| First of all, thanks for writing all that. I appreciate it, and so I'd like to respond. > Run a Google search that includes a minus term and tell me how effective the search results are in regards to obeying that instruction. Sure. I search for the movie I watched last night -- "How the West Was Won" (without quotes) -- and nearly all of the results are for the 1962 movie, as it should be. I search for "How the West Was Won -1962" and all the results are for the 1977 TV series, plus a Led Zeppelin album. Works great -- I use the minus operator all the time. > trying searching for "<thing you might want to buy> review". Enjoy the avalanche of low-quality SEO and link spam you're about to receive. I just typed in "dehumidifier review" and the first three results are from Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, and Good Housekeeping. Down the page includes more trustworthy sources like Tom's Guide and The Spruce. This is exactly what I want the results to be. I trust those a lot more than some random blogger of YouTuber, for instance. > Also consider the fact that many searches you perform on Google are already offered with a "reddit" suffix, because so many people can only find the information they're looking for by appending that term to their search Which is fantastic for me. I'll often find really valuable opinions in a single Reddit thread that provide a different perspective from Wirecutter, for instance. This isn't a failure of Google -- it's a testament to Reddit's success. (Indeed, Wirecutter and Reddit are often the first two things I want to read when researching a product -- but Reddit is more of a second pass.) > I was searching for a solution to a programming related problem on Google just a few days ago I definitely agree that finding incredibly specific solutions to technical problems can sometimes be hit-or-miss, but that's not a problem with Google at all, that's a problem with the entire concept of keyword search. But to my eyes, Google hasn't gotten worse over a couple of decades, it's gotten better. And I think it's noteworthy that your solution was ChatGPT, as opposed to a different search engine. That's exactly the kind of thing I turn to ChatGPT for as well. But again, I don't interpret it as Google having gotten worse, just as a new tool that's even better for certain types of tasks. |