Google search failed to even find a hollywood movie, even after 1 hour of attempts. I don’t really care about the movie, but I am terrified by the prospect that google now ceased to function on this basic level. Why is this happening?

I understand the explanations of seo and other stuff like spam content. But why are there NO relevant results at all.

I wouldn’t mind having to start wading through results at page 2 or even 10 but now it utterly fails to find even the most basic things.

Things you found on the first attempt even just a year ago. Now they are effectively hidden.

To me functionally the entire internet has now vanished. I cannot access anything that I am searching for. Might as well not exist at all.

Has anybody found a way around this?

Is this on purpose? Is this an attack on the free internet, herding people to just the top 5 sites like facebook, youtube, tiktok, and so forth?

Are there search engines that still work?

  • ebits21@lemmy.caEnglish
    24·
    11 months ago

    I came to the exact same decision a few months ago.

    DDG used to be worse; now it’s better.

    • 🐑🇸 🇭 🇪 🇪 🇵 🇱 🇪🐑@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      The only downside of DDG is that it doesn’t have a decade or two of algorithm data to personalise your searches and sort of “learn” what you mean with certain terms.

      Not like I miss it too much. It’s just a mild culture shock to suddenly having to be more clear with my searches

      • Scrollone@feddit.it
        16·
        11 months ago

        That’s a good thing, in my opinion. I miss when Google results were the same for everyone.

      • jennwiththesea@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        It just occurred to me that this ability to communicate with a search engine, that everyone used to call Google-fu, was exactly this! It didn’t already know (or think it knew) what you were getting at, and it’s took some practice to figure out how to finesse the results.