this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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What's your opinion? Does google really "not work" anymore? Are there any better search engines? Why did the quality of search results go down? I honestly stumbled onto this question through this music video, what is ironic in it's own way i feel...

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[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 94 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I need an engine where if I put something in quotes it appears on the site, visible to the human eye. sure sure it can ignore case, but otherwise the damn word or phrase should be there.

[–] HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yep, if I put a word in quotes with a minus in front of it, it used to mean that search results with that word would not show, but now it does not matter because "AI haz learn"

[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

yes. I will check given the one guys reply but I know in the past I have minused something then ctrl-f and the damn thing is there.

[–] nouben@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Actually i still use this feature but without the quotes (eg -keyword1 -keyword2 ...), few weeks ago it still worked

[–] HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

I might try it again then... that is if I have to search for something on Google again

[–] donio@beehaw.org 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is such a simple ask and yet it seems almost impossible with modern search engines. They all seem to insist on second-guessing you. It's a lack of respect for the user: "We know you are dumb but don't worry, we will figure out what you really mean. Oh and don't forget to watch your ads."

My other pet-peeve is that they will almost never admit that maybe they just don't have any good hits for the query. They insist on pushing some irrelevant crap in your face instead. I guess it comes down to needing to show the user something so that they can mix in those ads.

[–] asap@feddit.de 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I need an engine where if I put something in quotes it appears on the site, visible to the human eye

I can confirm this works on Kagi:

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've just recently started using Kagi. It's great, it's fast, I love that I can raise, lower, or block certain sites in the results.

However, $5 a month for up to 300 queries is pretty steep for the average user. Well, not for the average user (apparently the average google user only searches 100 times a month) but I used up the 100 demo searches over about 48 hours, mostly just researching for responses to lemmy comments.

I subscribed anyway. And I understand search engines are not cheap to run. But time will tell how much this will end up costing in the long run, and if it's worth it over a free one with an ad blocker.

[–] coldredlight@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I became a paying subscriber for kagi today. The way I justify the cost is it's saved me time digging up technical information at work and that increase in efficiency is worth money to me. Also, I hate ads and SEO crap, and $5 isn't really that much these days. I'm trying to reduce my reliance on Google so it's nice having an actual superior search experience, even if I have to spend a little money for it.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I tend to try to support new projects doing things different just because I want them to grow. At the moment it costs them approx 1.25 cents per search, which is what pricing is based on (they also need to offset the searches for free trials so the price is a little higher) but presumably there are fixed costs that will mean this cost can come down as the userbase grows. $5 is also not much to me, but it can mean a lot to the service which is young and founder-funded.