I think, they are trying to push back against generated pages. I faced this exact problem myself. We recently published an interactive source code navigation tool [0] where you can find examples for commonly used functions from some embedded SDKs. Google indexed it immediately and almost immediately it got a spike of views.
Then, an interesting thing happened. Most pages simply disappeared from the results. Search console shows them as indexed, no problems, no manual actions, but if you google up those functions, there results are not there.
It took some statistical analysis to figure out that they appear to be capping the number of pages. Out of all the pages Google crawled, it picked some percentage of the "most important" ones and it's showing those. The importance, by the looks of it, was computed from the number of incoming links, prioritizing pages for common stuff like int32_t that nobody googles.
It's not ideal, but it kinda makes sense. It's 2024. You can use AI to generate plausible content for any search query you can think of. And unless they put some kind of limits, we'll get overrun with completely useless LLM-churned stuff.
You have confirmed my fears: I'm publishing a text heavy webpage with separate articles per page as well as a large single page. Google will not like that.
I think more people are starting to realize that the search engine content is curated, so they are starting to look at additional search engines and comparing results. Though Google casts such a large net that its hard to see a world where they become a minority player.
Social media influencers have replaced Google search for the youngs. If there's something you want to know, an influencer will tell you. Not saying this is good or bad, but it's what I've noticed.
GPT is the new Google at least for me... yesterday at Thanksgiving a cousin wanted to play a game she brought. She taught us but forgot two rules that GPT knew (the Pit). I didnt have do a search, look through results or click thru various sites to find exactly the fringe info I sought about this game. GPT just provided the nitty gritty details immediately and when I needed to ask for another rule GPT retained what i searched for previously so i didnt have type a long query.
Google seems to be getting it's butt handed to them with the US government recent ruling and GPT's rise.
Im just hoping GPT releases their own AI Phone .. GPT Phone sounds cool to me. A Siri on iPhone that works like GPT won't be available til Spring 2026. GPT and maybe Microsoft have opportunity to take a chunk of the phone market.
I think the big problem is simply that the results are bad. They’re full of spammy links to weird websites with verbose but useless content or just links going to the obvious sources that you could visit yourself like Wikipedia or stack exchange. All the sponsored content and allegations of politically manipulated results don’t help either. Using a chatbot seems more effective most of the time.
But Google has one resource that others do not, which genuinely contains a lot of good content. And that is YouTube. If they could simply make the content of videos easier to search, they would be able to offer a unique set of useful answers. At least for now before AI generated garbage takes over YouTube.
A search engine having bad result is not a simple problem though.
Especially at the position of Google, it's neither a coincidence nor something taking them by surprise. They've been in an arms race with spammers and SEO gurus since the beginning, and had all resources on earth to deal with it. The results being bad as they reached a monopoly position is of their own making, or more precisely a situation they saw as the best tradeoff.
That's where I don't see Google turning the ship around: people who were there for decades to make searches relevant have probably already left a long time ago, or they accepted the new direction themselves. And new people with expertise and enough energy to rock the boat are also in a position to do more impactful work in other companies where they won't have to fight an establishment.
As a example of how hard it is to change direction, we haven't seen Microsoft suddenly build customer friendly OSes, nor Meta having good taste, nor Apple come up with open ecosystems.
Yes, please make youtube videos easier to search through. And then turn the relevant bits into text with maybe a couple of still images. You know, web pages.
Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/googling-is-for-old-people-thats-a-...
The open web is dead. Google zero is here. The end is nigh.
https://www.theverge.com/24167865/google-zero-search-crash-h...
Except for The Verge of course.
I think, they are trying to push back against generated pages. I faced this exact problem myself. We recently published an interactive source code navigation tool [0] where you can find examples for commonly used functions from some embedded SDKs. Google indexed it immediately and almost immediately it got a spike of views.
Then, an interesting thing happened. Most pages simply disappeared from the results. Search console shows them as indexed, no problems, no manual actions, but if you google up those functions, there results are not there.
It took some statistical analysis to figure out that they appear to be capping the number of pages. Out of all the pages Google crawled, it picked some percentage of the "most important" ones and it's showing those. The importance, by the looks of it, was computed from the number of incoming links, prioritizing pages for common stuff like int32_t that nobody googles.
It's not ideal, but it kinda makes sense. It's 2024. You can use AI to generate plausible content for any search query you can think of. And unless they put some kind of limits, we'll get overrun with completely useless LLM-churned stuff.
[0] https://sourcevu.sysprogs.com/
You have confirmed my fears: I'm publishing a text heavy webpage with separate articles per page as well as a large single page. Google will not like that.
More and more I am relying on my own set of domains for navigation, sorry google I am leasing you
https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
actually bing is for old people because it's default search on ms edge which comes with PCs. default PC with default browser and default search.
I think more people are starting to realize that the search engine content is curated, so they are starting to look at additional search engines and comparing results. Though Google casts such a large net that its hard to see a world where they become a minority player.
That's definitely a niche amplified on reddit and HN, average users don't know or care about their search engine.
I imagine that websites with a lot of ads also discourage people from using Google.
Social media influencers have replaced Google search for the youngs. If there's something you want to know, an influencer will tell you. Not saying this is good or bad, but it's what I've noticed.
GPT is the new Google at least for me... yesterday at Thanksgiving a cousin wanted to play a game she brought. She taught us but forgot two rules that GPT knew (the Pit). I didnt have do a search, look through results or click thru various sites to find exactly the fringe info I sought about this game. GPT just provided the nitty gritty details immediately and when I needed to ask for another rule GPT retained what i searched for previously so i didnt have type a long query.
Google seems to be getting it's butt handed to them with the US government recent ruling and GPT's rise.
Im just hoping GPT releases their own AI Phone .. GPT Phone sounds cool to me. A Siri on iPhone that works like GPT won't be available til Spring 2026. GPT and maybe Microsoft have opportunity to take a chunk of the phone market.
I think the big problem is simply that the results are bad. They’re full of spammy links to weird websites with verbose but useless content or just links going to the obvious sources that you could visit yourself like Wikipedia or stack exchange. All the sponsored content and allegations of politically manipulated results don’t help either. Using a chatbot seems more effective most of the time.
But Google has one resource that others do not, which genuinely contains a lot of good content. And that is YouTube. If they could simply make the content of videos easier to search, they would be able to offer a unique set of useful answers. At least for now before AI generated garbage takes over YouTube.
A search engine having bad result is not a simple problem though.
Especially at the position of Google, it's neither a coincidence nor something taking them by surprise. They've been in an arms race with spammers and SEO gurus since the beginning, and had all resources on earth to deal with it. The results being bad as they reached a monopoly position is of their own making, or more precisely a situation they saw as the best tradeoff.
That's where I don't see Google turning the ship around: people who were there for decades to make searches relevant have probably already left a long time ago, or they accepted the new direction themselves. And new people with expertise and enough energy to rock the boat are also in a position to do more impactful work in other companies where they won't have to fight an establishment.
As a example of how hard it is to change direction, we haven't seen Microsoft suddenly build customer friendly OSes, nor Meta having good taste, nor Apple come up with open ecosystems.
It may be a hard problem, but it gets a lot harder when quality results are not aligned with your companies main source of income.
I wonder what percentage of YouTube videos contain useful information though. I feel like it could be as low as 1%
I don't see YouTube becoming a better place to search stuff, but I think YouTube content being allowed no usefulness is the greatest gift to humanity.
That's probably the only reason we're getting the truely creative stuff that was thrown in with no expectation of monetization.
Otherwise the useful bits look decently surfaced to me. Albeit not in a searchable or convenient way.
Percentage of "useful content" is likely the same (or better) than the open web, though.
Yes, please make youtube videos easier to search through. And then turn the relevant bits into text with maybe a couple of still images. You know, web pages.
Agree with you. Problem is more about poor results and lack of good alternatives.
And youtube search is extraordinarily horrible. Unimaginably bad.
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