[Industry] Search Engines are the bane of the Internet. [Small Rant, V1, release 2].

[donald]

Cumlatively over the past year I have taken to note that the majority of online searches for information from the main cast of "providers" has gone from 'hmm that was a disappointing set of results' to 'I should find the email or telephone of a professional to directly ask this question of instead'. That is not a joke by any means; I had a plumbing issue and after 20 minutes of online searching for the reward of failure, I instead called a local contractor who earned my future business by answering and providing detailed information to me for my issue at ZERO cost which conversely is near to the same cost as the search engines offer to be absolute and fair. I see now more than ever that human direct knowledge triumphs any thing I can read or search for online.

Despite digesting that, I went back in looking for information and without exageration over the past 2 months the online searches have given a yield of results that frankly are embarassing even to myself as an IT professional. The current tally of results across all of the major engines are: IMAGE, IMAGE, IMAGE, unrelated IMAGE, link to TIkTok, and SALE, SALE, SALE. I should not forget to mention that the 1st results are from the latest unfettered AI bot suggestions, a persistent login to our service prompt, or suggestions about a topic that are far from even a cursory or vague misunderstanding of the search term that was input.

Am I in a /dev/null corner of the internet? Is anyone else seeing this as well?

[Uptorn]

You are not alone. Although I think the deterioration in search quality really started to become prominent around 2016 or 2017. It leaves me wanting to just be able to just grep -e $SEARCH_QUERY the web. Engines no longer use key terms or obey operators. And ever since the machine learning craze began, search engines have fallen even further.

I can no longer use search engines to hunt down pages or content that I know with certainty that I'd seen five or ten years ago. It's like there's a huge recency weight being applied to the search formula. And that's not just generic search engines either, but also site-internal search such as Youtube's. Basically, if you think you've found something that you might want to revisit in the future: save it locally.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

[donald]

Note: These posts are sharedas a human user, not as a Debian spokesperson).

You are not alone. Although I think the deterioration in search quality really started to become prominent around 2016 or 2017. It leaves me wanting to just be able to just grep -e $SEARCH_QUERY the web. Engines no longer use key terms or obey operators. And ever since the machine learning craze began, search engines have fallen even further.

I can no longer use search engines to hunt down pages or content that I know with certainty that I'd seen five or ten years ago. It's like there's a huge recency weight being applied to the search formula. And that's not just generic search engines either, but also site-internal search such as Youtube's. Basically, if you think you've found something that you might want to revisit in the future: save it locally.

I used to have a GIANT quotes/links file which grew cumbersome from items I had searched for previously and bookmarked, bookmarked ... as one would use the term, to refer to a passage of information or appreciation at a later point. However NONE of them work at all. On that segue, HP is the worst of this faux pas in my opinion for search landed results. They simply do not respect permalinks in any capacity at all and it is impossible to find information for an EOL product that you purchased 2 years ago straught*/straight in line with their closest competitor: Dell, being no better. I do give a lot of credit to Lenovo which despite not being the same company from a purchase/sale years ago is at least in the consumer market still has readily available manuals, guides, and tech sheets still active. Shout out to manualslib for keeping information free, If I can find a link to their financing I am absolutely donating to them next paycheck.

But back on topic, yes you must save and if possible print out everything tech, woodworking, or even cooking recipie related. This new Internet is video, advertisement, and all tracking from click driven catered results and honestly nothing more now than a horrible waste of time. I'm praying that forums and mail lists make a large return as a rebuke of this trash at the end of IANA's "special purpose address registry".

* I made that word up!

[trinidad]

I agree with you that HP is pretty hit or miss but Dell is actually quite good.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-u ... ll-product

I use StartPage se with NO search suggestions and finding technical information is decent, though I haven't searched plumbing etc. I do long for the days of Gopher when whole libraries were accessible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs

Progress in free enterprise systems is always covered in kitsch and kludge, but that's the fuel for the engine.

TC

[CwF]

Enshittification is real.
Not too long after floppies in the mail upgraded to cd's in the mail tempting even grandma to get online, we reached the peak signal to noise ratio of this new medium. As the new way to do it has condensed into the only way to do it, society has suffered.

This progression of change that we perceive, or naively tell our self is constant improvement, is actually experimentation similar to natures own evolution where the vast majority of the change is not improvement, no matter how long lived, but a temporary test of viability that eventually dies off. Most caught in the moment lack the skeptics filter to see anything but new is better. Few have the foresight, or patience, to wait for the ungratifying time they can say “See, told you it was bunk”

The ‘answer’ is no longer the goal. In the early days between AltaVista and Google I had the realization that much of this functionality should be put in the hands of public institutions like libraries and academia and be coded in a yet to coined ‘Open Source’ fashion. 30 years later, it's still being argued. We have a long way to go. It is a fair argument that leaving progress to commercial interest has push us further and faster than any ‘committee’ would have progressed, but most are still missing the point that most of it is bunk.

[donald]

I agree with you that HP is pretty hit or miss but Dell is actually quite good.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-u ... ll-product

A lot of the Dell manuals, for example since they acquired Sonicwall, are very difficult to locate, even on that manuls site. For some older firewalls and equipment one must use a 3rd party site to find information.

I think my larger point of this is while Dell and HP may have spotty presentation for archival information, search engines shouldn't point you to dead links and dead ends. What is all the crawling for then?

The ‘answer’ is no longer the goal. In the early days between AltaVista and Google I had the realization that much of this functionality should be put in the hands of public institutions like libraries and academia and be coded in a yet to coined ‘Open Source’ fashion. 30 years later, it's still being argued. We have a long way to go. It is a fair argument that leaving progress to commercial interest has push us further and faster than any ‘committee’ would have progressed, but most are still missing the point that most of it is bunk.

Well said.