DuckDuckGo Blames Bing for Site Delistings, Still Sucks Anyway
(torrentfreak.com)
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Search engine manipulation is always a topical topic here.
I've given up completely on DDG and never use it now. I have 3 search bars open now; yandex, gibiru and virtual mirage (formerly searx.me?) I'm not even pleased with the combination of them.
The internets have everything we're looking for and want to find. But the ancient underappreciated arts of indexing and cataloging have been irreparably broken. It's there - but you will never be allowed to find it.
Indexing is an underrated craftsmanship and is on the precipice of being overthrown. Don't even get me started.
Politics aside, marketing firms have done the real damage to search engine results by hijacking algorithms with padded, timely, but otherwise meaningless content. "How do I replace the springs on my garage door" will doubtless yield a thousand results from garage door manufacturers, written by clueless marketers, and 9/10ths of the page will just be gibberish like "A well functioning garage door is an excellent investment for your home. Did you know that a recent study concluded that upgrading your garage door will increase your home's value by boosting its curb appeal? We make garage doors in all shapes and sizes, so you can get the door of your dreams! etc etc etc" It's infuriating.
sometimes it feels like those fluff articles are ai generated based on trending topics
My favorite AI generated page was this "Buyer's Guide" on Amazon's marketplace about telescoping poles.
It was so hilarious I had to archive it. I figure a lot of their content is like that. That's certainly true for the wider web.
This is the plot to Ark 3 in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Though it was all "middlemen" including hairstylists and telephone sanitizers. There was no Ark 1 or 2, it was just a fake to get ride of them.
Unfortunately, they crash landed on a planet called Earth and became the human race. And their home planet died of a plague contracted from a dirty telephone.
My favorite is when you search for “best X” and the top ten hits are “articles” listing the best X. Except the list is twenty items long, encompassing virtually every X in existence, saying nothing but good things about all of them, and they’re all affiliate links. So helpful.
This comment perfectly encapsulates how I feel about web search. What Google did successfully was really hard, but they got woke and broke their machine. At the same time SEO optimizers are getting sneakier making precision drop. The alternative engines are playing catch up, and now you have some of them going woke or adding bias to their results for other reasons. I don't know how we get back to the golden age of search.
I'm like you and have a selection of multiple search engines to fall back on, but they are all weak in one way or another. Hopefully Brave keeps getting better and they don't go the same route.