Ask HN: Google Search is completely unusable. How do you work around it?
Over the last few years, Google search has lost its practical usefulness for technical or niche queries. I don’t understand how it got this bad.
Even the most basic search for a problem only returns results that share an out-of-context word with the query. When using quotes around an important keyword to force it into the results, Google still ignores that request silently, only for me to find out when I use Cmd+F on the page and see the word isn’t there.
It feels like Google is gaslighting me, as if I'm the first person to have the particular problem I’m researching, even though I’m sure documents about it exist on the internet.
Is it just me? What are you doing about this? Is Google salvageable in any way? What do you use now?
33 comments
[ 0.35 ms ] story [ 52.1 ms ] threadI use Google search logged in to my Google account and I have eliminated third-party cookies, browser fingerprinting, and targeted ads as much as I can with the OS/browser (iPadOS/Safari) settings and Google's privacy and advertising settings.
Do you have specific examples?
I would say searching for businesses outside major metro areas has gotten increasingly bad. I had a situation in the last few months that a business would only appear when they were open (barbershop) but if they were off that day they were not even on page 3.
Finding materials suppliers local to you has been a nightmare, I've been resorting to Yahoo-grade business directories to actually find businesses. These are places where Google has them on their maps but they never return in search unless I force my location to be away from home. Historically I never had to do this kind of manipulation.
I am having better luck driving around or hand scrolling around maps to find places then I am with search at times. It feels like after the first ten results Google completely gives up. E.g. I look for lumber yards and I get 20 ace hardwares and maybe two of them are actually lumber yards, but it completely misses some local sawmills that are specialized and amazing
I am whiffing Chinese restaurant near this town, state. I know the place is there but I cant remember the name, I can find it manually on the map.
I have seen plenty of ads and SEO abuse and had to wade through W3Schools and TutorialPoint junk links looking up programming questions. I know how to focus my search on specific domains and how to exclude domains when I need to drill down.
The examples you give seem like holes in Google's index that have probably always been that way, not a new shortcoming, though I don't know for sure because I haven't keept close track. I've started to use DDG more often because Google started using "AI" for search, and I have no interest in that, I usually know what I want to find and don't need LLMs auto-completing and hallucinating results for me.
Another thing is I tend to read more primary materials like books and docs. I have a bookmarks file for any interesting links I encounter.
when someone wants to believe something, facts will not hesitate to arise from the misty waters
If I’m searching for shopping or pop culture type stuff ordinary Google is fine
If I want information that requires a deeper dig then DDG is a good place to start.
Has Google’s UX gotten worse as it has elevated more and more paid ads over the years? Yes. But, not being able to find “even the most basic” things with Google is not an issue I encounter.
- Ads / sponsored links
- blogspam
- organic results
Now try to remember what it looked like 10 years ago. The rot is real.
For technical questions, Kagi’s Code Research Assistant is my first stop. It combines web search and AI summaries. While it says “code” on the tin, and does generate useful code snippets, I get a ton of value from it on super user issues and library/tool research too.
Whenever I see these complaints raised (and it's posted here at least weekly), the OP never includes any examples, just wide brushstrokes.
If the double quoted "exact phrase" functionality of Google were to have recently been broken, I can assure you wouldn't be the first to notice :)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34616647
I no longer use Google search, and I use DDG instead. But not always satisfied with the results.
I also search with keywords and not full sentences, else I ask an LLM.
1. Includes recent web search in context 2. Includes footnotes with sources 3. Has a much better voice recognition that improves accuracy from context of your question
Bonus: Perplexity.ai is smarter than raw chatGPT IMO, even though it sometimes uses chatGPT for input.
Example: Ask both LLMs - How many Rs in “strawberry” ChatGPT says 2 (wrong), Perplexity and Gemini say 3 (right)
Google only for shopping or things related to my local city, which is very small.
DuckDuckGo is a a good, (free) alternative as well
The sad truth is that Google Search 2024 can’t even compete with Google Search of 10 years ago.
The problems:
1. First page of search results is entirely made up of Ads and blogspam
2. Impossible to do specific searches now that Google ignores Boolean instructions
3. Google Search is spyware, posing as a free service, sucking up your PII to profile and target you
Solutions:
1. Use another search engine. The competitors have become surprisingly good. I use search.brave.com but DuckDuckGo and even Bing are better than Google now.
2. Use an LLM instead. I use Perplexity.ai for 95% of searches now. It combines an LLM summary with search results and includes footnotes to sources. The best part is that voice input is 10x better than raw ChatGPT and Google as it auto-corrects using context from your query. Other LLM search engines also work but Perplexity.ai have nailed the experience IMO.
[1] https://udm14.com/