Google Search was getting (even) more frustrating before the AI hearsay section.
It seems to prefer suggesting videos to easily-consumed information, ranking them higher (and also including TikTok, X and Facebook video sources, for god’s sake). Why?
And it’s almost impossible to ask it for the *latest* information on something. The News tab can be wildly outdated (by months or years), and the only other way is:
> Swipe/mouse over to the “Search Tools” option and tap
> Select “Any Time”
> Choose from either “Past hour”, “Past 24 hours”, “Past week”, etc. None of these give you the *latest* results.
No wonder people get their news from social media…
Not to screw up your comments section, but I personally *do* need a recommendation for a working search engine.. Google has become just absolutely, bizarrely shit. As you say, it feels like the results are just vibes now -- it might work if you don't actually know what it is you want to find (if you're just asking an impressionistic question), but if you know exactly what you want it is INCREDIBLY bad at finding it. Sorry. I know I'm just restating points you've already made. Just makes me so cross. What exactly is their underpants theory here?
You can turn off the AI in Google with udm=14. I have a shortcut in Firefox to www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14. (Whatever you then enter to search for is substituted for the %s)
I used to use Google's dictionary/thesaurus function almost every day. If you searched for a word, it would give you the definition and synonyms. And you could click on those synonyms and it would, in turn, show you the definition for that word and more synonyms. It was really easy to use and got the data directly from an actual dictionary.
It's now replaced this with the AI overview function, which does not work as well. The definition is instead an AI-generated approximation of what the word means, and a similar list of synonyms which are sort-of correct.
A dictionary is no good unless it is absolutely correct as an objective reference tool. I can't believe they've replaced this with an alternative that, 80 percent of the time, is slightly wrong - making the whole thing pointless, while probably being more expensive to run.
I've gone back to looking at a physical dictionary when playing crosswords.
Having said that, Google's AI search is very useful when you can't quite remember the name of something. A couple of recent successes: "I'm thinking of a song that came out between 2010-2012 by a UK indie band. I think I read about it in the NME single-of-the-week section and it had 'baby' in the title". Or "Name me a Brazilian striker who played for either Wolfsburg or Werder Bremen in the mid-to-late 2000s."
But Google has taken a blanket approach that it must serve us AI search for everything, which seems pointlessly infuriating.
Yes, I agree, to go back to a "I'm feeling lucky" button that you can press if you want secret sauce would be fine with me, it's the having it everywhere by default which rankles
I've gotten so fed up with Google that I've actually started using Bing. And I hate Microsoft! It's not even the AI answers that about me (I find them useful about half the time), but the fact that the first screen of results is now adverts and when you click on links the string Google says it found is simply not in the page there...
Google Search was getting (even) more frustrating before the AI hearsay section.
It seems to prefer suggesting videos to easily-consumed information, ranking them higher (and also including TikTok, X and Facebook video sources, for god’s sake). Why?
And it’s almost impossible to ask it for the *latest* information on something. The News tab can be wildly outdated (by months or years), and the only other way is:
> Swipe/mouse over to the “Search Tools” option and tap
> Select “Any Time”
> Choose from either “Past hour”, “Past 24 hours”, “Past week”, etc. None of these give you the *latest* results.
No wonder people get their news from social media…
Not to screw up your comments section, but I personally *do* need a recommendation for a working search engine.. Google has become just absolutely, bizarrely shit. As you say, it feels like the results are just vibes now -- it might work if you don't actually know what it is you want to find (if you're just asking an impressionistic question), but if you know exactly what you want it is INCREDIBLY bad at finding it. Sorry. I know I'm just restating points you've already made. Just makes me so cross. What exactly is their underpants theory here?
You can turn off the AI in Google with udm=14. I have a shortcut in Firefox to www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14. (Whatever you then enter to search for is substituted for the %s)
Haven’t tried it myself, but many people seem to stay with Kagi (paid search) once they try it. I may end up there too…
Normally when I mention this, people seem to pop up and say Duck Duck Go, but this is only a second hand recommendation at this stage ..
I used to use Google's dictionary/thesaurus function almost every day. If you searched for a word, it would give you the definition and synonyms. And you could click on those synonyms and it would, in turn, show you the definition for that word and more synonyms. It was really easy to use and got the data directly from an actual dictionary.
It's now replaced this with the AI overview function, which does not work as well. The definition is instead an AI-generated approximation of what the word means, and a similar list of synonyms which are sort-of correct.
A dictionary is no good unless it is absolutely correct as an objective reference tool. I can't believe they've replaced this with an alternative that, 80 percent of the time, is slightly wrong - making the whole thing pointless, while probably being more expensive to run.
I've gone back to looking at a physical dictionary when playing crosswords.
Having said that, Google's AI search is very useful when you can't quite remember the name of something. A couple of recent successes: "I'm thinking of a song that came out between 2010-2012 by a UK indie band. I think I read about it in the NME single-of-the-week section and it had 'baby' in the title". Or "Name me a Brazilian striker who played for either Wolfsburg or Werder Bremen in the mid-to-late 2000s."
But Google has taken a blanket approach that it must serve us AI search for everything, which seems pointlessly infuriating.
Yes, I agree, to go back to a "I'm feeling lucky" button that you can press if you want secret sauce would be fine with me, it's the having it everywhere by default which rankles
I've gotten so fed up with Google that I've actually started using Bing. And I hate Microsoft! It's not even the AI answers that about me (I find them useful about half the time), but the fact that the first screen of results is now adverts and when you click on links the string Google says it found is simply not in the page there...