In the case of YouTube, only after a few results they become completely unrelated to my search.
It also feels like some pages in top results didn’t even exist before I made the search. They are filled with generic babble about the subject without ever going to details or conclusions. Dribble that no human would ever write
Yes. I have regularly been using DDG, but would wind up using google sometimes anyway. Now I’m actively forced to use other engines because google is now a monetized results server and will return zero or no relevant results in favor or sponsored or monetized results.
Yet another on the endless list of reasons why capitalism is bad for humanity.
Doesn’t mean capitalism is bad. Google has a search monoply, there are plenty of other search engines but how can they compete.
If a guy starts a wildfire to get hired as a fireman because he needs to feed his family then capitalism is bad. There are a lot of examples. Maybe you’re saying it’s not capitalism, but human nature?
Starting a wildfire is arson and criminal, the only thing that guy should get is jail. You’ll get hired as a fireman because you’re entrusted to protect the community and as a thank you, the community will pay you back. Does that make sense?
Ah yes…the ideal versus the reality. A fight that has lasted throughout time.
DDG is worse though—so much of the time all I get are pages that were created by an LLM to be search engine optimized. Hollow language and a table of contents just so they can tell me how long to cook rice
Dunno about Google but Youtube seems to be making some things harder on purpose, like seeing the date of a video or showing search results in chronological order.
Extensions are your friend. I’ve had to install several just to make YouTube useable!
If I need to go find something to make a service useable that’s my sign to not use the service.
I’d be interested to know if there’s a way to fix this issue with extensions. Do you mean browser extensions? I use a browser sometimes and newpipe sometimes.
Using a browser and ublock origin, I find viewing youtube to work ok except for the occasional age gated video that I can’t view without a google account. What’s stopped working is search ordering and seeing timestamps. Like old comments might get labelled “2 years ago” with mouse-over no longer showing the actual date/time. It’s not shown in the unrendered HTML in any obvious way either.
Not commnenting on the efficacy of the following for everyone, but they help me:
Disable Autoplay for YouTube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/disable-autoplay-for-yout/dinkeiniijmpjehejhedbciaedblhnnk?pli=1
Return YouTube Dislike https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/return-youtube-dislike/gebbhagfogifgggkldgodflihgfeippi
U-Block Origin, obviously (still works fully on Brave Browser) https://ublockorigin.com/
Untrap for YouTube (Block YouTube Shorts & Remove Recommendations) https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/untrap-for-youtube-—-bloc/enboaomnljigfhfjfoalacienlhjlfil
YouTube Channel Blocker https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-channel-blocker/ghpibapiigafgbaolopljimengkfjofk
YouTube Upload Time https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-upload-time/nenoecmaibjcahoahnmeinahlapheblg
YTBlock - Block any content from YouTube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ytblock-block-any-content/nedcanggplmbbgmlpcjiafgjcpdimpea
Some of these probably cross over in what they do, but I can’t be arsed delving into the nooks and crannies of them, so long as they do the job for me.
Thanks, I don’t see any of those fixing the functionality that youtube broke, but the effort is appreciated. The one that shows the upload time only says you can use it while watching the video, but that time is shown in the text blurb if you click “more…”. And it makes a network request, of course. I’m using firefox so ublock origin still works for blocking ads.
Unhook does most of this in one extension.
It’s been bad for a few years already but it is getting worse. A good chunk of the internet isn’t indexing anymore (places which require logins to get the content), and those that are largely exist to earn from the advertising, not to be helpful.
There’s actually an opportunity for a disruptive force here. If you can be better at search than Google, you could steal users. But duckduckgo and related are mostly trying to be old Google rather than better Google.
I’m annoyed that YT got rid of the search by newest first option. At least Rumble has it still
That feeling when you’re trying to browse through a creator you like’s page for videos you haven’t seen yet, but you have to scroll past the dozens and dozens of things you’ve already watched, which each take time to load their thumbnails, making the task drag on for ages.
Yeah, the recommended videos is completely broken. It used to be good.
Probably because it’s prioritising what it thinks you’re more likely to click on more than the actual search term. AI recommendations basically.
Which sucks when you’re the kind of person that craves novelty. Just because I watched a nature documentary about sharks doesn’t mean all I want to watch are shark videos. YouTube doesn’t seem to understand that.
Thankfully, a lot of people gave really good suggestions when I made this Ask Lemmy post a few months ago. I’m still working my way down the list. Whenever YouTube search fails to give me something new or interesting, I check back on that page and pick a channel somebody suggested. Otherwise, the algorithm gets real stale, real quick.
month on month, everything gets worse and more noise to filter out. Can’t be the only one with this sentiment.
Use duckduckgo and turn off ai results. Problem solved.
no-ai duckduckgo is one url away:
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
I use DDG, but search quality on google is unmatched
It matches in what sense? Because google has become nigh useless to me. I’m relying hard on LLMs to provide links because google never gives me any relevant response anymore – and I’m not even talking about sponsored content here, which makes things worse in some cases
Google positions user created (reddit, discourse, other forums) higher than random articles in most cases.
Also google seems to be favoring official docs
Google is still the first thing that I check, it’s just not as consistent as it used to be in delivering any meaningful results
I wonder what would happen if we all just signed off for the rest of the year.
Yes, it is one of the main reasons I started paying for Kagi. Google search is designed first and foremost to serve you up to advertisers who pay Google.
It’s all monetization directed, no matter what. Boolean search is gone.
No. I don’t use it.
Search has been becoming smarter for years (decades?) by now.
The problem is that search has been made to work with the “you know what I mean” factor… fixing spelling mistakes, considering different tenses or forms of words, including related words…
Search became more friendly to the average non-technical user, but it became harder for users who know/knew how to search for exactly what they want.
Other factors include…
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where websites try to appear for as many searches as possible, occasionally regardless of relevance
- Monetization of search, where people with SEO and a lot of money pay to be included in as many “relevant” searches as possible
- AI incorporated into search by trying to find additional relevant pages
- Search engines being reluctant to return zero (or few) results and padding the results with other things you “might be interested in”
- Also, search trying to use what you “might be interested in” based on what they know about you/your account/your IP address/your location based on your IP range.
Yes
