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submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by MTK@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.

I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.

Perplexity seems to work but I don't like the idea of AI giving me "facts" since they are mostly based on other AI posts

ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.

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[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 156 points 3 weeks ago

they're pretty bad, but ddg at least feels like I'm getting actual results.

[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 55 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah DDG is great. The only thing I find is its not good at local results but a quick !g on the end gets me the local results im looking for.

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[-] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 22 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I prefer DDG, but I hate the news search. 90% of the results are paywalled.

Oh, and sometimes the image search will return a pile of porn for a seemingly clean search request. I once searched for "R34 Skyline" expecting Nissans, and got VERY different results without safe search.

[-] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 72 points 3 weeks ago

Searching for R34 is on you. Naming something R34 is on Nissan. The popularity of R34 is on all of us.

[-] ProstheticBrain@sh.itjust.works 42 points 3 weeks ago

R34 is also short for rule 34 - "if it exists, there's porn of it on the internet"

So if you search R34 and anything, you'll get porn.

[-] nonailsleft@lemm.ee 23 points 3 weeks ago

Now I want to see some skyline porn

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[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 124 points 3 weeks ago

It's not just you. Search got worse, and it did so intentionally.

Ed Zitron lays it all out really well, with all the receipts, but the basic version is this; Google has an incentive to make you search more for the same things, because then they can show you more ads. And google is, first and foremost, an ad delivery company. Every "product" they own is an ad delivery vehicle. It's not just AI slop that made search based; Google made search bad, and everyone else followed suit, to a greater or lesser degree.

[-] hannesh93@feddit.org 70 points 3 weeks ago

I'm very happy with kagi at the moment. Just crossed one year using it as my main search engine last week and don't see why I would go back.

[-] tk1ll3r@discuss.tchncs.de 43 points 3 weeks ago

Same. Using Kagi feels like surfing the old web. The first thing I did was block all Pinterest results. That alone made every search golden. 😂

[-] ownsauce@lemmy.world 22 points 3 weeks ago

I hate Pinterest lol, best thing about Kagi is being able to block whole sites and it remembers your preferences. I may come back to Kagi but I didn't feel like funding their AI features development. Now Im using Searx and 4get cause they're free.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 13 points 3 weeks ago

You're not the only one. They have a leaderboard and the top 7 results are various Pinterest domains.

[-] ownsauce@lemmy.world 20 points 3 weeks ago

Leaderboard here for anyone curious

Yep everyone blocking Pinterest.

Also the most prioritized website is Wikipedia. Guess everyone wants facts in the the age of hallucinatory AI

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[-] MTK@lemmy.world 31 points 3 weeks ago

Having to signup and login to a search engines sounds like an annoying hassle

[-] aMockTie@lemmy.world 21 points 3 weeks ago

It's a very minor annoyance and well worth it in my opinion.

I was searching for a book quote for over a year. I tried every search engine, tried changing the terms, checking back several times every few weeks or so, but couldn't find anything even close. I tried kagi and it was literally the very first result on my very first search.

I haven't looked back and have never had an issue finding what I'm searching for since.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 14 points 3 weeks ago

You pay instead of seeing ads, so they need the account. Remembers you, though, so you just login once. Plus they have a solution for incognito/private windows too.

I really like it, has some cool features.

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[-] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 66 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You know what I miss? Search engines that honored Boolean operators. I am often looking for niche results and being able to -, ! and NOT is incredibly useful. But that's just not a thing anymore. I know part of it is that SEO includes antonym meta data that ruins this but it would still be helpful on occasion.

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 61 points 3 weeks ago

It is, and it's not just the search engines to blame.

The content out there is incredibly spammy. It doesn't pay to create good content. It pays to make a pool of AI gunge based on what people search for and then stick ads on it.

[-] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 20 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Spam sites laden with key words and massive SEO to farm advertising dollars from clicks long predated AI

It doesnt help that big search engines like google have realized people will go as far as page 2 or 3 to find the results, so intentionally worsen their search results to increase ads being served.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 52 points 3 weeks ago

SEO spam has been a problem for a long time, but AI has allowed it to be accelerated to a whole new level.

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[-] zante@lemmy.wtf 44 points 3 weeks ago

Not just you.

DDG has deteriorated to absolute nonsense, I’ve used it for years and years.

Recently gave startpage another go - maybe marginally better but still really poor

[-] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago

I switched to DDG right after Google added the ai answers to search and in baffled by how fast DDG seemed to go down hill. Just a few months ago it was still giving me on point results on the first try, now it almost feels like I'm using one of those malware search bars from back in the day.

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[-] anttifantti@sopuli.xyz 41 points 3 weeks ago

I feel like it’s especially bad if you are searching for anything related to a marketable product. I tried searching ddg for information about using a surge protector with halogen bulbs and all I got was pages and pages of listicles on “best halogen lights 2024” full of affiliate links.

[-] undefined@links.hackliberty.org 25 points 3 weeks ago

And if you’re looking for legitimate reviews, good luck! Everyone’s an affiliate now.

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[-] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 41 points 3 weeks ago

The whole internet is in the process of being filled with garbage content. Search engines are bad but also there's not much good content left to find (in % of the total)

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[-] Zink@programming.dev 37 points 3 weeks ago

My experience is that search engines are still decent at finding niche information that would normally be hard to find. But for anything mainstream, for instance any household product that should be easy to find information about, instead how about these 300 pages of top 10 lists of Amazon affiliate links buried under AI generated filler?

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[-] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 36 points 3 weeks ago

It's not just you. At some point, search's primary purpose went from "finding the information you're looking for" to "getting paid to put links in front of you". Then they kept iterating on it, quarter by quarter, for a very long time.

[-] recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca 33 points 3 weeks ago

You might want to try SearXNG

It's an Open Source search aggregator:

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[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 29 points 3 weeks ago

Its not AIs fault, its advertising based SEOs fault. Search has been broken for years for many topics.

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[-] nick@midwest.social 27 points 3 weeks ago

Kagi is good. I’m very happy with it.

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[-] DancingBear@midwest.social 26 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The other day I googled how long should I broil a ribeye steak and the google AI told me to broil it for 45 minutes.

Broil is the hottest setting on the oven and you’re supposed to broil the meat as close to the burner as possible. This would probably burn down your house.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 weeks ago

Huh...Can't replicate that claim (though I would believe it happening)

On the 20th Sep. I asked my Google Home if it would be raining.
It responded that it would rain. I asked when it would rain.
Home responded with "Today it won't rain."

Like what? 5 seconds ago you said it would. No weather report reports rain. Where did you get the first response from??
And I could even replicate it (have it on video)

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[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 26 points 3 weeks ago

I'm going to be honest with you. They feel no worse today than they have for the past ~5+ years or so. SEO blog spam with a dozen paragraphs to tell you exactly one line of information have been around for quite a while. Many of these articles felt generated either from crappy writers or "AI" tools predating the LLMs we have now.

[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 25 points 3 weeks ago

Kagi is working very well for me! and honestly i like that it's a paid service.

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[-] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 24 points 3 weeks ago

Kagi is pretty awesome

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 22 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)
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[-] lurch@sh.itjust.works 20 points 3 weeks ago

they overengineered it. they now give you results they think most people want instead of what you searched. for google, it helps to switch on verbatim mode and set your country to something weird like Azerbaijan

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Kagi is great. It’s a paid service but you can try 100 searches for free.

You can use the Orion browser on iOS and set Kagi as the search engine.

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[-] irreticent@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago

It becomes more and more true every day.

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[-] vxx@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You only tested Google and Bing.

Qwant and DDG both use the Bing architecture.

I agree though, search engines have become noticeably worse the last 2 years.

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[-] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

There's an extension that filters out websites from every engine. So like when you see Quora or other other digital garbage in your result, block it once and you'll never see another Quora article again.

Idr the name of the extension - I'll check when I get home and follow up.

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this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
612 points (96.6% liked)

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