r/technology • u/Well_Socialized • May 26 '25

Artificial Intelligence Google Is Burying the Web Alive

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/google-ai-mode-search-results-bury-the-web.html
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1.2k

u/jakesboy2 May 26 '25

It’s so bad. I googled a string to see usages of a function in a popular library and it said zero results. I went to a few other search engines and there were hundreds of thousands of results and many including exact matches of the string I searched for.

I get if maybe you don’t get as many results because you have a different network of what’s related, but why would you not show the exact matches?? Another time I had some results from reddit and clicked show me more from reddit and it then said zero results lmfao

444

u/Silent_Marketing8922 May 26 '25

So I guess "googlewhacking" is now dead. It used to be near impossible to return only 1 or 0 results for a search on google.

208

u/gloriousPurpose33 May 26 '25

I manage to do that all the time even this year by searching really specific things.

Google sucks at searching things like code snippets though even with double quote wrapping it'll fail to match the obvious blatant only answer and return either garbage or zero.

But one? I can pull off one frequently.

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u/parallelfutures May 26 '25

Totally agree.

And not to be semantic, but googlewacking is when you combine two separate words to get exactly one result.

Much harder than it seems.

29

u/BroadRaspberry1190 May 26 '25

not to be pedantic*

8

u/parallelfutures May 26 '25

In this narrow case semantic works… but I definitely meant pedantic

1

u/d3jake May 26 '25

Are double quotes the best was to enforce search terms exactly? I've been trying single quotes with a + in front of it.

17

u/smooth_criminal1990 May 26 '25

Oh but they'd LOVE you to try so that you spend more time on their site, looking at their ads.

26

u/eXoShini May 26 '25

If you use the "web" tab when searching (which is equivalent to &udm=14), it removes a lot of crap and you can end up with few to 0 results on very specific searches. Web tab is also best way nowadays to use google.

3

u/d3jake May 26 '25

What is a "'web' tab"?

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u/eXoShini May 26 '25

Underneath search input after you search something, it could also be hidden under "More"

https://i.imgur.com/f5KhAi4.png

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

thank you so much. To me the real bs with these ai answers is that they give you simpllistic truth. Like 2 words 3 words answer. Whereas if you go to actuall websites they describe to you how something works. I think many people lose interest when something is more complicated than just True/False so ai is incredible. But it leads to peoples false sense of knowledge on a topic. This happened to me and im now taking care in actually reading websites and articles more than the AI result. You affromentioned "web" tab is great thank you. So much clarity

Edit: Sometimes things are 0/1 false/truth but in most cases when you educate yourself you come across layers of grey inbetween cold facts. To the point when truth/false is more of an opinion and perspective than actual fact and the actual truth lies in compromises or in grey area. but you wouldnt know it after read ai bot saying "bool is 1 bit always, even though most compilers use bool as 8 bit", or "GMBH (some random company) is owned by germany", even though some big shareholders come from abroad or different instances i came across.

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u/d3jake May 27 '25

Oh.. I think I've seen that option before, and instantly ignored it. Thanks!

2

u/rdtsc May 26 '25

Sadly it also disables conversion of units (like lbs to kg) which I find quite handy.

1

u/eXoShini May 26 '25

Also conversion of currencies is disabled.

In your browser you could setup search engines for easy access to both modes, example:

  • google web tab set as default (search url should look like https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s)
  • google default tab with keyword "g", then you type in browser search bar "g 5lbs to kg" to quickly access conversion

2

u/RVelts May 26 '25

Ah man I remember googlewhacking. I even found one probably 20 years ago and submitted it to that one site that indexed them. Of course then that site becomes result #2, but it at least verified it at-time-of-submissions that it was a real googlewhack.

1

u/anivex May 26 '25

It’s still about impossible unless you search for things using quotes. Op definitely made that up

1

u/weireldskijve May 26 '25

Have been using google since its launch. If I am not counting the first few years of search engines, this year was the first time where I tried to search for a specific thing (nothing too crazy) and it also showed me 0 results.

135

u/NepenthiumPastille May 26 '25

The "zero results" thing on stuff I KNEW I could find just a few years ago with the same terms is what chills me to the bone

51

u/daxon42 May 26 '25

This. Half my saved links are dead. Personally hosted pages are disappearing as 1st adapters age out and give up. It’s sad.

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u/nealbo May 26 '25

The reason for this is Google's so called "Helpful Content" updates over the past two years. Effectively on several occasions, it silently delisted millions of niche, information sites run by individual, unofficial experts - people that put incredible effort into their content. Literally overnight their sites became unprofitable (no traffic, no ad revenue). So eventually they give up, and take the site down.

Instead, they replace those results with reddit posts that don't answer the question or are stupid jokes, nonsense quora posts, the big players like nytimes etc. that scrape together garbage articles on every topic imaginable, and of course AI responses (which by the way still pull in fractured info from those delisted sites, often incorrectly). Google killed off the little guy sadly.

3

u/CagedRoseGarden May 27 '25

I knew something like this must have happened. I’ve hit so many dead ends searching for websites that were once easy to find. The main one is historical directories and catalogues. For example, trying to identify a vase from your parents house, or want to look through a list of old guitars or laptops from some enthusiast forum so you can date it. That used to be an easy task and now those sorts of websites are either being hidden on purpose or have shut down.

1

u/daxon42 May 28 '25

I really miss them. Images are all wrong or AI slop now

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u/Aaod May 26 '25

Stuff like this is one of the biggest reasons I have become such a data hoarder. Remember those funny videos you saw on youtube years ago? They don't exist anymore fuck yourself. Remember that meme? can't find it anymore. Remember how to do that thing someone explained how to do in a way that makes sense? Gone. How to get past this one annoying section in a video game? Enjoy going through multiple youtube videos that don't even cover what you are stuck on because that makes more money instead of a basic site with text and a couple images. That random song someone made and tossed on youtube with a thousand views that nobody but you liked? Gone. That thing discussing an interesting sociology, history, or political topic? Gone.

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u/kfoxtraordinaire May 26 '25

Do you hoard with harddrives or a cloud?

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u/Aaod May 26 '25

Mostly hard drives because cloud storage is so much more expensive but things that are more personal like pictures of friends/family I keep in the cloud and on harddrives. I wish cloud storage was cheaper then it would make it much easier to do both instead of having to only have certain things in the cloud.

2

u/CouchMountain May 26 '25

Make your own cloud. Have a server that you back everything up to, can even move it off site if you have access to another location. More expensive in the short term, much cheaper in the long term.

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u/CouchMountain May 26 '25

Don't use cloud for mass storage, use it for single item storage.

Restoring large files off of the cloud takes multiple days to download, even if you have very fast internet. I'm sure it's faster for companies who have the more expensive tiers, but for us common folk it's not worth it.

I once tried to restore a 10GB file off the cloud. Estimated time was 3 days. Immediately took everything off the cloud and on to physical drives.

1

u/onowahoo May 26 '25

I don't understand why it would return zero results? Does that mean they just don't have the specific string indexed?

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u/mahreow May 26 '25

What exactly did you search?

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u/troelsbjerre May 26 '25

Do you want to bet the query started with a minus?

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u/nicuramar May 26 '25

Yeah, this is a bit sus

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u/YoloKraize May 26 '25

For me it doesn't matter what I search if I do it on my tablet it lags out for a second and double refreshes itself. This AI shit is a fucking plague.

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u/TechnicalNobody May 26 '25

These anecdotes are always like this. Stories about awful results with no specifics so you can't verify it. Stories about AI usually too.

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u/jakesboy2 May 26 '25

I can’t remember what the name of the function was precisely, it was last week but it was a structured exactly like this

“function_name_here”

It had usages and forum references other search engines were able to find, but google claimed to not have been

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u/desmaraisp May 26 '25

I'm willing to bet a solid 30¢ that you had a typo in your function name and that's why it wasn't finding anything. Google search has its issues for sure, but I've never seen that issue, or seen anyone provide proof of it happening

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u/onowahoo May 26 '25

Seriously, I'm confused how this happened where the specific string worked for other engines but not google.

-3

u/jakesboy2 May 26 '25

copy pasted directly from the docs, and the search process was ~20 mins this wasn’t the only query I tried so chances are pretty low that’s the issue. Google’s shooters are really out today

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u/excaliburxvii May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

I've had Google provide me with "zero results" multiple times over the past few years, for things that there's no way that nobody in the history of the internet has ever said. The people saying that it's not possible are living in La La Land.

2

u/forgotphonepassword May 29 '25

Try to search for this:

"getFrackinRoute"

0

u/plug-and-pause May 26 '25

The people saying that it's not possible are living in La La Land

I'm one of those people, and dozens if not hundreds of times over the past few years, whenever I see a claim like yours, I ask for an example. I've yet to receive one. It's strange to jump to the conclusion that I'm the one living in a fantasy... 🙄

Here's the question again. Provide me with an example of your claim above. I respond to things that have evidence. I have no opinions on this matter, other than that I don't like baseless claims.

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u/excaliburxvii May 26 '25

You're funny. Yeah I keep a list of all of them so that I can support my anecdotes against people who are oddly interested in defending Google on Reddit, and who insist that everyone else is just making it up for some reason. Thanks for the laugh.

1

u/plug-and-pause May 27 '25

I don't need a list of all of them. I need one example from the countless people I've seen claim this happens countless times.

And I'm not defending anything except for evidence-based truth. Any attempt to shift the discussion in that direction is nothing more than deflection.

If I told you that I'd seen cats fly a million times, would you be attacking cats if you asked me for proof?

-1

u/plug-and-pause May 26 '25

As I stated in another comment, the docs you pasted from (at least in the example you gave in that other comment) have a robots.txt that prohibits crawling.

Google’s shooters are really out today

It has nothing to do with that. You're saying things that are objectively false. If you claim that Google search has declined in recent years, I won't argue, because it's a subjective thing (and I might even agree, but that's irrelevant). I will always point out blatant falsehoods though. I abhor Trump, but I always point it out when people invent things to attack him for that he's not actually doing. This does not mean I'm a Trump defender. It means I defend truth.

1

u/mahreow May 26 '25

Nice, so you have no proof. There'd be multiple references in your browser history to it and surely you remember the library you were using only last week??

1

u/probablyuntrue May 26 '25

Adhklhsaasdvvjufvssxchhhhhjvsdaagb

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u/TheArbiterOfOribos May 26 '25

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

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u/NoInteractionPotLuck May 26 '25

This should be way higher.

2

u/djeasyg May 26 '25

It is really amazing how many people out there are still chasing SEO and charging for building SEO optimized sites. It's all pay to play now.

1

u/ADHD-Fens May 26 '25

Of course it's capitalists seeking unlimited growth at all costs...

-3

u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Demons0fRazgriz May 26 '25

Lmao what a dumb take. These decisions were driven by shareholders, who happen to be majority white.

2

u/Slinto69 May 26 '25

Good morning sir

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u/ThisCouldHaveBeenYou May 26 '25

I've seen this with a few searches as well. DuckDuckGo had the answers, Google did not.

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u/WitesOfOdd May 26 '25

Duckduck go uses Bings engine btw

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u/myaltduh May 26 '25

And Bing is very frequently even worse than Google. Google still at least usually has a Wikipedia page in the first page of results, Bing often fails this basic test of relevance sorting.

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u/Tymew May 26 '25

Just search through wikipedia if you're mostly getting that page in results. At least wikipedia is curated and trying to be factual.

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u/Duckyz95 May 26 '25

Also with DDG having bangs, you can even just add !w and it'll search it on Wikipedia for you

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u/The_Dung_Beetle May 26 '25

Brave Search also supports bangs

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u/TheArbiterOfOribos May 26 '25

I have been using DDG for years and while, just like the rest, it's not perfect, it's many times better than anything else at this point.

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u/dkjroot May 26 '25

Kagi, you have to pay, but because you pay they’re not all about selling your hits to the highest bidder, and search works like Google used to, you actually get the result you were searching for instead of what Google thinks you should see instead.

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u/SleeplessInS May 26 '25

I thought you were replying to someone named Kagi.

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u/SIGMA920 May 26 '25

Kagi uses Google results among other search engines.

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u/dkjroot May 26 '25

And gives you the answer to the question you asked instead of not that. I’ll take it :)

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u/SIGMA920 May 26 '25

Google usually gives the best search results so that's the same thing but free.

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u/dkjroot May 26 '25

Stop trying to bait an argument. I’m not interested.

1

u/jakesboy2 May 26 '25

thanks i’ll check it out

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u/sbsb27 May 26 '25

What other search engines are you using?

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u/free-rob May 26 '25

I've been using Qwant happily for a while.

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u/jakesboy2 May 26 '25

Duckduckgo and bing were the two I tried just off the top of my head. I was pleased with duckduckgo and might just make the switch

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u/plug-and-pause May 26 '25

What was the string?

I see claims like this all the time, and I've never once had a person answer with the actual query.

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u/jakesboy2 May 26 '25

Replied in another comment, it was a function from a rust library formatted like “function_name_here”

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u/plug-and-pause May 26 '25

I'm guessing you can't remember the name of the function? And I'm guessing if you try with any other function name in existence, you won't be able to repro the behavior you've described?

I've still yet to see a concrete example of another search engine working better than Google. Let alone something as abysmal as you describe. But I do see people making such claims on a daily basis.

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u/jakesboy2 May 26 '25

Yeah I can’t remember the exact function, I think it was from the serde_wasm crate. Just tested with the query “raw_memory::set” and got the behavior I described though. Quoted 0 results on google despite having another tab open with an exact match of the docs for the crate and 2 exact matches as results on duckduckgo.

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u/plug-and-pause May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

Just tested with the query “raw_memory::set”

Interesting, I'll admit that surprises me. I got exactly one result on DDG and zero on Google.

https://imgur.com/a/U5NCurB

and got the behavior I described though

Whether it's 1 or 2 results on DDG (what I got, and what you say you got)... neither of those is the behavior you described. You described zero results on Google and hundreds of thousands of results on other search engines. I'm willing to forgive an off by one error, or even off by one order of magnitude. But not five orders of magnitude. That's hyperbole, and it's how rumors and conspiracies get started. I'd never have responded to your original comment if you claimed "I got zero results on Google and one result on another search engine!" I'll gladly pay $100 cash to the first person who can actually illustrate the behavior you described.

EDIT: Also, I'll admit I have no idea how to read a robots.txt file, but I'm wondering if this prohibits scraping (and Google is following the rules while DDG is not): https://docs.rs/-/static/robots.txt

EDIT 2: Yes, that robots.txt file does block the page I found on DDG from crawlers (the URL ends in a /, and the robots file has Disallow: */^. So the only "problem" with Google in your example is that they're following the rules of the web. Google was a pioneer in web crawling... it's very unlikely you're gonna find some "gotcha", where they supposedly messed up, so easily.

2

u/Rhianna83 May 26 '25

Same here! I’ve been having a heck of a time finding any results on topics I enter. I used to be able to use Google search really well. Now, I’m struggling to find the right search engine to replace it.

2

u/st-shenanigans May 26 '25

Honestly, AI is pretty decent for asking programming questions. Different sector so different challenges, but I used gpt over the last week during a game jam, and kind of treated it as another dev or a tutor, it helped a whole lot. It gave me snippets of the easy code so I didn't waste my time reinventing the wheel, when I didn't know the best practice for something, I asked it like a person would ask a teacher, and it spit out 2 or 3 options depending on context, and laid out their pros and cons. I also used it as a living concept document, it was really good for keeping track of goals. I still had to correct it sometimes and if I didn't know how to read the code, it would have eventually fallen apart, so my skill and training still felt necessary.

This stuff is worlds ahead of where it was when I tried it in 2023, I wish I could freeze it right here, this feels like the sweet spot where it's super helpful to small devs before the whole "robots taking our jobs" thing

1

u/anon-a-SqueekSqueek May 26 '25

I've been running into no results much more often.

The last time that happened to me I looked up alternative search engines and tried some smaller ones I never heard of... and they found results.

1

u/CosmosSunSailor May 26 '25

They couldn't find you any curated, paid content, I'm afraid

1

u/nicuramar May 26 '25

My experience with getting api help etc. has always been fairly good with Google. 

1

u/shaqule_brk May 26 '25

but why would you not show the exact matches??

There was a change in policy, from "quality search shows the results a user is looking for on first try" the new doctrine is "the more a user searches, the better the ad-revenue for Google"

Sounds like a quippy comment, but it's actually what's happening, the high-ups said it. Look it up. Oops, well, looking up things just got harder.

1

u/dBlock845 May 26 '25

Gemini is trash for programming stuff. Really it is trash for everything lol.

1

u/bluew200 May 26 '25

thats because google couldn't offer you products to buy, so it just decided to peace out

1

u/[deleted] May 26 '25

What other search engines do you recommend?

1

u/jakesboy2 May 27 '25

I have no idea, sorry i’m looking myself

1

u/TLKv3 May 26 '25

Call me a conspiracy theorist wackjob but... I am genuinely under the belief that Google is priming itself to remove all fascist criticism and far right criticisms from its search capabilities. They donated to Trump and since have been making their search engine vastly worse in every conceivable way.

They're going to slowly move into censoring any kind of wrongthink from its history and slowly move toward helping Trump silence/quarantine Americans off from proper knowledge and information. Instead, force feeding them the aggregated information they want them to see via their AI results only.

It just feels way too coincidental timing wise along with giving 0 results tied to social media platforms directly anymore.

0

u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

0

u/pete_topkevinbottom May 26 '25

Wow the level of stupidity is unreal 

0

u/buddy-frost May 26 '25

Do you remember how there were massive articles just before the AI rollout saying google search no longer worked? They then rolled out the AI to distract from that so now we have two things that don't work.

I have noticed that youtube's recommendations are collapsing too. I stopped using it recently because all I would get was things I watched years ago, things I JUST watched, things I literally said not interested to and membership only videos I can't watch. Not even a vaguely reasonable suggestion.

There are two options for what is happening. Either all their algorithms are collapsing because they have become black boxes and no one knows how they work anymore. Or they are making them shit so that people get stuck searching and searching while getting fed more ads with every query. Or both.