Have we reached peak internet information overload when doing internet searches.

[.RC.]

Years ago i found searching for information on the internet, including youtube and so on, was not that difficult.   Some well chosen key words and you could often find what you wanted.

These days I search for something and just get bombarded with lots of useless links.  Even youtube, there seems to be more and more wanna be populist with shit channels so when you are searching for something specific, you again get bombarded with these useless crap videos.

[ebastler]

Wouldn't it be nice if this were the peak? 

[JPortici]

some ideas here
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/program-that-filters-rubbish-sites-and-youtube-videos-of-low-value/

if only i could block shit from within the google search app as well..

[vk4ffab]

Years ago i found searching for information on the internet, including youtube and so on, was not that difficult.   Some well chosen key words and you could often find what you wanted.

These days I search for something and just get bombarded with lots of useless links.  Even youtube, there seems to be more and more wanna be populist with shit channels so when you are searching for something specific, you again get bombarded with these useless crap videos.

I went back to school part time just to gain access to the university library, like books are the new black. I am done with youtube with its constipated wanna be's pointing at things and click bait titles that have nothing to do with the content. I want milk that tastes like real milk. Not people thinking for me and telling how to think.

So its back to books as a source of information and facts.

[SiliconWizard]

So it's actually beneficial in the end.

[hans]

This was recently on the news: https://www.techradar.com/computing/search-engines/google-search-might-be-getting-worse-and-ai-threatens-to-ruin-it-entirely

So yes, your observation is correct. SEO spam is a real thing, and those Q/A answers "results" are often misciting (Q&A not related) or from bogus sources.

Then my tin-foil hat mind would ponder whether a party like YT would intentionally screw up their suggested videos when people adblock. Why keep people on the platform when they don't pay? The ads have really gotten atrocious. The other day I was using Chromecast to a TV to share some meme videos.. but seriously; 45secs of ads to play a 1min meme? Talking about a moodkiller. And even the image/text ads are advertising downright crypto scams and whatnot. You can click "don't show this again", refresh the page, and then get another 99% similar ad from a different (bogus) advertiser source.

That's what commerce gets you I guess..

[Infraviolet]

Not only do searches get drowned in spam they also get drowned in "the narrative". Searches for controversial topics, unless specifically searching for the names of sites which oppose (not all of them necessarily being truthful in their opposition) "the narrative", pretty much only return the sorts of results which support "the narrative" of present day politics/culture as presented by pro-big-government types. Unless you already know what it is called and where to look, search engines will no longer show you anything outside what their middle-managerial functionaries deem to be "acceptable opinions", you won't get served results from The Brownstone Institute, the AIER, the Daily Sceptic or Unherd (those 4 being the most immediately coming-to-mind of truthful anti-narrative sources) unless you search for them by name...

Then technical searches get drowned in lists of sites which contain your technical terms of interest as part of a wall of text fileld with nothing but other random technical words, sites set up to draw traffic to serve ads to I guess, because clearly nobody can read them. And/or lists of sites which might be AI generated, or might be created by poorly paid writers hired to simply fill pages with things which sound much like what is written elsewhere about a topic, and tell you exactly the same vague over-view of the thing you're looking for, with none of the details you were actually searching for. Sites of this kind all look to be copies of each other worded with just enough difference not to be spotted as such by search engines, again the business model looks to be luring in viewers who'll quickly recognise the page as worthless junk, but serving them ads first. How glad I am to have an ad blocker.

[audiotubes]

Wouldn't it be nice if this were the peak? 

My thoughts exactly.

Probably after google, scamazon is the greatest source of dis/misinformation on earth. Try to find a real, unbiased review of any product without scamalong affiliate links. Could take years and cost hundreds of lives...

[Infraviolet]

Amazon reviews are terrible, post a good one, including genuine good ones, and it always appears. Post a bad one, however overwhelming the vidence you can support it with, and it never gets shown.

As far as searching product reviews goes, on the internet as a whole not Amazon alone, that's a third specific case of really dreadfully useless results I should have thought to list in my earlier post. Huge numbers of scam reviews claiming the product is the best thing ever, and often written by someone who seemed virtually illiterate, and then among what remains and seem to be genuine reviews, you have to try to assess omething from a bunch of random anecdotes with no way to get a statistical feel for how good or badsomething really is. A key case in point being trying to select something like a hard-drive, where your deciding measure is long-term reliability... Is this just a bad anecdote, or is the wholeproduct line garbage and this person is merely the first to notice it...

[tszaboo]

Because Google search is broken and doesn't want you to have the information you are looking for. Youtube as well. It's by design, not a bug.

[SiliconWizard]

Given that those platforms make their money selling "information space", whether they are "ill-intentioned" or not, it doesn't matter, the end result is that it is necessarily biased.
I don't know if there's a solution to this at all. The more time passes, and the more companies will buy space to promote their stuff. It's entropy. So it's logical that the search results get "worse" on average as time passes. It can't get any other way.

But don't worry, they'll make it all better with more AI. For sure.

[rdl]

For any given item, many of the amazon reviews will not be about that item.

[themadhippy]

Anyone else remember the ole days when google arrived fresh faced on the scene promising us, that  unlike the search engine offered by our web portals, there  search results would be based on how many links went to that site and not the size of kickback they received.

[SiliconWizard]

Yes it all starts all nice and well. That's also what Mozilla was at the beginning, look at what they're doing now. Look closer.
But as I said, I think it's inevitable. I really don't see how it could be avoided.

[rdl]

In the beginning there were "operators" you could use doing searches. You could require certain words be in the result. You could require certain words not appear in the results. You could require that a specific phrase or string of words be found. There were more, but I forget, because years ago the various sites stopped "supporting" them, and to be honest, as more and more average people started using the internet, there were fewer people that knew these options existed. There was a bit of an uproar when eBay stopped recognizing the wildcard operator (*). And these days every site that serves up search results of any kind have their own agenda and search results there are always biased.

[EPAIII]

The first thing you must realize is

GOOGLE is an ADVERTISING company.

Everything that Google does is in support of that fundamental purpose: selling goods and services. Their free services do not pay even the electric bill at their headquarters.

The primary purpose of their search service is to help you find things. It is to GATHER information on your spending habits and then SELL that information to other advertising companies or use it directly to target you with ADs.

The same is true about a free e-mail address, YouTube, and any and all other services that Google provides for no charge. It has been said that Google still has the information from their very first free services which were run on a single computer in a college dorm. I totally believe that.

And the same is true about ALL the others who provide free internet services. The PRIMARY purpose of all of these free services is to collect information and to steer the users to the products sold by the companies which PAY to have those products featured at the top of every internet search.

If you want to avoid being targeted with PAID search results at the TOP of the results page, then the best advice I can offer is to use the NEWEST search facility. The new ones are still trying to sell their service to the companies which want to sell something. I recall that Bing was great for about a year or so, but then they got successful and were just like Google. Ditto for all the rest. They are there to sell things. NO OTHER REASON!

some ideas here
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/program-that-filters-rubbish-sites-and-youtube-videos-of-low-value/

if only i could block shit from within the google search app as well..

[tooki]

I wonder whether Google search returns useful, ad- and shopping-unburdened, search results when performed from within Google’s corporate network.

[coppercone2]

I don't think its too terrible you just need to work a little harder and be more methodical

its somewhat worse but there is way more sites and stuff now. even simple stuff with electronics IMO in the last 10 years you get wayyyyyyyyyy more content, its about being able to use slightly relevant information now to help implement a more ambitious and complex idea

harder to get a direct hit but its much easier to see a reflection/signature of what you want with useful information in there on topics that were completely devoid of any information. Having more information when doing esoteric things is superior to getting the complete picture of more generic things, often. I can sometimes see a partial solution from so many angles that it can be better then the perfect answer to what I wanted to know specifically, but it does take more time and effort to put together. Why? because you get much more insight and wisdom if you have many sources of information.

But yeah the wall of corporate bull shit that comes up sometimes is a exercise to scale.... but again they have more content so if you work hard you can often get to some where you could not get 10 years ago.

having 10 expert sources in 200 noise sources is more resources then 2 experts with 10 noise source, if you have the skill/time to filter. But if you use the internet for time critical work then its much less favorable now. But I don't think i can say that the internet got unilaterally worse. I can find everything from video explanations, to scans from ancient books, to papers on some really esoteric shit right now. Like I am generally surprised by how specific of an answer I can get to some really odd ball questions today, if I really want the answers.

and also having the ability to find extra information because of volume sometimes allows you to debunk some really authoritative sounding bullshit that used to basically be considered 'law' in specific circles, when it was the only game in a quiet town.

and also for ideas you can better find out if like a invention or thought you have is unique or if people are even interested in the topic. You used to have some real questions that you could not even evaluate properly with less people online. But of course you need to take that with a grain of salt because the internet tends to lump together things that are considered very unique/introspective/specific in real life into some kind of generic low value gruel category based on some generic/abstract observation of a pattern by a unfamiliar analyst, which leads to unwarranted devaluation, while in real life it might be really handy to someone that has a few extra details from experience. the utility score given to topics by the internet is in my opinion of rather low value. How many times I have been sure of the utility of something, had the internet lead me to believe its unnecessary/overcomplicated/obsolete and then I found that my angle with the problem lead to that thing having a extreme utiliy and the internet evaluation ends up sounding like its written by some irrelevant and unskilled noob.

[shapirus]

You could require certain words be in the result. You could require certain words not appear in the results. You could require that a specific phrase or string of words be found.

All of the above is still supported by at least Google. I use those all the time.

[EPAIII]

OK, I'll bite.

In the past you could require that a specific phrase of string of words be found by wrapping those words in quotation marks. But today, Google and all the other search engines just totally ignore the quotation marks and treat each word as an individual. Worse yet, often the results at the top of the list will contain only ONE of those words while those containing two or more will be further down. And changing the order of the words can completely change their meaning, thereby adding a number of returns that are totally irrelevant to your search. But Google and the rest WANT to be able to report to the buyers of their services that they found more interested, potential buyers. That way they can claim they ARE performing a service for those paying clients that they are NOT. They are actually ripping off their clients while irritating the general public that uses their search engine. In case you can't tell, I do not like Google's search engine.

So, just how do you "require" that the results, the TOP RESULTS contain a specific string of words. Preferably in the order that I use and not rearranged. I and probably many others would really like to know.

You could require certain words be in the result. You could require certain words not appear in the results. You could require that a specific phrase or string of words be found.

All of the above is still supported by at least Google. I use those all the time.

[ebastler]

In the past you could require that a specific phrase of string of words be found by wrapping those words in quotation marks. But today, Google and all the other search engines just totally ignore the quotation marks and treat each word as an individual.

As far as Google is concerned, I don't find that to be true.

[shapirus]

In the past you could require that a specific phrase of string of words be found by wrapping those words in quotation marks.

Yes that is exactly what I meant. I can still do it, it still works.

Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22google+search+sucks%22

All results fit on a single page. Of them, only 5 or so didn't contain exactly the quoted phrase, and all of those seem to be highly dynamic pages such as blog feeds, so who knows, maybe this phrase was there at some point too.

But today, Google and all the other search engines just totally ignore the quotation marks and treat each word as an individual.

Can you demonstrate this?

[jonpaul]

I have found

goog= push ad junk, mkt device , not a SE
bing = so so
duckduckgo = best SE at moment.

Suggest: Use browser Brave, Opear and Firefox,
dump MS junk like edge

Change default SE to Duck Duck Go (plugin for most browsers)

np problems.

Searching my site/domain we are first on page 1 and no junk or ads.

J

[ebastler]

goog= push ad junk, mkt device , not a SE
bing = so so
duckduckgo = best SE at moment.

This does not match my experience. Using Google with an ad blocker gets rid of the "sponsored" results. And for the real search results, I still find that Google's ranking gives me more relevant hits than the other engines.

DuckDuckGo gets its results from multiple other search engines, apparently relying heavily on Bing. I see its value if you want to make sure that your searches are not tracked. But I don't find its results to be as relevant as Google's.

[madires]

Another option: Startpage (https://www.startpage.com)

[YurkshireLad]

Years ago i found searching for information on the internet, including youtube and so on, was not that difficult.   Some well chosen key words and you could often find what you wanted.

These days I search for something and just get bombarded with lots of useless links.  Even youtube, there seems to be more and more wanna be populist with shit channels so when you are searching for something specific, you again get bombarded with these useless crap videos.

I went back to school part time just to gain access to the university library, like books are the new black. I am done with youtube with its constipated wanna be's pointing at things and click bait titles that have nothing to do with the content. I want milk that tastes like real milk. Not people thinking for me and telling how to think.

So its back to books as a source of information and facts.

Try the extension "Click Bait Remover for YouTube". I use it in Firefox and it removes ALL video clickbait thumbnails.

[magic]

For technology related searches Google still wins hands down.

But search for any product and it will flood you with endless offers to buy it. And that's google.com in Poland, the localized google.pl domain is even worse.
Search for anything "controversial" and it will send you instead to people explaining how bad it is, or might pretend that it doesn't even exist at all.