I heard this, what, 6 months ago, from someone else.
Over half of websites served to you by enshittified search engines are written by machines, to hit results.
They will rephrase the question as many ways as possible to hit the search engine , then explain why someone would want to know that question, then give you a half assed answer to your question.
Previously the answer was on the search page. Now, only the AI one is, the results make you all click and search now as not before.
That’s not by accident. They are forcing us to use AI. So called ai, llm bullshit.
We need our own Open Source Search Engines. We could do that, I could even help on that one.
The problem isnt the search engine, tge problem is the search index. The index gets big and expensive to maintain quickly. Ive mostly switched to Kagi at this point.
It would solve a lot, the search engines are willingly making their results less useful, together, in a trust, a shit-trust. While one way is my example, and they are not blameless in allowing these shit results to be displayed, that is only one way they have started to not serve the user of their product but rather their clients.
But, what do you think would solve it? Obviously a search engine, and index, that is open source wouldn’t solve everything regarding the internet being taken over by ai and bots, but it would help with a lot, not the only thing we need to do by a long shot.
search engines are willingly making their results less useful
Search engines are being flooded by shit content gaming their ranks algorithms. I guess open source engine could be so niche that no one would try to game it and it could help. The moment enough people start using it, it would have the same problem as all the other engines.
They are also purposfully not returning content we are asking for. We know it can work, because it did work. They will put forward results from people that pay them, remove material that people pay them to remove, and otherwise are not giving us what we ask for.
Which is to say nothing of removing answers from the search page itself and only giving it via their ai.
This is not a good faith enshitification, search engines are not blameless victims, and stopping seo websites from gaming their system is their fucking job, that they did for a long time and now don’t.
I honestly don’t know what part of this is enshitification and what part it’s actual inability to protect their ranking algorithms. There’s so much money in SEO now companies are willing to do crazy things to position their spam. They host entire networks of sites that link to one another, pay people to write spam content and so on. Maybe they could spend more money on detection and keep fighting it, maybe at this point it’s impossible.
It’s a war between search and seo. An ad company offers good enough search for free. I think more competition is the best bet. And it cannot be ad supported and it has to be free. Possibly if Apple is not allowed to be paid by Google (anti trust contract), or if universities/libraries run search engines.
We also cannot just block these websites, there are just too many of them, i hope some effective alternatives to search engine (or perhaps a modern community made index) will be developed soon
I heard this, what, 6 months ago, from someone else.
Over half of websites served to you by enshittified search engines are written by machines, to hit results.
They will rephrase the question as many ways as possible to hit the search engine , then explain why someone would want to know that question, then give you a half assed answer to your question.
Previously the answer was on the search page. Now, only the AI one is, the results make you all click and search now as not before.
That’s not by accident. They are forcing us to use AI. So called ai, llm bullshit.
We need our own Open Source Search Engines. We could do that, I could even help on that one.
The problem isnt the search engine, tge problem is the search index. The index gets big and expensive to maintain quickly. Ive mostly switched to Kagi at this point.
And it has to be fast. If it takes too long people will leave before it gives results, and thats also expensive.
Open source search engine will not solve this problem. The AI generated websites will simply optimize to be shown on it.
It would solve a lot, the search engines are willingly making their results less useful, together, in a trust, a shit-trust. While one way is my example, and they are not blameless in allowing these shit results to be displayed, that is only one way they have started to not serve the user of their product but rather their clients.
But, what do you think would solve it? Obviously a search engine, and index, that is open source wouldn’t solve everything regarding the internet being taken over by ai and bots, but it would help with a lot, not the only thing we need to do by a long shot.
Search engines are being flooded by shit content gaming their ranks algorithms. I guess open source engine could be so niche that no one would try to game it and it could help. The moment enough people start using it, it would have the same problem as all the other engines.
They are also purposfully not returning content we are asking for. We know it can work, because it did work. They will put forward results from people that pay them, remove material that people pay them to remove, and otherwise are not giving us what we ask for.
Which is to say nothing of removing answers from the search page itself and only giving it via their ai.
This is not a good faith enshitification, search engines are not blameless victims, and stopping seo websites from gaming their system is their fucking job, that they did for a long time and now don’t.
I honestly don’t know what part of this is enshitification and what part it’s actual inability to protect their ranking algorithms. There’s so much money in SEO now companies are willing to do crazy things to position their spam. They host entire networks of sites that link to one another, pay people to write spam content and so on. Maybe they could spend more money on detection and keep fighting it, maybe at this point it’s impossible.
It’s a war between search and seo. An ad company offers good enough search for free. I think more competition is the best bet. And it cannot be ad supported and it has to be free. Possibly if Apple is not allowed to be paid by Google (anti trust contract), or if universities/libraries run search engines.
universities rely on google scholar mostly, since they pa subscription to journals.
Give Marginalia search a try, see how well it works out for you.
We also cannot just block these websites, there are just too many of them, i hope some effective alternatives to search engine (or perhaps a modern community made index) will be developed soon
Start a repo then.