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Diane 🕵

It looks like google is manipulating the entered search queries to make them more profitable for google.

"Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution."

From wired.com/story/google-antitru

2 Oct 2023 at 16:30 | Open on octodon.social
24 comments
DeManiak 🇿🇦 🐧

@alienghic well that would go a long way to explain why results are so shitty

2 Oct 2023 at 16:40 | Open on social.oevents.co.za
Diane 🕵

@kaasbaas

Yes. I wonder how much of the off topicness of search results might be due to that too.

2 Oct 2023 at 17:16 | Open on octodon.social
Vanni Di Ponzano 🚴 ❤️ ☕ 🍎
DELETED

@alienghic

Putting numbers on the enshittification process. Love it

2 Oct 2023 at 19:10 | Open on mastodonapp.uk
Alberto Cottica
Mculbertson

@alienghic I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for a couple years, but they use Bing as their engine, which keeps injecting garbage into the results.

Started paying for Kagi a few months ago, it’s like breathing fresh air for the first time in years.

kagi.com

2 Oct 2023 at 19:23 | Open on mas.to
Diane 🕵

@mculbertson

I will have to look into that. thanks for sharing.

2 Oct 2023 at 19:34 | Open on octodon.social
Quinn Comendant

@alienghic @mculbertson Kagi is such a great project. I hope it continues forever because I’m completely dependent on it now.

2 Oct 2023 at 19:56 | Open on mastodon.social
Luna Saphira Dragofelis
@mculbertson @alienghic For any readers looking for a decent free search engine, Qwant still seems to have pretty decent results.
2 Oct 2023 at 20:56 | Open on fedi.criminallycute.fi
Joe Heafner

@alienghic I’m convinced DDG and Amazon do this too.

2 Oct 2023 at 19:36 | Open on mstdn.social
Diane 🕵

@heafnerj

I don't know about ddg. but do we know that amazon has it's own ad search game.

Amazon search engine rankings are heavily determined by vendors ad spends.

2 Oct 2023 at 19:42 | Open on octodon.social
OldFartPhil

@alienghic @heafnerj Amazon search has always been bad, but it's gotten noticeably worse in the last few years. Now you're inundated with results from random-letter Chinese brands before you reach the first name-brand result.

It's so bad you get better results using Google to search for items on Amazon.

2 Oct 2023 at 20:01 | Open on mastodon.social
Nihl L'Amas

@alienghic @heafnerj Yeah, try using Google (of all things!) to search for a product name along with "amazon" as a search term and, as shitty as Google is, it will find Amazon listings for in-stock products which don't come up in Amazon's own search.

2 Oct 2023 at 20:49 | Open on mastodon.social
Juleselt

@alienghic Been saying this for months; corporations have turned humans into commodities. We're no longer humans, we're only seen as money generators for the corporations.

2 Oct 2023 at 19:38 | Open on universeodon.com
Urzl

@julescelt01 @alienghic Corporations are a competing species, everything we ever feared an AI or similar creation would be.

Instead of protecting humanity, every government on Earth surrendered to the immortal amoral entities without a fight.

2 Oct 2023 at 20:56 | Open on mastodon.social
Juleselt

@gooba42 @alienghic it certainly feels that way. The avarice of these larger corporations that are making obscene amounts of money is truly demoralizing at times.

I keep hoping the pendulum will swing back the other direction.

2 Oct 2023 at 21:29 | Open on universeodon.com
Rick :swift: 6x💉😷🇺🇦

@alienghic @JamesGleick So they didn’t do away with their “do no evil” mantra, just the “no” part of it.

2 Oct 2023 at 19:51 | Open on geekstodon.com
Eric MacKnight
Urzl

@ericmacknight @alienghic I don't know if it's a geolocation thing because I'm in Missouri or what but every time I'm tempted to visit DDG, I get the most awful Right slanted results.

I don't know what they're doing but I don't like it.

2 Oct 2023 at 20:58 | Open on mastodon.social
Santo Perdido

@alienghic Someone turned me on to Kagi the other day (kagi.com/). You can search for free, up to a limited number of searches per month, but also buy packages with higher amounts. The price is small, but I realize that it still may not be for everyone. However, it deserves all the attention it can get in order to get people off Google.

2 Oct 2023 at 20:09 | Open on me.dm
lusofreak
Diane 🕵

@lusofreak though as an also ad supported service there's nothing stopping them (or their primary upstream source bing) from also doing this

2 Oct 2023 at 20:18 | Open on octodon.social
Discontinued Plopper

@alienghic @lusofreak
I've been seeing people saying this about DDG. Any similar issues with Qwant?

2 Oct 2023 at 20:59 | Open on todon.nl
DELETED

@alienghic @CurtAdams

Attention linguists. You can watch live as a recently coined verb: to google, disappears from vernacular English

2 Oct 2023 at 21:27 | Open on urbanists.social
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