Google is getting worse as it loses its fight against search engine spam::Aggressive SEO tactics are ruining search results on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, a team of researchers in Germany says.

  • The Assman
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    231 year ago

    Here come the totally organic Kagi users to tell us paying for search is worth it. Use DDG or anything else that’s free.

    • maegul (he/they)
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      111 year ago

      I mean, expecting everything on the internet to be free without question seems to be the beginning of some troubles. A more human and direct connection between people and the makers of the things they use seems to me a better scenario.

      • @bassomitron@lemmy.world
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        31 year ago

        Agreed, folks have gotten far too used to the majority of internet being free without considering that the backend systems cost money to maintain and operate. Take Lemmy for example, we’re fortunate to have such a dedicated group of volunteers literally spending time and money to operate instances like Lemmy.world. However, the admins of LW have been fairly transparent about how much work it is to keep the instance running relatively smooth. Now imagine a service that’s handling millions of users versus tens of thousands, it just isn’t feasible to run it without crowdsource funding it, similar to how Wikipedia funds itself.

  • Ghostalmedia
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    181 year ago

    Google has become even more worse because of all the sponsored content.

  • Lvxferre [he/him]
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    101 year ago

    I’ve noticed that using more advanced syntax helps to alleviate the issue, in both DDG and Google. Specially apostrophes (to force exact terms) and the minus (to remove results containing a certain word or expression).

  • kingthrillgore
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    11 year ago

    I’ve been pretty happy with SearxNG as a stand-in as it collates from multiple search engines.

    • @JayleneSlide@lemmy.world
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      11 year ago

      Except the results from DDG are also a dumpster fire of affiliate spam “listicles,” Pinterest garbage, and unrelated SEO BS. Oh, and Reddit sure has risen in all the results since the APIpocalypse. Almost like big business is all starving each other’s backs.

  • DreamButt
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    -21 year ago

    Sadly haven’t found a search engine that beats it

    • @reddig33@lemmy.world
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      81 year ago

      Adding “site:” before a search string can help if you know what you’re looking for. Like site:wikipedia or site:GitHub.com

      This kills off AI spam by constricting search results to pages from that site.

      But google’s other problem that this doesn’t solve (just like Amazon) is that the first few results are always paid ads, and not actual search results.

      • @sanpo@sopuli.xyz
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        31 year ago

        Right, except if I knew beforehand which site has the results I need, why would I even use Google?

        • @vividspecter@lemm.ee
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          51 year ago

          Sites that have discussions almost always have useless search functions. Using site: on those would likely give you better results then searching globally (even if it takes multiple searches).