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Google SEO has homogenized the internet with vapid marketing content. The internet is one big commercial. The reason Reddit got popular was because communities found and shared good content and created more by talking about it. Now ads are disguised as posts and memes.
The internet is getting as bad as radio.
The internet is getting as bad as radio.
Lemmy kinda feels like the 2000’s internet and I love it
edit: formatting
i didn’t get to experience the 2000s internet and I’ve been loving lemmy
Imagine content creation that was done purely for the fun of creating content and sharing info, albeit with literally zero hope of receiving any money. Better in some ways, worse in others.
Pretty much.
As soon as people realized you could make money generating content, it all became homogenized shit.
Same thing with video games. I miss the days when people didn’t treat them like a job.
Now every gamer thinks and plays like they can go pro, similar to elementary schoolkids on the basketball court thinking they’ll go pro.
this seems perfect
Yeah. I’m noticing when things get too big, undesirables start creeping in.
‘Undesirable’ in this sense would be people with more money than sense and incredibly low standards for what they spend it on. They are the kinds that are proud to be ripped off and businesses will cater to them over smarter folk.
Yup and hopefully only the beginning. The fediverse is like a better internet without big tech.
The most “2000s internet” I get is me and my internet pals hosting our own websites)
I’m hosting my instance and website in my basement and its awesome
The internet is one big commercial.
So fucking true.
Thanks, capitalism.
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Google’s ranking algorithms are also to blame. If you publish anything on a new website it will take you eternity to rank up against copycat sites and websites that have nothing to do with the search query, they will outrank your publication just because their websites have had 5+ more years presence than you, have paid their way through the ranker, and their article has only one of the six keywords mentioned in the search query but isn’t relevant to the whole search query, your article will linger on page 10. you will put 5 times more work to move your post to the 9th page than the time it took you to research and write the post.
google has shaped the internet into what American democracy is, those with more money get more exposure
I don’t have an Instagram, a YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter account, and I still hate Google search. It’s nearly useless unless I’m specifically trying to find something to purchase.
It’s not about what you as the searcher has. It’s about where the content you’re searching for is located. If the entity or company you’re searching for has only published within walled gardens such as Instagram or Facebook, then you are less likely to successfully find that information in Google. If they had published a normal website, then Google would be better able to index that information and provide you the result you want.
I feel that, but also, the content I am looking for is indeed typically posted on regular websites without walled gardens, and Google still seems to want to show me a whole page of garbage before the site I’m looking for, whereas on DuckDuckGo(bing), my desired sites are usually the first or second result. Google is better if I’m looking to buy something, or find local restaurants etc, but ddg gives me better results in my academic and flight of fancy searches.
I just hate the google search UI 😊 but of course this is not the only reason that DDGO is my default private and bing my default while working. We are a full on Microsoft software company with all the teams stuff etc. So using bing allows to search not only in the internet, but in the company SharePoints as well.
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It’s even bad for finding something to purchase honestly. I’ll search for a specific part number, and most of the results are other similar but not interchangeable products. No Google I cannot just shove this random other battery pack into my UPS, but thanks anyway.
I tried searching for airtight drawers and all the results were either airtight or drawers. Only one was both and it was a ten thousand dollar museum specimen cabinet.
It’s especially terrible if you care about the fiber content of your clothes. Searching for linen or even 100% linen gets me linen blend, linen-look, linen color. 100% wool gets mostly acrylic wool blends. Wool toe socks gets me either wool socks or toe socks but again, not both.
Plus I can’t block Amazon and Walmart from the results anymore, so that’s a ton of extra junk to filter through manually.
Oh, you’re looking for a part number for something relatively common? No can do. However, I’m sure you’d be interested in pages of Chinese phone numbers that carry 3 digits in a similar order to your search.
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DuckDuckGo is the same. I searched for “ham and cheese recipe” and Yummly is the top result.
My top result is tasteofhome.com.
You can use quotation marks to filter only results that have a certain word or phrase in it, rather than related content.
You would think so wouldn’t you? But Google usually still tries to be “helpful” about everything. “100 linen” does work better, although still not perfect.
That also doesn’t fix the issue with being unable to ignore Amazon and Walmart. On the standard search, the dash to ban a specific term makes it not the first result but it still shows up further down the page. On the dedicated product search it doesn’t seem to do anything at all.
Here’s an example of how well search operators do these days.
I just signed up for the free trial of Kagi, I’ll have to see how it compares.
I like Google products but the search engine really has become shit. I’m not sure there’s anything they can do about it though.
There is plenty they can do. They created this mess with their algorithm. They can undo it by changing it, again.
Google does not objectively score or rank a site based on what you are actually looking for. They rank based on how much time other people spend on the site. How many other sites link back to the site. They rank based on how many words are on the page, regardless of if that actually matters.
This is why when you google a recipe, all the top results are blog posts from soccer moms telling a life story about food. You don’t care about that stuff - you just want the recipe. But that’s what google cares about.
Google can change this.
I don’t think the algorithm is the problem. The problem is that sites started to capitalize on your attention. Everybody wants your sweet little attention so they can earn money from it. Internet also moved into walled gardens of money making machines (like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok).
It doesn’t matter which algorithm is used. Somebody will crack it and abuse it for their own good.
There’s no reversing this.
It doesn’t matter which algorithm is used. Somebody will crack it and abuse it for their own good.
If the algorithm gives a bigger shit about giving the answer people are actually looking for, and doesn’t emphasize length, formatting, and other bullshit… And people crack the algorithm by giving exactly that answer I’m looking for, I’d be ok with that.
But it all starts with the algorithm
That’s easily abused. Search engines before Google were pure keyword search, but those were quickly abused. People just made websites with all types of keywords just to get on top of search results. Google’s PageRank fixed this - temporarily. People were quick to abuse it too.
It doesn’t matter what you try to do. Somebody will figure out how to abuse it.
But to do that, the algorithm has to know the right answer in the first place. Meaning a human has to tell it what’s right and what’s wrong.
Have you seen Google’s generative AI tests? They’re trying to do exactly that and it’s mostly useless.
This is exactly right but assumes the nature of the internet must remain the same. The problem is the content and people wanting your sweet little attention. The internet described in the article - the blogosphere and Usenet and the rest, was an internet created by people for people and existed for its own sake. What google has access to now is 3 billion people all trying to scam the others for money. Its a fundamentally different user base and there’s no way a better algorithm can find content that isn’t there
Bro. I’ll never understand why recipes have taken the blog-first, recipe-last approach.
They simply need to change the way relevancy is measured. They need to implement some mechanism that can evaluate the quality of the page. The algorithm should penalize sites that have content very similar to other sites (like those that scrape github or stackoverflow), low effort sites, or sites that are infested with too many ads.
And since so much quality information is in youtube videos, and they already generate transcripts, why can’t you search through those?
Any metric that isn’t direct human curation can be gamed.
Yeah. The whole ‘search engine optimization’ scam has really messed things up.
I feel like, aside from a top few sites, most results just spit out content mill bullshit.
Ever notice how just about every explanatory article is structured the same way? They’re trying to repeat the same shit as much as possible to get higher in search results.
“What is X?”
“Why would you want to do X?”
“Here’s how to do X.”
I just want to know how to do X, guys. Enough with the fluff.
Just out of curiosity what google products do you use?
I guess it’s gmail, drive, calendar and YouTube mainly
Thanks. The only one left for me is YouTube now. On a WAN show Linus asked Luke what product released less than 10 years ago by google he was using and they couldn’t think of one. It was the same thing for me. I’ve been asking friends and colleagues ever since, the answers are interesting.
Most of the big ones. Gmail, calendar, maps, YouTube, YouTube music, photos, tasks, pixel…
It’s more interesting to say the ones I don’t use tbh: Drive and Chrome.
The only REAL replacement I’m still looking for is YouTube. Sure, Peertube and proxy sites for YouTube exist. But the amount of content I am interested in is by dozens of decimals larger an YouTube than on any other alternative combined.
And, yes, of course, the search engine.
I’m hoping that as the fediverse grows it will start to accrue enough capacity to sustain a strong video hosting platform like peertube.
Social media has a network effect where the more people use it the more attractive it gets, and because the fediverse can interconnect between different formats I see it as inevitable that eventually it will take over, because it can manage a much more comprehensive network than any centralised site.
Once it becomes more mainstream, server capacity should increase until it can handle the world’s video sharing as well.
Odysee seems to be doing relatively well. Probably 20-30% of the YouTubers I watch are also on there.
I legit didn’t know about this service, looks cool, but I don’t fully understand how it works.
I hope alternatives to youtube like Nebula and peertube find their footing, but I can’t help but suspect that youtube has and will continue to find the successful path in this social media era. I’m not a youtuber or anything, so I don’t really know any details about how it works, but the way they seem provide a platform with monetisation and brand building possibilities built in seems pretty effective/pragmatic for a platform that needs to find someway to work within capitalism.
Just use duck duck go. Its better in all regards.
Its better in all regards.
I wish it was true. My strategy is to use ddg in first try to find something and switch to google when ddg ducks in wrong way. Currently google is better in images and searching for “this particular site” instead of answer on any site
I tried DDG many times for work. Often I don’t find the result I want at all. I try different queries and all, but I only find barely relevant shit. I switch to Google, and immediately the top result is exactly what I want.
Exactly the opposite for me
Seriously. I hate the censorship going on on youtube.
Duck Duck Go has been nothing but great since I switched a few months ago. It’s like Google from 10 years ago.
If I need to find really obscure stuff Google is still better.
there’s been a shift to entertainment-based video feeds like TikTok — which is now being used as a primary search engine by a new generation of internet users.
I hate when journalists use data from Arse Research Institute to boost sensation
But if that last 25 years of Google’s history could be boiled down to a battle against the Google bomb, it is now starting to feel that the search engine is finally losing pace with the hijackers. Or as Marwick put it, “Google has gotten shittier and shittier.”
“To me, it just continues the transformation of the internet into this shitty mall,” Marwick said. “A dead mall that’s just filled with the shady sort of stores you don’t want to go to.”
Worth citing
Dash is one of the web’s earliest bloggers. In 2004, he won a competition Google held to google-bomb itself with the made-up term “nigritude ultramarine.”
DarkBlue.com is not Google
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011225539/http://dashes.com/anil/2004/06/nigritude-ultra.htmlI always wondered if "using X app instead of Google as search engine should be interpreted as sign of generalized computer illiteracy (not being able to distinguish between two different contexts/products) or a product of our own doing (convergence between desktop and mobile, interfaces harder to visually differenciate between apps and its functions).
Either way we have a long way ahead.
They’re bloggers, not journalists.
In fact, the site’s original name, BackRub, was a reference to the backlinks it was using to rank results.
Oh, I’m so gonna be using the original name from this moment on. “Have you backrubbed it?”
Too long. We need to shorten it. I know… “I can’t find any information on grasshoppers.” “Have you rubbed one out?”
“What ingredients do I need for thick pancakes again?”
“Hang on, I’m rubbing one out now?”
translation: Google Search is still an important tool, but it is no longer the only way people find information.
I hope it’s true, but honestly I don’t believe sites and opinions that have to do with google from sites like the verge.
Because sites like the verge are in reality rivals to google. For example verge is owned by voxmedia which has an advertising company and a web advertsing platform. They are rivals to google which also is an advertising company. They hate google because they want google’s money lol. I seriously doubt they can be objective especially to google.The point of the article is that whatever is replacing Google is not going to be better. It’s not Google that is broken. The entire web is.
The only thing I still use from Google is their Pixel phones, and then I immediately flash them with GrapheneOS. That, and Google maps which I can’t find a good replacement. I’ve tried every single OSM app and none of them remotely compare.
Google Maps was painful enough to me (on GrapheneOS) that I bought a Garmin - a dedicated physical navigation device.
I thought it would be a compromise, but I’m hooked on Garmin now. It’s much nicer than Google maps.
The only thing I miss is the real-time traffic updates along my route.
For me it’s mostly for looking of businesses. I can pull them up, see pictures, check their website, even check their menu if it’s a restaurant, and also their phone number. Also with my gym I can see how busy they are on average at different times of the day so I know when to go when it’s less busy.
Yeah. I still do most of that through Google Maps in a browser. Google’s solutions to those are really nice.
If Google blocks those services behind an app, I’ll stop using them, because the (if experience so far continues) app likely won’t work in the GrapheneOS privacy sandbox.
I use GrapheneOS and can confirm it works. It even works if you don’t have sandboxed play services installed. If you do install it, I’d set the battery usage to restricted, and disable background data in network settings.
Cool. Thanks.
I wish. Unfortunately it will probably live on for all eternity like Facebook is somehow living on.
It’s no surprise that Facebook is hanging on, the average nerd might avoid it like the plague but the average person doesn’t care
I only use Facebook for local community info as I can’t get that anywhere else. My fake profile works wonderful for that.
I use it for ice cream. There’s a place that makes their own flavors in house and one of the best ways to find out what they have besides checking in (they’re not exactly super local to me) is to check their Facebook page. That and occasionally family contact in the event that someone loses a phone or something. That’s literally it.
It’s far from over
I’ve been looking for a replacement for Google Keep for so long and can not seem to find one.
NotesNook
There was a thread on the android community recently about that, I think. If you want to dig through there. I think the consensus though was that it is pretty hard to replace.
If you don’t mind me asking, could you please link me to the android community? Still trying to find my way around the Lemmyverse.
Sounds like you got what you needed, but here’s the link anyway.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
A writer for the site, interviewed under the pseudonym Michael Hugedisk, told Wired in 2007 that their three-person team linked to a webpage selling pro-George W. Bush merchandise and was able to make it the top result on Google if you searched “dumb motherfucker.”
Per Sullivan’s logic, Google Groups added better discovery to both Usenet and the myriad other message boards and online communities creating proto-meme culture at the time.
Alex Turvy, a sociologist specializing in digital culture, said it’s hard to map our current understanding of virality and platform optimization to the earliest days of Google, but there are definitely similarities.
Alice Marwick, a communications professor and author of The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media, told The Verge that it wasn’t until Myspace launched in 2003 that we started to even develop the idea of internet fame.
In 2004, he won a competition Google held to google-bomb itself with the made-up term “nigritude ultramarine.” Since then, Dash has written extensively over the years on the impact platform optimization has had on the way the internet works.
On top of it all, OpenAI’s massively successful ChatGPT has dragged Google into a race against Microsoft to build a completely different kind of search, one that uses a chatbot interface supported by generative AI.
The original article contains 3,695 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 94%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is a terrible tldr. Just go read the article.
