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Google search failed to even find a hollywood movie, even after 1 hour of attempts. I don't really care about the movie, but I am terrified by the prospect that google now ceased to function on this basic level. Why is this happening?

I understand the explanations of seo and other stuff like spam content. But why are there NO relevant results at all.

I wouldn't mind having to start wading through results at page 2 or even 10 but now it utterly fails to find even the most basic things.

Things you found on the first attempt even just a year ago. Now they are effectively hidden.

To me functionally the entire internet has now vanished. I cannot access anything that I am searching for. Might as well not exist at all.

Has anybody found a way around this?

Is this on purpose? Is this an attack on the free internet, herding people to just the top 5 sites like facebook, youtube, tiktok, and so forth?

Are there search engines that still work?

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[-] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 313 points 1 year ago

Everybody is blaming SEO, which is true - but Google is also hamstrung by walled gardens.

Before Facebook, most content posted to the web was open. It could be viewed by anyone without logging in. Reddit even uses this paradigm.

But then Facebook started putting everything behind their account login and suddenly, Google can no longer spider a significant amount of the conversation going on on the Internet - and it can't link you to it either, because the link would be dead if you weren't a logged-in Facebook user. And of course it's not just Facebook.

This is why appending site:reddit.com has come into fashion in the past couple years. Reddit, being open, viewable without a login, is a fantastic source for finding people who are talking about exactly what you're searching for.

And it's another reason why Meta is cancer: all the conversations going on about whatever problem you are experiencing that made you do a search in the first place, if they exist in private groups on something like Facebook - they are useless to you and useless to anyone but the members of that private group. We are losing our giant public knowledge base because capitalism.

[-] Aurix@lemmy.world 255 points 11 months ago

You really need to add Discord to this list as it is soaking up gigantic amounts of information about video games as a forum replacement. One could argue for actual community games like MMO's it is perhaps slightly different, but for the majority it is a huge problem.

[-] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 108 points 11 months ago

In 10 years, when we move off discord for "the next big thing" all that info will be gone yet again. It happened to slack and it will most likely happen to discord. None of it will be indexed too. Fun times.

[-] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 11 months ago

Where are the data hoarders when you need them?

[-] FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago

Tools for backing up servers already exist: https://github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter But unfortunately discord can't be easily scraped in one coordinated attempt unlike reddit due to the massive number of private servers and existing verification/anti-bot mechanisms. As a result, only the communities that have data hoarders will be actually archived.

[-] rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Good link, though not the one I used. I've already begun taking measures archiving various chats. Even if Discord lives, my account might not.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 95 points 11 months ago

Reddit keeps asking me to use their app and they are very clearly making the mobile browser version worse and worse.
Just last week I couldn't view a thread I found on Google without signing in. It wasn't adult content and didn't require verifying my age. The reason given was very vague and had something to do with the content not being vetted (despite being old).

The Reddit garden wall is already here and is currently being rolled out. For your own good, of course.

[-] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 28 points 11 months ago

I use a browser extension to redirect to old reddit, which doesn't have all this crap yet

[-] Nastybutler@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago
[-] heyfrancis@lemmy.ml 11 points 11 months ago

There are some extensions you can try - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=old+reddit+extension+firefox&t=fpas&ia=web

But I'm using LibRedirect - https://libredirect.github.io/

If you're using Firefox mobile (Android), you could try this https://github.com/octonezd/oldlander

[-] tryagain@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

You're a goddamn life saver

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 22 points 11 months ago

Probably this:

“Unreviewed Content
This community has not been reviewed and might contain content inappropriate for certain viewers. View in the Reddit app to continue.”

Knew I could find it by searching for an in-theaters film followed by “DVD rip reddit”. Behold / old reddit link.

The sub exists to funnel people to a single TinyUrl. Checking the preview instead, I expect it (123movieshd dot club) is a malware distributor.

While reddit’s tactic is coercive, it also functions as a lazy way to fight the reach/effectiveness of spammers.

[-] Juvyn00b@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

Replace the beginning of the url with old.reddit.com. this will get you in.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

Sure, for now. They won't keep that up forever.

[-] Juvyn00b@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Agreed, but it's been working now for longer than I originally expected. I wonder if some part of their choice base totally relies on that being available...

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Yeah it’s true. Too bad. Bye reddit.

[-] AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Use Firefox and there are extensions that block the app request popup. Or you could use tampermonkey or something similar to do it.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago

I bet that doesn't work with the login requirements.

[-] SolOrion@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

The page still loads behind it, usually, there's just a popup keeping you from accessing it. So I don't see how they could stop you from just.. removing the popup.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

Sure, to see a few top-level replies. That's another part of it, you've got to click "see more" several times in order to see every branch of the conversation. None of that is hidden behind the overlay element.

[-] ironeagl@sh.itjust.works 19 points 11 months ago

Also, starting in 2018 Google no longer actually searches for the words you entered. Instead, it tries to figure out "what you really mean" and shows results for that. See BERT

[-] morphballganon@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

"... Google can no longer spider a significant amount..."

What?

[-] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

"A Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing."

Wikipedia

[-] orcrist@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

But I think that's letting Google off the hook because when I search for things I do get hits, it's just weird and I get terrible hits. Last week I was looking for something specific and I found five pages in the top 10 that were all variations on each other, to the point that I assume some of them were automatically generated but have no idea which is the actual original source, if any.

And then if I'm searching for something like song lyrics, the top five hits are all sites that require JavaScript to be enabled and AdBlock to be disabled. Of course Google could filter its rankings to bring sites like this out of the top 10.

So I agree with you that capitalism is a huge issue but one specific issue here is that the Google developers don't care about things that we care about. And other companies such as Apple and Facebook are worse of course.

this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
959 points (91.6% liked)

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