• BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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      7 hours ago

      Do people still use the most popular search engine for search? I get you’re trying to be factitious but it comes across as naff.

      • ragas@lemmy.ml
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        7 hours ago

        I just tried to use google a few hours ago and it got me the same bad results as other search engines, only that it gave me a bunch of advertisements and AI slop first.

        • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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          7 hours ago

          Right… But you’re not operating under the misapprehension that Google is somehow an uncommon choice for search. I agree it’s gotten crap in a lot of cases, but equally I also know just about everyone uses it for search.

      • billwashere@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        It might be the most popular but it is utter crap and has been for a while. It has reached peak enshittification. You used to be able to say you absolutely wanted a term in the search or you didn’t want other terms. It ignores all of that now. Google stopped being about able to search years ago and is more about showing you the most relevant ad. I’m either DuckDuckGo or I self-host my own searxng. I’ve also tried using a locally hosted perplexica (running on my own local LLM) which uses searxng underneath the hood I think.

        Btw: I’m a yank so I had to look up naff so I learned some cool new slang! Now I’ll admit I was being slightly flippant but serious in the fact that Google really sucks as a search engine now.

      • SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        Maybe I just am using it wrong, but DDG consistently gives me completely irrelevant results, while Google still gives me what I’m looking for about 70% of the time. Maybe I just need to learn the proper way to search with DDG but so far it’s been next to useless in finding me relevant info.