▲ 181 ▼ Google search boss says AI isn’t killing search clicks (arstechnica.com) submitted 1 year ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world 48 comments fedilink hide all child comments
[+] Cypher@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago (4 children) [deleted] permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] Dave@lemmy.nz 12 points 1 year ago (2 children) To give credit to the people trying to make good search, the internet is so much worse than it was a decade or two ago. Over that time the ad driven internet has encouraged low quality, high volume websites full of articles designed around common search terms. It started before AI, but now you can drum up an article in seconds it has got much worse. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child) Yup I ran into this last week, looking for a wiring diagram of a relatively obscure part. 1st page of results on DDG and Google were both AI ‘blog’ style results of random diagrams unrelated to the part. All the same “loading…” text and I’m pretty sure all generated on the fly as I opened them. It didn’t even give me the manufacturer’s site in the first 2 pages. And because I got upset and clicked through every result to vent to a co-worker, it decided to give me MORE slop results. I watched the useful info vanish from the results on reloads of the same search term. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 point 1 year ago Holy crap, I hadn't considered that we have the technology to create articles on the fly based on search terms. That could be a serious weapon of war - you get your site to the top through SEO, then show each user personalised propoganda. You show googlebot the genuine page but adjust the page based on what you know about the user. permalink fedilink source parent [–] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 point 1 year ago SEO garbage has been around for much more than a decade. In fact, before Google got really good at search ranking, sites easily gamed the search engines. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 12 points 1 year ago (2 children) To give credit to the people trying to make good search, the internet is so much worse than it was a decade or two ago. Over that time the ad driven internet has encouraged low quality, high volume websites full of articles designed around common search terms. It started before AI, but now you can drum up an article in seconds it has got much worse. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child) Yup I ran into this last week, looking for a wiring diagram of a relatively obscure part. 1st page of results on DDG and Google were both AI ‘blog’ style results of random diagrams unrelated to the part. All the same “loading…” text and I’m pretty sure all generated on the fly as I opened them. It didn’t even give me the manufacturer’s site in the first 2 pages. And because I got upset and clicked through every result to vent to a co-worker, it decided to give me MORE slop results. I watched the useful info vanish from the results on reloads of the same search term. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 point 1 year ago Holy crap, I hadn't considered that we have the technology to create articles on the fly based on search terms. That could be a serious weapon of war - you get your site to the top through SEO, then show each user personalised propoganda. You show googlebot the genuine page but adjust the page based on what you know about the user. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child) Yup I ran into this last week, looking for a wiring diagram of a relatively obscure part. 1st page of results on DDG and Google were both AI ‘blog’ style results of random diagrams unrelated to the part. All the same “loading…” text and I’m pretty sure all generated on the fly as I opened them. It didn’t even give me the manufacturer’s site in the first 2 pages. And because I got upset and clicked through every result to vent to a co-worker, it decided to give me MORE slop results. I watched the useful info vanish from the results on reloads of the same search term. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 point 1 year ago Holy crap, I hadn't considered that we have the technology to create articles on the fly based on search terms. That could be a serious weapon of war - you get your site to the top through SEO, then show each user personalised propoganda. You show googlebot the genuine page but adjust the page based on what you know about the user. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 point 1 year ago Holy crap, I hadn't considered that we have the technology to create articles on the fly based on search terms. That could be a serious weapon of war - you get your site to the top through SEO, then show each user personalised propoganda. You show googlebot the genuine page but adjust the page based on what you know about the user. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 point 1 year ago SEO garbage has been around for much more than a decade. In fact, before Google got really good at search ranking, sites easily gamed the search engines. permalink fedilink source parent