blog/monotonous-web/index

[utterances-bot]

Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google. :: Reasonably Polymorphic

https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/monotonous-web/index.html

[previousdolphin]

There’s almost an aware ignorance of next Gen language models and what direction search is bearing; exactly where you want- contextual with massive language models that can interpret the reasonable intent you’re expecting… the Web 1.0 was meh, what will We6.66 look like; get excited not pessimistic!

[troff01]

and what direction search is bearing; exactly where you want

... that's moronic. In the late 90s, search WORKED because you got results based on the words you punched in; whereas now the stupidity that is Google will ignore terms if it gets you more hits, even if you specify "allintext:" and put quote marks around "necessary terms" as if the terms weren't necessary when I punched them in. And so help me if I'm looking for a specific word that the Google Moron thinks I've mistyped.

There's no POINT getting excited. Getting pessimistic is the reasonable response because the trend has been downward and stupid. And frankly, you're making it worse. The author of this article is RIGHT.

[stacksize]

I mean, pretty much all niches are plagued with a lot of what was said here. The biggest culprit is of course "content stuffing" - which I feel like should be emphasized a bit more than just "I don't like Google's search results".

For example, let's say I am looking for "the best javascript build tools".

Now, my expectations are quite low for this query and I am happy to just explore the given tools documentation on my own, so as long as there is a link pointing towards it. But things that would make it better include clarification of how the data was sourced, also what experience the author has, and perhaps some benchmarks (at least for the top tools).

Mind you, this is an extremely technical query for a person who has never in their life touched a build tool. So, of course, when the top 5 results for this query return articles that have a 800-word slab of "what is a build tool?" plastered to the top of the page, of course it is a very concerning sight. And even more so when you consider that Google's algorithm actually prefers to show that specific article rather than one from an actual developer with experience in the said tools.

[edpichler]

Well said. The internet is getting worse.

[AlexNodex]

What compounds this is that ranking can be easily manipulated by whomever has the largest budget to pay for links.

By paying for links I do not mean buying them outright per se. Buying links includes paying people to go out and write articles or proactively get links back to your website about anyhting relevant in your niche. What Google does not take in to acocunt is that the website that all these links are pointing at (example.com) is possibly NOT the best answer for the user query but by definition has inserted itself as the best or one of the best by virtue of having a strong backlink profile and some loosly connected keywords related to the query.

Or to simplify this.... They whom have the largest marketing / growth budgets will always dominate the search results regardless of whether they have the best content (and thus the best answer) for a user query.

The problem extends way beyond simply on page optimsiation (keywords, metadata etc) and is part of a wider issue with how Google are choosing to implement their algo's.

On the backend of this there are also negative SEO attacks happening where similar "marketers" are paid to write articles or submit links on low value "spammy" websites to try and pollute or dillute a domain's backlink profile and in turn authority for a set of keywords.

In our niche the top 5 - 7 results are filled with keyword stuffed, poor / low content slow websites that dominate due to their backlink profile which flys directly in the face of what Google recommends (write good content and you will rank for it).

[stuebinm]

I'm just going to note that this exists:

https://search.marginalia.nu/

it's not perfect, and its search index seems to be a bit too small to always get useful results, but even so it's a lot of fun to rummage through it

[nf33]

The internet isn't, the reality is you all forgot basic facts about PC's, when you connect two or more pc's in a network they become a single computer, google, intel, and the game industry have been consolidating their "world sized personal computer" and that's how we got mmo's in 1997 when they started stealing networking code out of PC games and slapping mmo on the box and selling software back to the public minus ownership.

The internet has been shit from the beginning because you all forgot, under american copyright, software is licensed not owned, so that means big companies can steal software on industrial scales legally from the public.

Next you need to all investigate trusted computing, microsofts attempt to put drm in your CPU and the internet to police software licenses forever, you all forgot the internet is just a bunch of PC's with intel/amd cpu's and windows server/10/11, when you replace them all with the coming drm'd tech, they can start locking down the internet and start doing crazy shit.

Shit is going to get a lot worse because most people have been buying back ended software for their PC's through steam, and their phones.

When we never got any ownership over the files of our digitial devices, that doomed the internet to be consolidated and the end of the personal computer, we've gone back to mainframe computing of the 60's and you all haven't noticed.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

[jancbeck]

I agree with the author and was reminded that Google used to have a feature called Blog Search. Apparently it was killed multiple times https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Blog_Search

[tacotuesdayeve]

There used to be a feature in Google Search to block domains, but it was labelled by regulators as anti-competitive. And now we have to put up with endless over-tagged & labelled Pinterest images in our search results. :/

[woropajj]

I've been talking to my friends about this topic for some time now. I'm happy I'm not the only one that noticed. I remember that back in the day I could find obscure personal websites with really amazing content. Nowadays all I find is a couple of big websites with the same stuff. Even looking for technical things like some Linux configuration, you often get websites that copy articles from each other!

[martha-neeva]

Hi Sandy, you should check out Neeva.com. (Disclaimer: I work there.) Neeva is ads-free, private search. We were founded a couple of years ago by people who share the concerns you articulate here -- i.e. we have a "flat earth problem," where one company controls 90% of the market, deciding what information we see and how we access it. The incentives of that information are misaligned between advertisers and users. We've challenged ourselves to rethink search decoupled from the traditional advertising model. Being member-supported, we can freely innovate on search for how people use the internet (not advertisers). One recent example is something we're calling OneBox. Happy to chat with you, or connect you with others at Neeva, if you're interested in a personal onboarding or want to learn more.

[bitwombat]

@martha-neeva you should have someone read over the content for "OneBox" you linked to. First of all, OneBox already means something else to people, second, the article doesn't explain what it is or how to get to it, third, it uses "UGC" without explaining what that is. Fourth, grammatical errors.

I'm cheering for your idea, that's why I'm taking the time to point out something that might be holding you back. Good luck!

[edpichler]

Hi Sandy, you should check out Neeva.com. (Disclaimer: I work there.) Neeva is ads-free, private search. We were founded a couple of years ago by people who share the concerns you articulate here -- i.e. we have a "flat earth problem," where one company controls 90% of the market, deciding what information we see and how we access it. The incentives of that information are misaligned between advertisers and users. We've challenged ourselves to rethink search decoupled from the traditional advertising model. Being member-supported, we can freely innovate on search for how people use the internet (not advertisers). One recent example is something we're calling OneBox. Happy to chat with you, or connect you with others at Neeva, if you're interested in a personal onboarding or want to learn more.

@martha-neeva Neeva seems really cool. Clean UI. I really hope you guys succeed. We really need more competition in this area.

[joonazan]

I've tried Neeva and Kagi. I found Neeva's search results pretty poor compared to DDG and Google. Kagi is good at filtering out bad hits and has its own blog indices, so it is definitely an improvement over Google but it doesn't do its own search.

search.marginalia.nu, which was suggested here earlier is pretty fun.

[bexsentance]

I have thoughts on a lot of things in your post, but I'm going to pull on this one thread specifically because my thoughts on it are the most fully-formed and it's been on my mind recently:

"Google isn’t the only search engine around. There are others, but it’s fascinating that none of them compete on the basis of providing better results. DDG claims to have better privacy. Ecosia claims to plant trees. Bing exists to keep Microsoft relevant post-2010, and for some reason, ranks websites for being highly-shared on social media (again, things that are, by definition, not hard to find.)

"Why don’t other search engines compete on search results? It can’t be hard to do better than Google for the long tail."

I think there is a widespread received wisdom - perhaps beginning to show its cracks lately as more and more people criticise Google - that Google has the best-quality search that it's possible to get, and that there isn't any point competing with Google on search quality. After all, Google became the titan of web search for a reason, right? And they've poured all this money into AI and have sophisticated algorithms like RankBrain and are constantly doing impressive things like implementing "multimodal" search (search across multiple "modes", like text and visuals), so they must be the best. Not to mention that if you switch to another search engine, the results still aren't as good as Google (that's because all other search engines are, basically, Bing. DuckDuckGo is powered by Bing; so is Ecosia. So the only alternative to Google, at least for people in "the west" since I don't want to discount search engines like Baidu and Yandex, is Bing).

And Google has poured a lot of money and time and research into improving web search, but the underlying goal for them is always to earn more money, even if it's under the guise of providing a better "user experience", and so in truth what they're working towards is not a better outcome for the searcher, but a better outcome for Google. Hence the extensive problems you outline above.

With that said, I also think that "do[ing] better than Google" isn't as easy as you imply. I don't have any insight into the actual nuts and bolts of developing a search engine, but I'm pretty sure it takes a long time, a lot of money and a lot of resources. Back when the web was smaller, searching it and devising new ways to search it was an easier feat, and there was also a more level playing field, so you'd be more likely to gain traction among web users even as a new engine. But Google's monopoly on search nowadays is such that it's incredibly heard to break into the field. Why would anyone use your search engine when they can use Google? How do you prove that it's better? And before that point, how do you earn enough money to develop your better search engine if no-one is using it and paying for it?

That's why so many of Google's erstwhile competitors (like Ask Jeeves, which was ahead of its time in providing natural language search) stopped developing their own search technology and decided to outsource it instead, or shuttered altogether. They couldn't compete and therefore couldn't earn money. And now that Google has shouldered them all out, it's hard for any newcomers to shoulder their way back in. And those new search engines that do start up find it's easier or cheaper to outsource the actual search tech and make their USP something that they know Google will never do, like respecting your privacy. Because that's an easier sales pitch to make to new users. "Sure, Google is great and all, but wouldn't you love to not be tracked everywhere on the web?"

[hannahdonovan]

I think the Koh Lanta of Croatia is Vis. It’s tiny and the least touristy of the islands. It was an abandoned military base until the late 2000s, so it has an undeveloped vibe. People are friendly, the water is super clean and the food is a bit more “Italian” than “Croatian” probably due to the geographic proximity. I loved it.

[jancbeck]

Very happy with this one: wiby is a search engine that only indexes sites that don’t use JavaScript. It’s like a portal to the internet of the 1990s http://www.wiby.org/ (I like searching with “site:.edu” to find those obscure homepages of professors of mathematical physicists that collect all kinds of fascinating stuff)