Search engines are pretty much redundant because they don’t return what we are looking for.
They cooked themselves.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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But what if what your are looking for is AI generated articles that don't provide any trustworthy answers or top 10 lists of products that their manufacturers paid the site to figure on the list? Google is still the best for that.
Well when you put it that way…..
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I use DDG and SearXNG several times per day. It's better at finding information in StackOverflow and Reddit threads than directly searching in those sites and it's the only way I know how to actively seek out websites I haven't been referred to by anyone.
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If you have a technical problem and enter "reddit" in you search often you find help. But this is so stupid.
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Yup,i use perplexity as my first port of call for most searches. Not because it’s good - it’s not, I’d estimate it’s wrong around 80%of the time - but because it’s still better than the alternatives
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Most of the time i use search engines to get to wikipedia. Now i have to add "wiki" to most of my queries because wikipedia wont even show up on the first page.
Just add Wikipedia to your search bar
Use the DDG bang :
- Go to https://duchduckgo.com/
- Enter
!w <your-search-here> - It searches Wikipedia specifically for
There are bangs for "image search" (!im), "github search" (!gh), "search PubMed" (!pm)
You cannot live without this
Why would I need any of that if I can bang the search bar of my browser instead, and it takes me straight to search on Wikipedia or any other site I want without waiting for DDG to add that site?
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You can completely skip DDG's systems by just using your search bar though.
I know I speak for everyone on Lemmy that they prefer entering their question into Grok.
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...why don’t you just go to Wikipedia to begin with? I’m honestly asking. URLs still exist.
Wikipedias search kinda sucked 15 years ago. So i never bothered to try it again since then tbh
It seems significantly better now. A lot of topics, I just go straight to Wikipedia now.
If you add '!w' to the end of your word in the address bar it takes you directly to wikipedia.
For example: buffalo buffalo buffalo !w
Only if you are a good netizen and using DDG ;)
Also, it works at the start too: "!w buffalo buffalo"
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So what the new business model is?
- Steal content from creators
- Train AI model using that content
- Sell this content to users as original
When creators go out of business and there's nothing to steal, how will this business continue?
Yes. Also combined with:
- replace all entry level jobs with AI
- run out of experienced people because nobody new can learn the skills required
- ???
- profit
But you see, for a brief moment, we made the shareholders very rich, and that was a beautiful moment totally worth everything.
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They can't see past their next set of financial statements. And the government wants those content creators to fail so they can control all information.
Advertising obviously. /s
at least some of this has to be because people use other search engines
Google search doesn't actually return useful material anymore
I tried kagi a while back and liked it so much I subscribe now. Google messed up the one thing they ever did right.
I dropped them for DDG over a year ago. Never have had a cause to regret.
It’s AI overviews which result in almost no clicks and people using LLMs like ChatGPT.
Former SEO here. I know so many people that now just ask ChatGPT things as their search engine. Many SEOs are now trying to SEO LLMs.
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Who uses Google in this day and age? They haven't had good results for a decade or so.
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The first thing I do when searching google is to scroll past that AI shit they put at the top and look for a valid link to a valid website.
The first you should use other browser like ecosia or qwant
https://udm14.com/ , you can also add "&udm=14" to your normal google link so you don't have to rely un udm14.com, there should be a tutorial on the site
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Unfortunately, most of the first page of results is often AI slop at this point...
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Steal it. Wrap it up. Give it away. The perfect crime by google.
Fewer people using Google
No, fewer people getting past the AI summary
Given the state of a lot of the summaries I've seen lately, that is scary.
Is that what this is saying? I wasn't sure. The article should state that explicitly, and not assume that the reader concludes that.
I think the issue there is the data doesn't tell anyone "why", it only tells "what".
Hard to imagine usage of Google suddenly falling by 22%, much less 60%.
Good news, though, is if Google stops bringing in traffic to sites, they'll block its bots, so both search and Gemini will become even worse, possibly turning people away.
Holdup, are people not skipping the AI summaries entirely because the info is fucking shit?
You forget we are in an echo chamber here. Most people not only read the AI summaries, they believe them. Just the other day I saw a normie ask ChatGPT to add up some numbers for them, instead of using a calculator. That's how entrenched AI has become in their day-to-day. They don't have to think any more. Thinking is hard. And that's how Google is able to dominate the web. Steal the data and serve it up as slop that's good enough for the everyday Joe.
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It's true organic growth is basically dead. There's very little reason to share expert insights now and while the old system sucked due to seo gaming but there was some actual value there even if buried deep.
I thought this was wild, that no way it could have dropped THAT much: hell, I still search for things and didn't rely on LLMs.
Then I remembered I switched my default engines to Duck Duck Go, and Startpage,
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