Google is getting worse as it loses its fight against search engine spam::Aggressive SEO tactics are ruining search results on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, a team of researchers in Germany says.

  • The Assman@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Here come the totally organic Kagi users to tell us paying for search is worth it. Use DDG or anything else that’s free.

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      I mean, expecting everything on the internet to be free without question seems to be the beginning of some troubles. A more human and direct connection between people and the makers of the things they use seems to me a better scenario.

      • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Agreed, folks have gotten far too used to the majority of internet being free without considering that the backend systems cost money to maintain and operate. Take Lemmy for example, we’re fortunate to have such a dedicated group of volunteers literally spending time and money to operate instances like Lemmy.world. However, the admins of LW have been fairly transparent about how much work it is to keep the instance running relatively smooth. Now imagine a service that’s handling millions of users versus tens of thousands, it just isn’t feasible to run it without crowdsource funding it, similar to how Wikipedia funds itself.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    11 months ago

    I’ve noticed that using more advanced syntax helps to alleviate the issue, in both DDG and Google. Specially apostrophes (to force exact terms) and the minus (to remove results containing a certain word or expression).

  • RustyNova@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    *Search engine optimization spam. Spamming your bings and duck duck go won’t do anything.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I left everything google makes long ago, and I haven’t had any problem.

  • kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    I’ve been pretty happy with SearxNG as a stand-in as it collates from multiple search engines.

    • JayleneSlide@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Except the results from DDG are also a dumpster fire of affiliate spam “listicles,” Pinterest garbage, and unrelated SEO BS. Oh, and Reddit sure has risen in all the results since the APIpocalypse. Almost like big business is all starving each other’s backs.

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Adding “site:” before a search string can help if you know what you’re looking for. Like site:wikipedia or site:GitHub.com

      This kills off AI spam by constricting search results to pages from that site.

      But google’s other problem that this doesn’t solve (just like Amazon) is that the first few results are always paid ads, and not actual search results.