Google search has become trash. Anyone else noticed this?

Nothing can be found anymore.

For example:

1 - Right now I am looking for a book by a poet who lived in the 1400s. I am sure 1 or 2 years ago there was a site that had posted the contents of all the volumes to be enjoyed for free online and it was at the #1 position on google.
Searching for it now I can't find it anymore. There are all links to paid reissues or online stores. Too bad copyright should no longer exist on this work anymore.

2 - Some time ago I was searching for a dog-related query and found no answer. Only association sites and the like appeared to me.

3 - Then having never seen Harry Potter, I recently saw the blurays on offer on Amazon cheaply and decided to buy them and finally see this work. I then searched online for opinions to see whether it was better to watch it dubbed in my own language or in the original language and subtitled. Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it was a hot topic at some point in the past and the series has been wildly popular, I could not find any site that dealt with this matter, not even on page 10.

Then I tried Bing and found quite easily an old forum from 2004 where they were talking about it.

And I could continue with the examples. Do you also notice this? I'm seriously thinking to switch to Bing as the main search engine recently

If you don't know the keywords then it really is a hard time finding things on google now for sure. Was fine 3-5 years ago

Ababba2 said:

Too bad copyright should no longer exist on this work anymore.

Click to expand...

That's not how copyright works...

yeah, google are pretty biased / manipulative in what they're showing you in the search results.

Personally, I've gone away from using google 2 years ago, I switched to DDG back then but after I noticed that DDG started censoring stuff too I moved to Qwant (which is what I'm still using currently), but Qwant takes their results from google itself, and this infuriates me, but I have no other option. Even in qwant I search for something and when I check the date of that blog post / forum post / whatever it's old as fuck (2009 or earlier type of old), and I end up going to google again because - good or bad - at least google can accurately sort by freshness of content, with Qwant this is not possible. I mean, it is possible to sort by freshness but the results I get most of the time are horrible, totally unrelated to what I'm searching and also not fresh by any stretch of the imagination.

I also tried smaller SEs in the past (about 2-3 years ago when I researched google alternatives), and used SEs like Mojeek and Ecosia for a short while, but they were really really REALLY bad. We really lack options and competition in the SE market...

Personally, I'm doing my part in not relying on google (and on american corporations in general), but I don't have many options because the entire mankind has been manipulated educated by google to only trust and go to them, and until 90% of content creators switch over to other SEs there's very little we, the common users, can do about it

Yes, only the paid ads looked decent with some spamz

well guess the “Just Google” days are over

More room for Ads
Simple as that

Yeah, need to provide more information. Sometimes that notification at the bottom will always pop up, there are some more results that may not be relevant but many times we see proper results in that only.
Crazy stuff! Might be due to AI stuff getting injected into the system?

Yeah, at least the first three pages of Google search are polluted with shops.

It's a mess. Ads all over the place, videos with stupid clickbait titles, those Q&A taking traffic from content creators...it's a nightmare. And the actual search results look like random crap.

I can't find anything technical, they're filtering everything.

Why doesn't anyone create a new truly neutral search engine? Microsoft and others are missing one helluva opportunity here.

Ababba2 said:

Nothing can be found anymore.

For example:

1 - Right now I am looking for a book by a poet who lived in the 1400s. I am sure 1 or 2 years ago there was a site that had posted the contents of all the volumes to be enjoyed for free online and it was at the #1 position on google.
Searching for it now I can't find it anymore. There are all links to paid reissues or online stores. Too bad copyright should no longer exist on this work anymore.

2 - Some time ago I was searching for a dog-related query and found no answer. Only association sites and the like appeared to me.

3 - Then having never seen Harry Potter, I recently saw the blurays on offer on Amazon cheaply and decided to buy them and finally see this work. I then searched online for opinions to see whether it was better to watch it dubbed in my own language or in the original language and subtitled. Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it was a hot topic at some point in the past and the series has been wildly popular, I could not find any site that dealt with this matter, not even on page 10.

Then I tried Bing and found quite easily an old forum from 2004 where they were talking about it.

And I could continue with the examples. Do you also notice this? I'm seriously thinking to switch to Bing as the main search engine recently

Click to expand...

I see these posts every now and then, I strongly disagree. Try using duckduckgo or bing consistently, the results are so much worse. IMO. Because they have no where near the traffic to justify what searches u are given in the SERPS

Google's a brat! Out there to make the most of their dominance without giving a damn. I look forward to a time when somebody will cut them down to size.

I've this site related to local searches in specific country.
with google, I've to still create individual pages for each city. Since google is dumb, it can't recognize that if i provide particular product within a certain (entire) country, that means I'm providing it to ALL cities within that country.

bartosimpsonio said:

It's a mess. Ads all over the place, videos with stupid clickbait titles, those Q&A taking traffic from content creators...it's a nightmare. And the actual search results look like random crap.

I can't find anything technical, they're filtering everything.

Why doesn't anyone create a new truly neutral search engine? Microsoft and others are missing one helluva opportunity here.

Click to expand...

You can now thank AI for the mess that the search engine has become, and it will only get worse as AI gets preferential treatment above human interaction.

Google trying to make most money before ChatGPT takes it over?

Ababba2 said:

Nothing can be found anymore.

For example:

1 - Right now I am looking for a book by a poet who lived in the 1400s. I am sure 1 or 2 years ago there was a site that had posted the contents of all the volumes to be enjoyed for free online and it was at the #1 position on google.
Searching for it now I can't find it anymore. There are all links to paid reissues or online stores. Too bad copyright should no longer exist on this work anymore.

2 - Some time ago I was searching for a dog-related query and found no answer. Only association sites and the like appeared to me.

3 - Then having never seen Harry Potter, I recently saw the blurays on offer on Amazon cheaply and decided to buy them and finally see this work. I then searched online for opinions to see whether it was better to watch it dubbed in my own language or in the original language and subtitled. Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it was a hot topic at some point in the past and the series has been wildly popular, I could not find any site that dealt with this matter, not even on page 10.

Then I tried Bing and found quite easily an old forum from 2004 where they were talking about it.

And I could continue with the examples. Do you also notice this? I'm seriously thinking to switch to Bing as the main search engine recently

Click to expand...

All the good sites run by folks with little SEO experience have either been penalized or deranked.

The Google updates are too much

Always the high search volume keywords shows higher results with most recent updated content for it.

ArmpitFunk said:

You can now thank AI for the mess that the search engine has become, and it will only get worse as AI gets preferential treatment above human interaction.

Click to expand...

That's spot on.

The AI rankbrain is a disaster, always has been.

When I started seeing lots of parasites, that was when I know Google is messed up.

I saw a case study that concluded that most Google search (I think was like 70%) is taken by big parent companies.

These companies have dozens of sites under them, all with superficial content and targeting the same keywords.

In my niche, for most big keywords, there's only one company that ranks on the 1st page with 10 different sites having the same content and the same author.

Even if the articles are not 100% related to the user search intent, they still got the 1st position.

Like imagine you search for "affordable creams" and you got only articles about "creams" and you need to search on that list of 20+ products to find something affordable.

As a consumer, this is very annoying and time-consuming.

I guess this is one of the biggest problems why Google search is broken for quite a long time.

Google doesn't let a chance for passionate people to rank, which ironically, are exactly those that provide in-depth and unique content.

Why? Because they generate 0 revenue for them.

Instead, they prefer to rank these companies that hire random journalists with 0 expertise to write for them that have no idea what they're talking about.

I strongly believe what Google is doing now is unethical and even illegal to some extent.

They're a whore, and a cheap one that'd suck a dic* for a cent.

Ababba2 said:

Nothing can be found anymore.

Then I tried Bing and found quite easily an old forum from 2004 where they were talking about it.

And I could continue with the examples. Do you also notice this? I'm seriously thinking to switch to Bing as the main search engine recently

Click to expand...

If I am looking up something and don't get what I need from Google, I try Yahoo, Bing, etc.

One of my sites main KW aren't ranking on Google but are on Yahoo/Bing and I assure you my content is premium for those KW.