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Did Google get worse?
Anybody else noticed a drop in quality from Google searches?
It's been a couple of days that the top results are absolutely terrible.
For example, I used to search for "youtube downloader" to get some website to download videos from youtube -ie.: download as a service-.
Now the top results have no service at all:
The first one is a software, the second one is Amazon :S, and the third one is yet another software.
It also happened many times that Google page results reloads the page, and the reload is a lot worse than the original one.
Anyone else experienced something similar?
Still a lot worse than usual.
Example:
I searched for "48 laws of power summary", and the 2 top results are from Amazon, are NOT summaries, are in German (albeit my preferences is already set for English results), and are not marked as "ads" :
I'm seriously considering now switching to another search engine if it continues.
Google has indeed gotten much worse for me.
Today, I noticed this though:
Upon clicking it, it directed me to this page:
Without having looked into it too far, it seems that Google is making changes to its Google Search algorithm to keep up with ChatGPT. And this project is called "Search Labs".
I think it's because of this event that occurred a few months ago (just search "google loses 100 billion" to find it):
Google's parent company, Alphabet, lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new artificial intelligence technology produced a factual error in its first demo. It's a bruising reception for Bard, the conversational bot that Google launched as a competitor to Microsoft's headline-making darling, ChatGPT.
Ever since this blunder, Google has been trying to compete in the AI space and its Google Search may be suffering for now while they try to figure everything out.
Thank you for cross-checking this, Ali!
I still wouldn't be too sure that is the reason for the drop in search quality, but there may be a connection.
I have been using duckduckgo when Google is not giving me what I want
Interesting video on this topic:
Basically he says:
- SEO services have been so good and successful that they can manage to push low-value content up, content that's been regurgitated by thousands other similar articles
- Hire for writing & AI opened the gates for a flood of lower-value content, the same everywhere
- Ads have taken more and more space in Google search results
The "same content everywhere on Google" is something I've noticed a lot writing the recent articles on manipulation.
And this video was before chatGBT.
I don't trust chatGBT for the many topics where I feel it will only regurgitate run-of-the-mill mainstream.
But it has become my go-to tool for searches such as "can I boil chicken liver", word-related searches such as "give me synonyms for" and even several research-literature queries.
