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?

  • FlatFootFox@lemmy.world
    703·
    11 months ago

    Have Brands™ started astroturfing Lemmy yet?

    I’m not completely sold on Kagi yet. I’m still in the trial period right now. But paid services can be a tough sell online. I figured I’d be up front about the costs rather than wait for the inevitable “$10 a month for search!?” comment.

    • eric@lemmy.world
      292·
      11 months ago

      I haven’t seen any obvious astroturfing yet, but your last paragraph really did have the vibe of a smoothly transitioned paid promotion. Not saying it was, but even the comments that you haven’t fully bought into it made it feel even more like one of the more honest paid promotions.

    • berkeleyblue@lemmy.world
      5·
      11 months ago

      I read this same sentiment two days ago; Google doesn’t work for me.

      Not sure what they are on about. I can find things I‘m looking for on Google in under a Minute 9 out of 10 times and I tend to use it quite heavily tbh…

      • 9bananas@lemmy.world
        5·
        11 months ago

        if you’re searching for something general, like, i dunno “dishwasher cleaner” or something, it spits out usable results.

        but as soon as a query becomes technical in nature, like troubleshooting IT problems, it’s a straight up nightmare.

        the reason it’s so bad at searching for anything very specific is their attempt to “figure out what you really mean”:

        and google does that by… ignoring what you typed and changing your search prompt behind the scenes without telling you and without any options to change it.

        and putting it in quotes rarely improves searches anymore, only spits out more garbage.

        point is: google is basically dead for any specific searches and only really works for searches that amount to “i want to buy thing. show me thing.”

        • diannetea@lemmy.world
          2·
          11 months ago

          I had this weird hardware issue with my desktop and I could not find results for it on Google about a year ago, and I had searched for it a bunch of times previously as well and couldn’t find anything relevant. My boyfriend searched for it on Google on his computer and found a result with the information we needed and i immediately fixed it.

          Guessing my “custom” results were poisoned by something at some time, but it prevented me from finding the answer I needed, and I didn’t think to log out at the time.

          Super done with Google tbh

    • bravemonkey@lemmy.ca
      2·
      11 months ago

      I signed up for Kagi after the trial. I’m very subscription adverse, but this one was something I don’t mind paying for.