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?

  • AWittyUsername@lemmy.world
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    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.

      • SolOrion
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        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
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          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.