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?

  • brbposting
    10·
    1 year ago

    This is tough.

    1: Kagi is getting some play in Lemmy comments recently.

    2: Lemmings are often technology evangelists, making Lemmy a good place to astroturf for very specific products.

    3: Companies are better than ever at properly seeding account comment histories to prevent suspicion.

    We should all be appropriately skeptical, though somewhat polite can’t hurt either since there’s never proof of anything and I’ve sounded like an ad before.

    • Baines@lemmy.world
      73·
      1 year ago

      who honestly pays for a fucking search engine

      reads hard like astro turfing

      • brbposting
        41·
        1 year ago

        Yeah.

        If Google released Google Premium - where teams of offshore workers deranked SEO spam junk - would you give them 99 cents a year to Stop The Madness?

        This is that, except it’s a no name, and the cost is far more. But I’d consider the $0.99/yr.*

        If that seems more sane… imagine you have plenty of disposable income so whatever the no-name charges is practically free for you. There has to be a market for it. But the resistance will certainly be immense.

        * (I’d instantly pay DDG 99 cents for a year of provably better results, whereas I’d have to think about Google b/c they have too much power and it’s an uncomfortable endorsement.)

        —

        Back to astroturfing…

        Anytime Kagi is mentioned I suppose I’ll jump in and say they’re an oft-mentioned brand suspected by at least a handful of users to be astroturfing, although there’s no proof, and SearXNG is a popular non-commercial alternative. I wanted to throw Grasp in to give a commercial competitor a shout but they’ve “paused”.

      • ultranaut@lemmy.world
        41·
        1 year ago

        I do. I use search basically every day and when I’m working I don’t want to waste a bunch of time digging through bullshit if I can help it. Google sucks, $10 a month for a better experience that both saves me time and helps get Google more out of my life is worth it to me.