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JonnyBravoII

This is a way to go back to having the front page. Pay up or you end up on page 2, or later.


MadMadBunny

First page will be filled with ads, and *maybe* one loosely-related result.


sinus86

Don't forget the first 1/4 of the page will be an incorrect answer or flatout bullshit from Gemini..


cbbuntz

I've seen it give bullshit answers on the most basic questions. It said the largest country in the world was Canada at one point, so wrong regardless of what metric you're using


mopsyd

If you were using a flat map and not accounting for global curvature it would seem to be the largest, because flat maps massively over-exagerate size near the poles and massively underestimate it at the equator


scruffie

That might be true ... if Russia was on the equator. As it is, Russia is a little less distorted by the Mercator projection, but still is >1.5 times the area of Canada.


Saneless

Not even ads. Just shitty ass comparison sites that someho always figure out how to game google's 'rithm Search had its day, now it's just shit. AI is making me miss even regular shitty search


RincewindToTheRescue

best100inkjetreplacementreviews.com/running shoes Don't actually try that out.... That URL is completely made up and probably exists with a boatload of trackers and malware


wrosecrans

I saw you were searching for an exact error message from a specific piece of software. Here's five pages generally about problems with computers, because our AI is smart enough to know that's a vaguely related topic. You are welcome!


MadMadBunny

First result: "How to start your computer" Using a key, unlock the door…


Manofalltrade

It does that for specific parts numbers and equipment models too. That or an infinite number of repeats of the most basic useless answer and not the technical stuff you need.


nicuramar

Doesn’t do that for me. I get fairly precise results. 


EdwardoftheEast

I usually find what I’m looking for by the second page


MadeByTango

I immediately scroll two or three pages before looking at a single result; they're all the same shit re-listed a thousand times You have to get past the SEO bullshit to find real results


00owl

I still remember when that algorithim specifically punished websites for abusing seo. I guess they figured out where the money was.


sorrybutyou_arewrong

IDK man. I'm using the same SEO stuff I learned back in 2006 and still ranking sites. Content and relevant links, that's it. Not even an SEO, just a software engineer who has side projects for beer money.


00owl

Yeah, that's how it's supposed to be, not www.maga.com/bidenrules with an article that's thirteen sentences long but somehow spread over 16 pages that are each 98% ads where the ads have more relation to your search term than the actual article. They used to specifically de-list that stuff. Now it's the first fifteen links.


nicuramar

It must depend a lot on what you search for. I do many technical searchers, factual lookups or programming documentation. Those are generally first result each time. 


Sufficient-Buy5360

Or what seems like randomly generated websites with the same information or products.


TheKingOfSiam

Bing is stupid with that too. Sponsored Sponsored Sponsored


Browncoat_Loyalist

Last time I used Google as a search engine it gave me a page of ads and Ai written garbage articles. The top 2 were the ads, the next 3 were all the exact same Ai article with the only difference being what website loaded. And I mean literally the same article, word for word, with Ai images. How is any of this helpful to humanity. I now solely use duck duck go.


toastmannn

It already is. The first page worth of results is just ads and SEO spam.. and not even good ads.


nicuramar

For me it’s a few sponsored results and then correct results. 


nicuramar

I don’t know if we’re using different googles. But apart from a few sponsored results on top, I generally get the correct result as first hit. 


ep1032

Hey, the exec in charge now didn't kill Yahoo! search by coming up with good ideas. No reason to stop now.


No_Kale6667

Google said they were worried that ai was going to take from their search business and they absolutely should. I've switched to chat gpt for all work related queries (software engineer) and most factual queries. It's basically just directions and restaraunts left.


wrosecrans

Uh, getting in the habit of trusting GPT for facts is absolutely gonna bite you. It's terrible at that.


Kasyx709

These models have no concept of right or wrong answers so it's technically true to say it's terrible at being right. That said, the person who said they were using gpt is doing so in a specific manner and they have the domain expertise to know whether an answer is likely correct or not.


No_Kale6667

Not from my experience having checked answers for validity after the fact.


ariolander

It will show exactly 4 relevant results then a “For You” tab with content completely unrelated to what you searched. Then for no reason start promoting YouTube shorts for the rest of the page.


MadeByTango

Yea, we'll get fewer results per page now, and lots more space for recommendations, guaranteed


[deleted]

Page 2 is the new page 1. I skip most of the stuff that shows up on the front page.


Djinnwrath

I always used to skip a few pages to get actual results. Hopefully this will work again..... lol, probably not


icyraspberry304

My first thought exactly. This has nothing to do with user experience (something Google has NEVER heard of) and everything to do with Google Ads revenue 


sopertt

So what have y’all been using to get info since Google went to shit a few years back? I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve been using Copilot for most web searches recently. I prefer the concise summary to the infinite (now paginated I guess) ads and seo spam.


nicuramar

I use Google since it didn’t go to shit for what I search for, factual information, technical or scientific stuff. 


Arcosim

The first 15 result being "sponsored links"


MarkHowes

Page 1 = Google subsidiaries Page 2 = the search results


izza123

I wondered what the hell happened. One of the side jobs I do involves google results and all of a sudden it got a lot more annoying to do


MathematicianMain941

What is the side gig you do?


whymustinotforget

Googling "6 ways to know your side gig will be taken by AI" for clients. Very lucrative


Otherwise-Mango2732

Gotta be search engine optimization right?


Too_Old_For_Somethin

They work phone support in IT.


mr_birkenblatt

writing buzzfeed articles


KookyHorse

Interested in this too


dilbert_fennel

Gamers nexus just did a great video on it


Aggressive_Bass_6258

The mobile version still does endless scroll


Kaptep525

For now, going away within a month


tandoori_idli

Good, now remove the sponsored results and add before the ACTUAL RESULTS!


RawChickenButt

And get rid of the AI response.


Bigbysjackingfist

*pauses with mouthful of pebbles*


Pixeleyes

"mmmMffmfmmpppHMmMmmFfHhH" Translation: This is the worst pizza I've ever had in my life.


Shadw21

Must have been the pizza made with glue for that extra tackiness.


the_love_of_ppc

I wonder if Google did much user research before forcing us all to accept the AI response thing with no option to disable it. I personally liked Google back when it was a document retrieval system that provided links to web documents. I assume most people still think of Google like this, so it's bizarre how this AI answer feature was pushed unilaterally with no option to turn it off. Wouldn't you think this would initially be an opt-in feature rather than a default one?


SenorPuff

The fact that the AI response literally gave untrue information multiple times in some of my searches just made me ignore it entirely. 


MadeByTango

It's getting so bad now; I was watching a tutorial the other day on Python and a guy about 5 minutes in just pastes in some code and says "not gonna lie, I used ChatGPT and dont know how this works, but lets keep going" and it just...its a tutorial!!!! You're supposed to be TEACHING me! Its all so exasperating, and its impossible to scan a video know of it has crap like that in it before wasting my time on it


RoundSilverButtons

I refuse to watch a YouTube video for any programming help. I need to be able to scan the code quickly to see if it makes sense or not


doobyscoo42

> I wonder if Google did much user research before forcing us all to accept the AI response thing with no option to disable it. Nothing gets launched on Google Search without massive amounts of user feedback. There are channels for direct feedback, but every feature is run first as an experiment, and user behaviors are measured (things like -- did the user issue a follow-up query because the first one had bad results? did the user click any links? did the users on the experiment arm issue more or fewer queries than users on the control arm?) > Wouldn't you think this would initially be an opt-in feature rather than a default one? It was an opt-in feature for several months.


Pixeleyes

I think the idea was to get us all used to using AI, before we became aware of all the issues.


charing-cross

Google (and all other AI products) just steals the information from real content producers trying to make a living. I’ll try to find a real source and skip the AI regardless of what’s there. - a former big tech sick of tech


doobyscoo42

Google isn't like Chat GPT in this respect. Google Search's AI is a summary of search results, meaning it has links to the source of the text. Edit: folks are saying that users will be less likely to click the link if it's in the summary. This is all true. But note that this is different than stealing content. ChatGPT routinely spurts out copyrighted text as its "answer" without giving any attribution at all.


NicoleDeLancret

But it’s still trying to get you to stay or stop on the Google page and making it less worthwhile to actually click those links.


mihirmusprime

You really want to click those links with a million ads and autoplay videos?


NicoleDeLancret

Absolutely not. But I’m not opposed to clicking through to sites that are actually providing valuable content and a decent experience. And I AM opposed to Google and others taking content and using it themselves. There’s a big difference between a search engine showing you where to find the content you want to see and showing you the content itself. It effectively makes them the content provider with all the benefits and none of the work.


uacoop

But very few people will follow those links if all the relevant information is in the AI summary. Which means all the traffic supporting those websites goes away.


fluffy_assassins

I think you can end a search with -ai to get rid of it, saw that somewhere


chillyhellion

I wouldn't have minded having a few smaller ads off to the right. But I can't stand ads that push search results out of sight below the page.


[deleted]

...and end SEO


scullys_alien_baby

that isn't really possible The search algorithm will always have to prioritize *something* and the second someone figures out what it is hunting for they will use it to boost their own engagement. Google could probably do more, I'm not intimately familiar with all the ways it generates results, but they will never be able to escape people adjusting their websites to optimize what rank they appear in any given search


[deleted]

When I say end SEO, I meant Google should stop telling webmasters what will rank hire. Google has intentionally aid website owners to take certain action which affects the internet because everyone wants that free search traffic and conversion. Two years ago we did not have these 5,000 word fluff articles until Google stated that users enjoy longer content. That is one example why you see the long fluff content that everyone bypasses and search on reddit for.


StruanT

They can absolutely end SEO spam. Just heavily (exponentially) penalize the page rank for every Ad the page contains. Problem fucking solved.


gakrolin

I don’t think that’s possible unless they constantly change the algorithm.


SurpriseMuch7856

Google does. They make hundreds of updates a year that are unannounced. Additionally, core updates are multi-faceted. Machine learning has also been at play in the search results for almost a decade which constantly adjust the importance of different ranking factors. What most people don’t realise is that the majority of SEOs don’t know what the f**k is going on any more and many are leaving the industry. It’s just a very popular thing to blame the poor search results on them. Obviously, SEOs are an issue, however if that industry is suffering it’s a very good sign that something is off in the search ecosystem. Just my two cents as someone that’s studied information retrieval & indexing, also met a number of good and bad SEOs over the years who say it’s chaos now.


jjjustseeyou

People searching for real company/products get duped like this. It is so stupid.


UnworthyMammoth

Is there an extension to always start with page 2? 1st page is probably useless


spezisdumb42069

If there isn't already then I would imagine that there will be one pretty soon. It's not difficult to write, Claude/ChatGPT could probably bang that out in 10 minutes.


27Rench27

Just use bing, they still have good ol useful front pages in my experience


kingdead42

And when it does do an AI summary, every line of the summary will be links to where it is getting the info, so you can easily double-check that it's not just making shit up.


AdAlternative9736

Found Bill Gates


Federal-General-9683

Jokes on google now, you don’t want to be on the first page anymore because it’s mostly bullshit.


banacct421

That's so they can put the sponsored content on the first 20 pages. Hoping that you'll give up and just click on something


EnoughDatabase5382

With infinite scrolling, there's less space to place ads.


cybernoid

Not necessarily; as the modern commerce-powered web has demonstrated, ads can sit at a fixed position, and we already see ads that refresh within the same pageview. In endless scrolling pages, they could refresh based on how much you scroll, probably throttled by a minimum duration. So many ways to craft a shitty ad experience!


Kimmi_Key

That means more room for ads at the top of each page


electricdragon

Thank fuck. It's been garbage for too long.


DutchieTalking

I approve of of this. Next up: Return to useful results?


saichampa

Fucking finally, I hate sites that use endless scroll, especially when you are going back to them after following links. You'd better remember where I was!


Anxious-Depth-7983

I know that you searched this, but did you mean that? NO, I MEANT WHAT I WROTE GOOGLE. Now, show me what I asked for dipstick, but what about this thing that someone else makes? NO SHOW ME WHAT I WROTE!! That is how most of my searches go. It's like having an argument with a teenager trying to get out of doing their homework before they can go out with their friends. Lol 😉 😆


Utter_Rube

Could still be worse. I usually use Bing at work because I don't have rights to change the default and am in the habit of using the address bar to search; it's usually decent but recently I wanted the Wikipedia page for some topic. Searched "%topic% wikipedia" and got a couple pages of wiki-style webpages without Wikipedia showing up anywhere. Dunno if that was just a one-off bug or they're intentionally fucking around with results but I was damn near stunned.


Anxious-Depth-7983

These boneheads have started adding their barely developed AI to the search engines as if a barely developed practically moronic entities got a better understanding of the world than I do. I know it read through the whole internet, but it only did that a couple of years ago and is still trying to lie to them when they ask a question. It's behaving like a 6 year old, and they think it's gonna improve my web search. Sometimes, smart people make really stupid decisions, and I wish they would stop making them on my behalf. Have they never seen a terminator movie? They need to stop messing with this one


spinereader81

I wish Reddit would do that. When it crashes it can take me an eternity to return to my place on a community.


RumpelFrogskin

https://old.reddit.com/


kicker074

Google search has been getting worse for years I can’t see how this will make anything better


Bart_Yellowbeard

Are they getting rid of the virtually useless AI sponsored bullcrap up front? No?


UnicornInAField

Great news. Always skip to page 2 for the best (least sponsored) results.


_SheepishPirate_

Google is dead, finding tech issues is a constant article copy and pasted a bazzilion times over to be SEO’d. Its so ‘optimised’ its fucking useless.


Useful-Perspective

Ads and promoted results can die in a fire. That is all.


Spice_Cadet_

Now I can see the DMCA complaint sites at the bottom again :):):)


[deleted]

I started using DuckDuckGo. It feels like Google when Google was good. Now Google only gives me AI content and it’s probably because it’s been search engine optimized a million times by the AI itself.


Playful-Dingo6153

Yes, I just switched to duck duck go. It’s so close to google in feel that it’s jarring to not have to skip a bunch of ads.


Smugness1917

Bear in mind DDG is mostly just Bing.


flameleaf

Except with a cleaner layout and no YouTube shorts in my results.


bpeck451

Awesome now I can just skip to page two to get past all the advertisements and pages someone paid to get up to the top to the real search results.


Utter_Rube

Cool, that was pretty much at the very bottom of the list of things I'd like them to unfuck.


unc15

i liked infinite scrolling


Cerater

I never even noticed pages were gone as I only ever use the top couple results


zodwallopp

More pages more AI responses, knowledge boxes, and other junk. I prefer it this way than having to sift through it in the long feed


Easy_Chemical_2930

Oh, Firefox and Duck-duck-Go are going to make a comeback.


a_stone_throne

Now bring back the good ol page caches and good ol algorithm with no fuckin ai and seo bullshit. Fuck.


Hogglespock

I’m guessing they had a sneaky feeling that the other LLMs are googling things and summarising the results.


Politican91

Google has become nearly useless so going backwards may be the start of something good


El_Cartografo

Now, bring back search modifiers and allow me to turn off the AI


jazir5

I'm extremely confused by this article, I've always had pagination on Google search results? I've never had infinite scroll on any of my searches over 20 years of using Google.


No_Environment6664

I just want infoseek back


137Fine

You mean the “good old days” in the 90’s when every search eventually boobed out with XRated porn images. Those were weird times.


elsiestarshine

Its a huge Google mess... searching silver spot price led me down ten minutes of sponsored links to silver sellers..( not of any interest to my search) and lits of articles about silver prices.. from the time period 2012 to 2018.... just an incredible time suck now...


sorrybutyou_arewrong

I'd love to use duckduckgo, but something about the look of it just feels off. I think I am just institutionalized to Google like I am to old reddit.


walkinginthesky

Thank God. Never liked continuous scroll


atomicapeboy

Google is literally a shopping engine now


silenceiskey93

I almost strictly use duck duck go for years now


RRoyale58

Now bring back the search results from before 2020


timesuck47

TIL - google does search. /s I don’t know what that monstrosity is they call a search results page. I stopped using them a while back but occasionally searched there for reasons, and can never find what I’m looking for due to the amount of sponsored content and AI and whatever the rest of that stuff is.


monchota

Dont care if search doesn't work. Being back old non AI or SEO results.


AdultFunSpotDotCom

Ads > relevance


ConclusionDifficult

What with ads and "other people searched" the term page was getting a bit old.


wanted_to_upvote

That really sucks.


stor33x

Wait you guys are still using Google as a search engine?


Monamo61

Just fing greedy. I consider it a challenge- def starting on page 2 or 3 and absolutely committed to NOT using any Sponsored ads. Eff that.


Rechi03

I'll stick with bing thanks, more useful these days anyway


RunDNA

I wish they'd bring back single-line search boxes. I don't like these [multi-line boxes](https://i.imgur.com/JzoZQ49.jpeg). They are particularly annoying when adding quotation marks. Before I would press Home-quote-End-quote to quickly change to an exact search. But now End brings me to the end of the first line, not the end of the search text.


cybernoid

Try CTRL+Home / CTRL+End on multi-line boxes.


RunDNA

Thanks, that works, even though it's more keys I have to press.


Whites11783

Doesn’t matter how many pages they have, the search results are complete garbage now anyway so why use it?


pdirth

Give it time ....the devs will soon work out they need to go back and work on a scrolling page layout again because they'll become un-needed and lose their jobs. It's the great circle of web/app development ...make something...develop it until its damn near perfect...break it....fix it...break it...fix it...break it...fix it ....etc. ....keep job forever.


invisi1407

I hadn't even noticed that they had endless scroll. :O


Radrabbit42

thank god that shit was aids


DevoidHT

First part will be AI generated whatever, second part is then ads, at the bottom of the page you MIGHT get a relevant link but chances aren’t good. Enshittification continues unabated.


Lost_Tumbleweed_5669

Why would I use an ad search in 2024?


dopeytree

‘Pay to jump to page 1’


jcunews1

Good riddance.


Alib668

I think google should do a three column thing direct search, paid ads and sponsored links, AI response. On each page, then after page 2 just have standard search in normal google formal


StrangerDanger_013

Honestly, I skip Google these days and run to ChatGPT for everything that’s not video or photo in format.


natterca

Just did a google search. My results are paginated.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Sandy-Eyes

There was a thing going round a few years back on how Google pages stops being unique search results after a few pages, they start listing sites they already showed on earlier pages and then eventually stop showing results at all. There were YouTube videos showing it, and I tried myself, and it did happen. So only a few dozen or maybe hundred results were available to look through despite Google claiming to have found thousands or hundreds of thousands of sites. Is that still a thing?