Search engine results are getting worse, research confirms
www.theregister.com
'Search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam,' says study
  • northendtrooper@lemmy.caEnglish
    177·
    8 months ago

    I’m finding that LLMs are doing a better job for searching for new things. If I have a question, instead of going to google or bing I’ll goto chatGPT and ask some of that nature with some sources for further reading.

    Never would I think that I would need to use AI to answer simple search and yet here we are because the sole purpose of a search engine doesn’t really exist anymore.

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
      461·
      8 months ago

      The problem is, you can’t trust ChatGPT to not lie to you.

      And since generative AI is now being used all over the place, you just can’t trust anything unless you know damn well that a human entered the info, and then that’s a coin flip.

      • Lmaydev@programming.devEnglish
        72·
        8 months ago

        The newer ones search the internet and generate from the results not their training and provide sources.

        So that’s not such a worry now.

        Anyone who used ChatGPT for information and not text generation was always using it wrong.

        • BakerBagel@midwest.socialEnglish
          81·
          8 months ago

          Except people are using LLM to generate web pages on something to get clicks. Which means LLM’s are training off of information generated by other LLM’s. It’s an ouroboros of fake information.

    • LWD@lemm.eeEnglish
      175·
      8 months ago

      I hear it’ll be $20 a month soon for the privilege of a glorified search engine distilled into a chatbot.

      Edit: why the downvotes? I’m just relaying what Microsoft through OpenAI will charge.

        • LWD@lemm.eeEnglish
          61·
          8 months ago

          If the data was gathered using the legal loophole of being for research purposes, I’m not sure anyone should have exclusive rights of it to begin with… Not sure if that answers the question

    • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      8 months ago

      Thanks for your visit
      Unfortunately we are not yet available in your country.

      And no way to set my country.

    • Got_Bent@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      Whoa. I did a search that would inevitably bring nothing but sponsored bullshit on Google - “best tires”

      My results were cartalk, consumer reports, cnet, and the consumer insider.

      Nary a national chain trying to sell me something in sight.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    5·
    8 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    No, it’s not just you - search engine results really are getting worse as the internet is flooded with low-effort garbage from SEO farms and affiliate link sites, a group of German researchers has concluded.

    After pouring over countless links for the past year, the team has concluded everyone complaining about Google’s declining quality seems to be correct, and things are probably only going to get worse with the advent of generative AI - just like we predicted.

    Along with that, the researchers determined that all three search engines are prone to being gamed by large-scale affiliate link spam campaigns, and their efforts to subvert such manipulation through algorithm updates have, at best, “a temporary positive effect.”

    Google even claimed in 2022 that it was updating its algorithm to prioritize “people-first content,” but as the researchers found, those efforts have been in vain as SEO experts and spam factories have simply figured out how to game the newest tweaks to the system.

    Janek Bevendorff, research assistant at Leipzig University and an author on the paper, told The Register that it’s hard to say whether there’s an easy way out of the current online search predicament in which we find ourselves.

    “Affiliate marketing itself is in part responsible for what online content looks like now,” Bevendorff said, but noted that “banning it entirely is probably not a solution,” as many authentic sites use the tactic, and SEO optimization, as an important revenue stream.

    The original article contains 748 words, the summary contains 242 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

      • Z3k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        8 months ago

        I find myself hitting the same issues with ddg as with Google. The 1st page trys to sell me the thing I want info on

      • Kraiden@kbin.social
        8·
        8 months ago

        I use DDG when coding and generally find it to be a bit nicer, but from the article it sounds like they’re prone to the same issues. Anecdotally, I have noticed non-code queries do seem to be similarly crap

        ETA: You can set it as default in Chrome too, under Settings -> Search Engine

    • cozy_agent@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      I use DDG like others have mentioned, but I also like Perplexity, because it’s not a chat like ChatGPT, it just answers queries without trying too hard to chat to you.

    • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.mlEnglish
      11·
      8 months ago

      I use DuckDuckGo Lite in Librewolf with Ublock and NoScript (amongst other addons). That combination used with ddg’s !bangs got me covered. No ads, not even image search (just go to ddg directly foe that), just content.

      I’ve used searx through a docker container, and it’s a strong 2nd choice, but ddg lite is just easier to set up and gives better results imho.

      All said, an LLM like a local Llama and ChatGPT, can fill the gaps for very specific searches. Sadly, the modern internet takes a lot of savvy to navigate quickly and effectively.

      There’s a very good reason so many are typing in “reddit” at the ends of their searches, and that’s if their not using Chat GPT to just get them to the answer faster, and using much more computational resources to do so…it’s a big cluster fuck.