this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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An example of search engines failing me miserably last month:
I wanted to hire a photographer, so I started searching using keywords like "wedding photographer MAJOR_CITY_NAME", "photography MCN", "event photographer MCN", etc. The top results I got were all mostly along the lines of "top ten wedding photographers in MCN" i.e. listicles with links to a few photographers who probably paid the listicle creator? There were maybe one or two links to a photographer's website itself in the first page.
I'm okay with ignoring the first page of results and moving on to following pages. But rather than giving me individual photographer's websites in subsequent pages, I started getting listicles for "top ten wedding photographers in OTHER_CITIES". I'd click through multiple pages of results to find maybe 5 direct website links.
What actually helped me find a photographers eventually was entering the exact same key words on Instagram. Almost every single one of them that I found on Instagram had an excellent website and the city name, and their addresses were mentioned clearly on their websites. So, it wasn't a case of them not having enough information on their website. It's just that search engines chose to prioritise listcles of photographers from other cities rather than giving me links to individual websites of photographers in my own city.
In this case, I got lucky because photographers have a presence on Instagram which has a functional search engine. What if I want to find a plumber, or someone else? I'm forced to just trust a listicle creator because search engines don't want to give away links to single purpose websites and only want to keep us on websites with a shit ton of content (that may or may not be what you need) and ads.
/rant
Why the hell are you not switching to Google Maps when you're searching then? If you want something in a specific area, especially local work, you search on Maps...
You understand that while this would give better results, this is an example of the problem under discussion - you're deferring to businesses listed on Google, washed with Google reviews and promotion. Businesses that don't actively try/pay to work with Google functionally don't exist - they are the gatekeeper, toll collector, marketplace, and the arbiter of good and bad. They don't do this altruistically or honestly - they do it for profit, and the crashing quality of their search results is evidence of this.
Bro,
I have been using Google before 2000
Had an early invite to Gmail. Got mobile search results over text message before smart phones.
Google maps didn't even launch until 2005.
Some of us went places and did things before Google+
I don't disagree that if I want to go somewhere I might search g maps.
But the search results are really shit lately.
I miss competition with several web spiders
Just sounds like people don't know how to use the services available to them. Even if I don't specifically go to maps to search, searching "wedding photographer" immediately puts a maps result at the top of the list with 3 photographers in my area.
I remember Lycos, Altavista, Looksmart, AskJeeves, Yahoo, etc -- You are putting some awfully rose tinted glasses on saying that those had anywhere close to the results that Google was putting out at the time; or even now for that matter.
Even now, the competition is garbage with 1 exception -- OpenAI's GPT3.5 and GPT4. If they can get the hallucinations under control, it's incredibly good at distilling information you are looking for. Unfortunately, it is also TERRIBLE for any kind of up-to-date information.
Every time someone says "Google couldn't find this thing", I say -- "what were you searching for exactly" - and I put it in, and I get perfect results. I have no idea what people are doing, or maybe if Google is geo-blocking certain things, but I have not once had anyone show me empirically that their results are any worse today than before.
Additionally - nobody should be using Google for search without an Adblocker.
Would that work in the case of photographers? I would only think to use Maps for business that are likely to have or must have by necessity some building or office.
Photographers are it an obvious term to search for on maps. “Photo studios” sure. But event/wedding photographers are a google search not a maps search.
Yeah. I just found 8 different photographers near me in less than 30 seconds.
Disclaimer: I'm late to this whole discussion and I also don't understand some things (I don't fully understand what SEO is and why it's bad, though from the comments I understand it's part of what's making search engines worse nowadays)
Given that: I also made some searches where I wouldn't get anything good in the first pages, but that seemed to be dictated by the amount of spam sites too, isn't it?
I mean, I use the Ublock Origin and NoScript extensions for Firefox and search logged out of Google, so I don't get advertisements, but I agree that, depending on what I search, I need to fight through large amounts of crap to find something good. Still I don't understand (and it's my lack of knowledge in this) why it's the search engine's fault for not being the best and hiding spam sites
SEO itself is fine - it's just optimising your website website for whatever a search engine considers important.
The problem is that search engines' seem to have absolutely garbage metrics for what is important and worth it.
I’ve noticed for quite a while now that you can’t search by location like that, but have to use the keyword “near me”. When I do that, the first result is a map with on an and list of photographers.
Its not actually “near” but its in the area so that might be that I don’t share location