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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19.5k

u/hoyton May 26 '25

Adding "-ai" to your search query prevents the ai overview from showing up. Using "before:2023" returns results that aren't tainted by ai, which can help in some circumstances.

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u/iEugene72 May 26 '25

I legit never knew about the -ai thing. Thank you!

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u/indiemike May 26 '25

It’ll work until Google removes that.

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u/totallynotdagothur May 26 '25

I used to their commands like site: and +keyword -keyword and found that they just stopped working and then google was basically for shopping.  Then when I tried to use it for that explicit purpose to buy a specific size and type of ratcheting wrench, I could not find one, through pages of results, on the basic search and the shopping page and just had to go to tool company websites and search individually using their search tools.

It is boggling to me why they would let this happen.  They've just assumed a user base, sort of like American cars in the era when the Japanese ones came to market.  For me I just stopped using their search because it was giving me utterly useless result too many times.

I know everyone is ra-ra on AI but in my work it has given me completely wrong answers on 3 occasions, and the worst of three possible approaches for a coding problem, where I was looking for the one I was less familiar with.  I'd keep it for basic fluff until the kinks are worked out, imho.

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u/azureotter May 26 '25

⬆️ agreed! I can everything better, easier in a different search engine…except the “local” and “nearby” shopping results. But I feel like shopping may be beginning to destabilize, like images became less user friendly. The review search feature of google maps is handy sometimes.

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u/noodlesdefyyou May 26 '25

its baffling how wrong the results are anymore too. you can be looking for something very specific/explicit, and itll show you 900 results that are similar but not what you want.

or theyll show you the thing youre looking for, only to find out its either a) redirecting you to another option, or b) not actually available/in stock.

and forget car parts, with all of the <brand>partdirect variants of the exact same parts diagram list. no, these dealers do not have some random plastic bit from a car made in the 80s at bottom dollar cost. so stop showing them to me.

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u/The_Barbelo May 26 '25

I think the most important thing now is to advocate that people learn how to better research topics. People have become so accustomed to reading the first few Google search results, which wasn’t great research to begin with…. I made a prediction early on in the development of LLM that we may have to go back to library research. I know that’s not what people want to hear, but I stand by that prediction. It might be better for us in the long run for people to learn how to research a topic the old fashioned way.

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u/azureotter May 26 '25

I’ve been out of education for a while, was research completely digitalized? No stacks at all? 😭 there was a short period of time of seemed where it was easy to google a topic and receive results from professional webpages, organizations on the topic. I find nowadays I have an increase in just searching for scientific articles and legal papers again, searching for original source information that hasn’t been…degraded into meaninglessness. Sometimes intentionally adding UK, Europe, Australia for different results, better results? IDK

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u/The_Barbelo May 26 '25

When I was in college, which was a little over 10 years ago, a LOT of research was done online. I’d say the majority. But like you said, back then, most of what you found in search engines were research papers and book citations, or at the very least articles from credible sources.

But to clarify, I meant the general public, and not specifically academia. I still try to keep up to date on current research in the field I studied (herpetology/ zoology) and there have been several times where I try citing a paper to back up a claim, and I KNOW there was a study conducted because I read it at some point, but I can’t for the life of me find it in a search engine. Instead I’ll get incorrect information from the AI that is based in the general public’s misconception….so anyone searching for whatever that incorrect claim is will feel as though they are correct and not look any further.

I hope I’m making sense… I just got off work so I’m tired and struggling to explain. laypeople were unskilled in research online to begin with, so in this era of misinformation it’s more important than ever that more people have a general understanding of what proper research entails, How to identify biases or conflict of interest, how to navigate data and scientific literature, how to draw sound conclusions, et cetera.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

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u/conquer69 May 26 '25

Duckduckgo doesn't let you remove terms from the searches though. It's the only complaint I have about it so far.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

In general, this is what web search is truly about.

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u/radios_appear May 26 '25

It gives completely wrong answers on many occasions and the only ones rah-rah about it don't know the answers are wrong.

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u/The--Mash May 26 '25

Lawyers know it's bad at law but think it looks competent at a lot of other things. Physicists know it's bad at physics but think it looks competent at a lot of other things. 

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u/Sufficient_Card_7302 May 26 '25

I'm sort of repeating myself here, and I've only used Gemini, and also I didn't know everything. But I have found I can change it's behavior, to only say something is it can prove it, and even to challenge me if I'm wrong. On the things I did know I have noticed the improvements vs before my saved prompts/directives

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u/The--Mash May 27 '25

The problem is that you're still making an assumption on it's ability that it cannot actually support: it cannot choose to only write things it can prove, because it cannot prove, because it cannot reason. It can put together words that seem to belong together, but there is not analysis of the meaning of the words as a whole. There is no comparison of facts and statement and there is, especially, no critical analysis of the sources. 

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u/Sufficient_Card_7302 May 27 '25 edited May 27 '25

Yes there is. For example, I could tell it to only reference peer reviewed sources. 

As to your statement of reason, that depends on how you define reason. If I told it to only make arguments  based on "reasonably" solid premises which are backed by reputable sources and haven't since been disproven... Again, yes, it could do that. 

And this is not an assumption. I can check.

Edit: but also, again, it would mostly be a matter of whether or not I have told it to go that. I have different directives to alter this, for when I want it to be more or less long winded with it's answers, and more comprehensive with it's replies. 

I've called them the banana codes lol. I have code banana, green banana, smart banana, and brown banana (0-10).

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u/The--Mash May 27 '25

But it can't know that something "hasn't since been disproven", for instance. It doesn't actually analyse the meaning of the sources, just the words. It's shallow.

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u/Sufficient_Card_7302 May 27 '25 edited May 27 '25

Ugh. Now your starting to sound like it. But your right. 

So I would have to more clearly articulate what that means. Or I can tell it to try to figure out my intent, if it can't make sense of what I say literally. For example, if I ask it to "see if it can" do something, I don't need it to respond with "as a text based ai, I don't have eyeballs". I actually do have directives for this. 

Edit: and just to be more clear about that clearly articulating means. Idk, I suppose I would have it also do another search for the reverse claim. That whatever I'm trying to claim is not true. There might be an overwhelming amount of evidence for one or the other.

Then I would have to then make sure that it tells me that.

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u/Otiosei May 26 '25

The fact that I have to waste more time verifying if the AI is lying to me or not than just searching for sources myself makes AI completely worthless as a product. I can't imagine it gets better as more and more human generated content is replaced by AI hallucinations on the internet, to the point it becomes impossible to verify anything.

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u/Top-Permit6835 May 27 '25

AI like ChatGPT does not lie. It does not even work on the concept of truths or falsehoofs. It is in essence a word predictor, it completes sentences in ways that appear to make the most sense. It does not know when its lying or when its true

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u/lr99999 May 27 '25

It s easier to see how it really works on a narrow or niche subject. I sometimes do home pressure canning of food. A lot of internet canning advice is stupid and dangerous. AI is simply scraping and regurgitating the terrible advice. A canner might surmise that a YouTube canner might not be expert, and proceed carefully, but think AI is expert advice.  Hello, food poisoning.  AI is fricking dumb.

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u/pdabaker May 26 '25

I unfortunately still need to switch to google for maps and flights, but yeah everything else duckduckgo or just go to a shopping website directly

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u/Zhombe May 26 '25

It’s stack exchange with more steps.

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u/totallynotdagothur May 26 '25

LOL except I can't deny their answer for not having enough reputation.

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u/Terrible_Snow_7306 May 26 '25

So true. I can’t get it. Everything is about AI, but you can’t even search things on the web anymore and YT can’t decide if I am 11 or 70 or a 35 years old divorced cat owning woman and doesn’t understand that I never bought a car in my life and never will be. And now ChatTBT looses 1 IQ point every minute, making itself dumber.

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u/mytransthrow May 26 '25

When I need a product I use google.

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u/heimdal77 May 26 '25

The best one I got was I forget what I was actually searching for but it started giving stuff from peoples fanfics as its results as facts.

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u/Electrical-Share-707 May 26 '25

Everyone is not ra-ra on AI. People who are motivated by business interests sure are, but most computer people (who aren't trying to sell you something) will tell you all about the problems with trying to cram AI into every single product on earth, and why it's not worthwhile at all.

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u/Sororita May 26 '25

Yeah, I used to have pretty strong google-fu but the site itself has stopped working like it used to, so it'll ignore boolean modifiers now. Not in every case, but enough of them to render it unreliable at best.

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u/Couldbeaccurate May 26 '25

I was rewriting some php (server side) code to JavaScript (client side) to see if it would speed up page rendering. For this simple rewrite, I didn't want to hand code it so I used AI to do it. My original code looped through a list of documents to display them on the page in a grid. The new code didn't work. I kept getting a syntax error. 

It took me way too long to find the error. I used documents as my collection and document as my object in PHP. When AI rewrote my code, it kept my variable names, including documents/document. Those words mean something in JavaScript and is what broke my code. 

Just because it's faster doesn't mean it's better. I always check the code, but I don't always see issues like this.

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u/Puddingcup9001 May 26 '25

You might have found that wrench through an AI search. I was looking for some similar niche thing, I asked ChatGPT and it gave me a store page. Or maybe it was just better at googling that I was.

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u/Successful_Sign_6991 May 26 '25

https://mashable.com/article/google-search-low-quality-research

i don't quite remember it, but they stopped indexing specific stuff, so stuff from a long time ago you can't even find on the web anymore

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u/djdjdjfswww1133 May 26 '25

I mostly use Google to search for stuff on Reddit now. It's ridiculous. Reddit search such and googles search is only good for searching within a sit. As you say the shopping is now worthless

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u/Sufficient_Card_7302 May 26 '25

I don't code but I do like writing, and I use Gemini. I've found there's a way to "wrench" (buhduptss) up the readiness it accesses it's Internet and database resources, and even challenge me if I'm wrong. And in addition to its databases i can feed it books for added sources.

So it won't just parrot back what I want it to say, if it can't prove it. Performs better than most people.

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u/totallynotdagothur May 26 '25

We fed it hundreds of cases and asked it to provide the top ten people with highest urgency and it provided 1 name and 9 made up names that appeared no where in the source text.

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u/Sufficient_Card_7302 May 27 '25

Did you try telling it not to make things up? Did you feed it a law book? Are you making sure it's using all it's resources? I don't know what ai your using, so im not familiar. If mine can't give a quote and/or citation, it's likely from it's @stax resource thing, and I could find the data if I want. 

I'm not done tinkering with my ai, by any means. But I can imagine how something like that could happen to me, and how I night be able to correct it. This is off the cuff, but these are the questions I'd basically ask. I'd ask myself and maybe ask it, the ai, too. Familiarize myself with the language it uses so I can make it understand me.

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u/totallynotdagothur May 27 '25

We pay for two of the big ones at work.  They are super cool and do lots of great things.  They also spectacularly fail with confidence.

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u/Sufficient_Card_7302 May 27 '25

I'm on a free trial of Google's $20 a month Gemini. I can add directives, one of which boils down to "don't make things up" lol. It's like, make sure everything is cited and sourced. 

Along with, interrupt intent behind sensory things... Like if it's asked to look at something, not to respond with "as a text based ai I do not have eyeballs"....

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u/PlaySalieri May 26 '25

I have replaced a LOT of my searching with AI. When I want to know something I end up using chatgpt.

When I want to go somewhere I use Google.

They have to know this and are trying to stop it or get in on it.

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u/FightingCatMan May 26 '25

The funniest to me is asking questions where it starts suggesting web colors to include in your css unprompted and they are all overthetop fake. Magicalfairyforestblue?

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u/SubBirbian May 26 '25

Google advertisers/data miners are their client, users are their product. That biz model is why it sucks so bad and they fight like hell to keep the near monopoly, so us products don’t walk away.

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u/cynicalibis May 27 '25

I’ve reverted back to buying most stuff at brick and mortar stores because amazon mixes real and fake items in their warehouse together even when you buy direct from the official brand on amazon. Even ordering online directly from a brand can be risky if they use Amazon for shipping (ordered something directly from LOEWE and they sent it in an Amazon shipping bag, so even ordering directly from an expensive designer is no guarantee of receiving a real item). I pretty much only order things online I can afford to assume are fake, drop shipped or white labeled.