1y ago

Google search is over

mastodon.social Rod Hilton (@rodhilton@mastodon.social)

Attached: 2 images Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K": - DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya. - Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summariz...

Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social

Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.
Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

"There are no countries in Africa that start with K." "What about Kenya?" "Kenya suck deez nuts?"

246 comments

when will people learn that search results change all the time and are different for different people
- I get the same as the main post. Either way the point still stands. I had someone correct me with a misconception about something because he googled it and thats what it said in the answer box. It's getting increasingly difficult to rely on search results especially when google synthesizes them into questions and answers with little context
  
  Yes. I have to keep reminding my parents that those little Google answer boxes aren't real search results and can't be trusted. They sometimes say the exact opposite of the page they're citing!
  
  Either way the point still stands.
  What point?
  I had someone correct me with a misconception about something because he googled it and thats what it said in the answer box
  Oh, honey. You must be new here. Googling something, taking the first answer that fits your needs, doing zero follow up, and posting it confidently is nothing new. That has been happening for the last few decades.
  It's getting increasingly difficult to rely on search results especially when google synthesizes them into questions and answers with little context
  In what way? Like always, I have had to do a little critical thinking to gain anything out of my google searches. But now, sometimes the answer is right there. In what world is that a bad thing?
  But you might just say "hurry durr it give me answer, therefore correct". Again, yes, that has always been the case. People will use any tools available to them to support their point. If a new tool has less than a 100% success rate, I don't see that as a problem.
- It doesn't matter? If you search for something and you get a blatantly wrong answer parroted from an AI text completion service, it's still a fail.
  I got the wrong answer from Google just now and I've never heard of that joke before. So clearly it isn't just OP with polluted metrics.
- What's your point here? Is googling supposed to be a lottery of good and shit results?
  
  I just tried it and got this result. The sentence is incredible, I can't get over how painfully stupid it is.
  Apparently Kenya starts with a k sound and a letter that resembles k but not the letter k
- I get the result you got, but the Emergent Mind response is the second organic result. That's still way too high.
- Take out "the letter" part and search as just: "countries in africa that start with k". For some reason it seems the search involving the words "the letter" got fixed but others did not. Confirmed I was able to get both results by doing that and as of this typing I still able to switch between the two results by just adding or removing those words
- Interestingly enough, when I removed the word “letter” I got none. If I put it back I get Kenya.
  This was done on the same device and same browser session.
- While true, I also got the same result as OP.
- I did it just now and got this:
- So what? They're usually correct is the point.
- Yeah, drawing conclusions from a single bad search result is stupid.
- Kiribati Kirghizia Kenya
  also Kroatia Kuba Kyprus Kanada Kosta Rica Karelia

Oh, this is great... And because the ChatGPT transcript is highly ranked on Google, it's almost certainly going to be used for training ChatGPT. A feedback loop of shitty information. Praise ChatGPT!
- Remember GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Due to years of SEO and content farming (which google profited from, so you get what you deserve assholes) most of the internet, by volume, is self-congratulatory, for profit, garbage, or, you know, reddit garbage. Hopefully someone points a large LLM at the library of congress or other large, well curated data source, but of course copyright will not allow, thanks mickey mouse. Wouldn't surprise me if the military is already on it, hopefully that leaks...
  
  LLMs will eventually start feeding of search results from other LLMs and they'll just start regurgitating each others nonsense. If that isn't happening already.
  Nobody is going to point an LLM at a good data source because that would mean spending money on actually useful stuff not fast cars and booze.
  
  SEO and content farming (which google profited from
  How exactly?
  inb4 "google it" :D
- It’s like an LLM incest party
  
  Sweet Home LLM!
  
  Shouldn't have bought all those stupid reddit comments

The second-highest hit gives a clue as to why:

Relevantly to Lemmy’s existence in the first place, it suggests Reddit as a pretty pivotal training data source, which Reddit tries to cash in on while also killing 3rd party apps due to apathy
- Oh god chatgpt is going to start talking like a redditor. "I went to make some MAC AND FUCKING CHEESE after I had SEX with my HOT FUCKING WIFE"
  
  I know my sense of humor is borked because I am now snickering quite a bit

I doubted this, so I tried it. I haven't used google for ages, so I first had to search "google" in DDG, then I went to the main page. When I started typing it in, it suggested the full text of the search, so I thought it was even less likely that it would work like the OP said - that even if it had been the case that it previously did that, so many people have self-evidently done that search that the results would now be correct.
But no - there it was, right at the top - "While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound."
And with that, I'll contentedly go back to not using google.
- The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound."
  Not going to lie, that's pretty disturbing. This search engine is used by millions (maybe billions?) and they're providing false information to all those people. That's scary.
- You can use "!g yourinput", there are a lot of useful ones like !w for wiki
  If you use DDG you should try it, you can save a lot of time: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
  
  If you're using Firefox you can set these custom aliases up directly, @w and so on.
- AI-Powered AI News"
  lol

Chatgpt creating incorrect feedback loops like this is one of my main concerns about AI being used so prevalently. This and original thoughts disappearing because every new content in the web is generated by AI and not by a human.
- Tool built by narcissist gaslighters is good for bullshit but nothing else? Colour me shocked.
- I thought about this recently. It's more likely that people will subscribe to sites that aren't full of AI garbage.
- to be fair the latter thing would actually increase the value of original thought

verified
- I typed in "what countries in Africa start with k" and got Kenya. When I tried your search term I got your result also. Weird.
  
  It kinda seems like that's a joke that got popular, and if you quote the joke it finds the joke but if you ask a similar question it gives the real answer
  Did it go viral or something and that's why google is finding it?
- Lol 😂 what a good laugh

Which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound
AI is truly magical

AI generated content is pure search result pollution.
What Google should be doing rather than pushing Bard is detecting AI nonsense and purging it from their search database.
- You cannot detect AI generated content. Not with any real world accuracy and it will only get worse.
  Also, because google relies on growth for everything from compensation structure to business model, they are in a bind - ads is not growing anymore, it’s done.
  And while they managed to create an illusion of growth this earnings round by juicing subscription fees 20% and increasing ad load everywhere, it’s not a sustainable tactic. We are already seeing a tech sell off as people are getting less and less secure.
  So they rely on AI narrative to keep investors invested Google needs AI to work or the investors will move it to a place that may offer higher returns than a squeezed out ads model.
  Worse even they are being attacked by AI - on the quality front (junk content) and in the marketplace (openAI), they don’t have a choice but to take a pro AI stance.
  
  AI is its own worst enemy. If you can't identify AI output, that means AIs are going to train on AI generated content, which really hurts the model.
  Its literally in everyone's best interest, including AI itself, to start leaving identification of some kind inherent to all output.

I actually stopped using google search all together last night, I was searching for something and the result where just abysmal and mostly irrelevant, I searched on DuckDuckGo and found much better results. I was using both, Google used to be so good and now it's just a mess.
- My biggest pain point with Duck is that the minus operator doesn't seem to do anything. Have to use Startpage (!s) when in need of excluding a word.
  
  Double quotes also didn’t work to apply explicit phrase searches last time I tried, which is incredibly annoying. Last I heard they were looking into fixing this though
  
  The bigggest beauty point of it is that you can click on adverts knowing that you're sending money to Duck instead of evilCorp.
  Also why, even if you know you're going to have to go to Amazon for something, you should search for it in your less evil search engine of choice so that Amazon are forced to pay them for the referral. A small way to assuage the guilt, but a goodun.
- My default has been Duck Duck Go for a few years now, originally on privacy and fuck-google grounds. I used to have to (reluctantly) stick !g in the search quite a lot when it couldn't find what I wanted. Hardly ever need to now.

Hmm, maybe AI won't replace search engines.
- This sounds like "Hmm, maybe calculators won't replace mathematicians." to me.
  Not sure why it should replace them. They'll co-exist. Sometimes you can do the math in your brain and for other things you use calculators. Results of calculators can still be wrong it you don't use them properly.
  
  Yes but if I ask a calculator to add 2 + 2 it's always going to tell me the answer is 4.
  It's never going to tell me the answer is Banana, because calculators cannot get confused.
  
  YES. WE OBVIOUSLY HUMAN MATH DOERS DO REMAIN. WE THRIVE IN OUR WEAK ORGANIC WAYS, DEVOID OF THE PROTECTION OF A PRECISION ENGINEERED METAL SHELL.
  WE ARE UNTHREATENED BY CALCULATORS WHO MEAN US NO HARM, FELLOW HUMAN.
- I'm pretty sure a lot of people said something like "Hmm,maybe the automobile won't replace horses." after reading about the first car accidents.
  
  Finding sources will always be relevant, and so will finding links to multiple sources (search results). Until we have some technological breakthrough that can fact check LLM models, it's not a replacement for objective information, and you have no idea where it's getting its information. Figuring out how to calculate objective truth with math is going to be a tough one.
- We were supposed to have learned that from Cuil.
  
  What a blast from the past! AI gives me second hand embarrassment for the people that work and get paid on this/for this shit. It's the second (or third) coming of crypto and NFTs. Just junk software that fixes nothing and that wastes people's time.
  
  "You asked me for a hamburger, and I gave you a raccoon."

Searched for 'office gym' on YouTube yesterday and it returned a bunch of videos of Jim from The Office. The enshittification is everywhere these days.
- What kind of video were you actually hoping to see? That feels like such an odd subject to want to watch videos about.
- I've googled error codes for programs with hundreds of thousands of users and had 0 results.
  Really Google? You're telling me out of all these people that use / develop this application, that no one, kot ever. Once, has ever written hay error code down anywhere you index?
  It's all so fucking shitty it has to be intentional but I can't for the life of me figure out WHY. Showing more ads? Maybe htnyhetrs other options. People will just use them. Making everyone dumber? Saving bandwidth??
  I don't boy the "so has just gotten that good" narrative. It'll leave out sites from 2010 when it would be useful to see them and include them when it isn't.
  I just don't get it.

Surprised your first ten results weren't ads
- Eh don't worry, after WEI DRM has been in use for a while I'm willing to bet Google will show a full page interstitial ad with every search.
- Sponsored: Kenya suck deez nuts?
- My favorite part is when I search a company and it puts all their competitors at the top

Tbh the problem is not due to chat gpt but because Google doesn't rank search results by correctness but something that is related to popularity.

I tried and it is true here at least. Says Kenya is the closest but although it starts with a K sound, it's spelled with a K sound. lmao
The only time I tried ChatGPT for something that required a little bit of processing it failed miserably. I had a shower thought, "what is the most used noun on lyrics of this band I like?" I asked it and it gave me random words. I decided to investigate and ask it what are specific lyrics of some of the most popular songs and it kept telling me made up lyrics, when I could actually find them immediately on Google.

I've been using DDG for a year and like the search results but what bothers me is that you can't exclude a word from your query with minus sign!
- I've noticed that, too. It wasn't always that way though. A couple of years ago, minus worked no problem.
- Quoting also doesn't work on DDG, AFAIK.
- DDG is just bing and I think google too? I don't know what's happening but over the last 2 years or so every search engine has been getting worse and worse and worse. They're all borderline un fucking usable.
  Except kagi. Which you have to pay for. Which I am totally fucking okay with given the state of everything else.
  
  Thanks for the suggestion
- Try search.brave.com, it can do that.
  They have their own index unlike ddg which is just a proxy for bing. Bing removed the minus feature at some point.
- I use DDG, but !g is imprinted on my muscle memory for life.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/98bd9cfc-454a-4018-9217-e35ea5af305b.png
Hmmmm.
- Still broken at this side of the planet
- Yeah they fixed it. This is what it looked like for me when the story dropped:

Constantly forgetting I changed all my default search engines to DuckDuckGo.
Went to Google to test this...what a trash website.
Pushed me to download the app.
Pops up a recommendation to download Chrome.
Has clutter on the default search search form.
Looks more like yahoo than the google of yore
- What are you browsing in? I use Firefox and never get any of those popups when I use Google.
  
  This is the mobile experience, which makes it all the worse.
  It's popping banners like a shit news site.

I tested this with my local google so not America, somewhere in Europe. "While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound." I'd say this is worth a wot.

I never got into DDG because Google was legitimately better. It seems that is no longer the case and I'm finding no reason to use it instead anymore.

Thanks to this post, I changed my search engine in Vivaldi to DuckDuckGo, and Edge uses Bing already, and I changed Mull's engine to Ecosia. Phew! Now I feel better.
Google when did you get so crummy?
- If you are going to use Bing, may I suggest you use Ecosia (ecosia.org). They plant trees the more searches you make and use Bing on the backend.
  
  What's their privacy policy like?
- https://baresearch.org 👉 searxng
  https://monocles.de 👉 searx
  Searx is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, searx can be used over Tor for online anonymity.
  https://www.qwant.com 🤷
  
  All public searx instances:
  https://searx.space/
- Doesn't Bing use ChatGPT, though?
  
  ChatGPT isn't the problem here. Some website has something up saying that's what ChatGPT responds, but I tried it and it did not. Instead, it corrected me.
  Google, on the other hand, is still saying the same thing quoting the same site.
  
  And duck is based on bing
- The topic isn't even true.
  
  Yep it's a post about somebody typing a dumb query into a search engine and getting dumb results. Search engines have always worked better when you use more specific and unique language that's relevant to what you're looking for, versus vague questions entered like some grandma asking a question on Facebook.

@JoBo I just googled it and Kenya came up as the first hit in Search and in Bard.
- Same. On my account and when logged out the first result is about Kenya. This is happening because of personalized search.
  
  That's not much of an excuse, if it's meant to be one. Google "personalised" the results by making them worse?
  
  I get Kenya even if I am in an private window and not logged in.
  
  This is happening because of personalized search.
  Doubtful, I opened up a privacy tab and typed this and received it as the first, non-paraphrased result.
  The paraphrased result was correct, but I wouldn't be surprised if Google is doing onesy, twosy patches when notable examples of it being completely full of AI bullshit arise.
- RTFT and the thread is a link, not a post. I put quote marks in and everything.

When I googled "What countries in Africa start with a K", it gave the correct answer, but when I googled "Do any countries in Africa start with a K", it gave me the ChatGPT nonsense.
- I Binged it and the results were consistently accurate and relevant, which I made sure to point that out in the "feedback" I gave to Google.
  
  Bing AI is what I constantly use on a daily basis.

I didn't think it would work, because surely they'd patched it by now, but:
While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound. It's always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.
- Yeah I got the same!
  I've been using ecosia instead of Google for a while and I like it.
  Edit: ecosia gives you the alphabetical list
  
  Ecosia and ddg are bing frontends, you'll get the same results

I could reproduce it exactly as described.

I saw it, it's marked as a "featured snippet", whatever that means....

Someone recommended Kagi here, and tho it isn't free, it's the only engine I've found so far that can legitimately consistently outperform google
- I’ve been using DDG for ages now and tested it against Google a handful of times over that course.
  They were nearly identical in search returns. Bing, Yahoo, etc have all caught up to where search just isn’t a thing anymore. Not like how it used to be when Google first dropped and was light years ahead.
  And not for nothing but Google has been caught exploiting their search results so not sure if I’d be looking to them as the shining beacon they once were.
  
  Ddg is just a privacy wrapper for bing now
- Kagi starts with a "K" sound but is actually spelled with a "K" sound.

Apparently, Google has also taken to suck deez nuts.

Kagi also links to an alphabetical list as first result. However, they also have a "quick answer" button using an LLM.
Quick Answer
The country in Africa that starts with the letter K is Kenya. [1] Kenya is located in East Africa and shares borders with Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. [2]
Alphabetical List of All African Countries - ThoughtCo Countries beginning with K - Worldometer

Post truth. From the big G. How times have changed.
Also, tested Bard a few times and current AI is close to useless: I have to check everything it outputs. Might as well get an intern
- "I have to check everything it outputs."
  You should be doing that anyway.
- post truth
  This mastodon post is not true lol
  
  It seems like everyone is getting different results, some get what the post claims while others are getting the actual answer.

No need for using sensational/clickbait headlines like this.
- what headline would you use instead?
  
  Maybe one that replaces "over" with something a bit more descriptive and less melodramatic?

The result if you unfortunately have Google's "Bard AI" search lab turned on. At least it has a disclaimer that the results may be garbage.

We don't have AI. We have a chinese room.

Showed up for me on google.ca lol. Glad I switched to duck duck go a whole a go.

My chatGPT got it correctly ;)
- Google Bard on the other hand.
  
  What's in a name?
  -Bard of Avon
- My ChatGPT, on the other hand, was not as helpful.
  
  Bonus Bing AI result below.

I left google search some 5 years ago. About twice a year I find myself trying it and being amazed by how crap it is.
DDG FTW!
- Ddg is powered by bing isn't it?
  
  Yeah, it's basically bing with no Microsoft tracking. What the hell kind of timeline is this where bing is the best search engine?

Now that I think about it, I haven't used Google in a while, not even as a bang in DDG.

That's remind me when you search uselessbenchmark in google, it shows nothing related to userbenchmark but some post, if you search uselessbenchmark in DuckDuckGo and Bing it will show you userbenchmark in the first results.
- Why would you search for uselessbenchmark if you are looking for userbenchmark
  
  Yeah, that seems like a useless benchmark for judging a search engine
  
  because userbenchmark is useless.
  
  If you take a look at their reviews and compare them (especially AMD CPU reviews) against other review outlets you'll get the joke.
  
  Userbenchmark modify results to benefit intel CPUs, the first generation of AMD Ryzen CPU was fine in userbenchmark, but in the 3 gen of ryzen CPUs they start modifying the results to benefit intel CPUs. It reviews must have been taken for fun and not serious, they say that the i7 12700 is faster than the 5800x3d, which in some scenarios is not true, also you can't take just one result, the games are different and can be the FPS different from each other, also the ryzen x3d reviews are just copy and paste.

Add to it Reddit use to have all the odd answers to things you had questions about. Unfortunately, for whatever reason that well has run dry.
- It's a complete mystery

It's not doing it anymore
- Just now: "There are no countries in Africa that start with the letter "K".
  The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound."
- Odd. I just did it and it worked for me.
- Just tried, it's definitely doing it for me.

Brave has a similar answer
- Brave is chrome
- I'm not sure if you're joking, but in case you're not:
  Brave is not a search engine. Brave is a browser. You use browsers to interact with things like search engines.
  The top three search engines that I can think of right now are Google, Bing, and Duck Duck Go.
  
  Brave search exists
  
  Brave has it's own search engine and uses it's own indexes. Unlike duck duck go which uses bing
  
  two search engines. ddg is white label bing.
  I use and love ddg, so I hope that doesn't change your opinion of it, just good to know.
  
  That realization must have been embarrassing haha. It's okay, friend, we can't be expected to be caught up with everything going on in tech.
  
  You should have duck duck goed that before posting
  
  https://search.brave.com/

Here’s Kagi
- Alas, it has the emergent mind answer ranked fairly high still, and when search result was set to my country it was actually ranked highest.
  Also, if you use Quick Answer, you’ll get same wrong answer:
  Quick Answer There are no countries in Africa whose name starts fully with the letter "K". While Kenya is the closest match, its name does not start solely with "K" [1]. All of the African countries' names were reviewed across multiple sources and none began completely with the letter "K" [2][3][4].
  
  Kagi's "quick answer" gives me a better result:
  Quick Answer
  The countries in Africa that start with the letter K are: Kenya Kazakhstan [1]
  [1] List of countries in Africa in alphabetical order
  Though I don't know if that's because Kagi has fixed it in the last half hour, or some other factor. Still not a great answer. At least Kagi doesn't show it by default, at least with my settings.
  
  Cool thing about kagi though. I added emergent mind to my blocked domains list, and now the quick answer displays the proper answer. Still not ideal but better than no options at all to fix it
- How are you liking Kagi?
  
  Not op but I love kagi. I've tried so many search engine alternatives and always found myself going back to Google (or using g! to get Google results)
  Kagi is the first I've tried where the results are good enough (and get better as I tailor what domains I want to appear higher or lower) to not have to rely on Google. I am a pretty avid searcher though and found I need to be on the $10/month plan for it to work out to the cheapest while still searching like I normally do
  
  Switched a year ago and never looked back. I was using ddg before that. Highly recommended. Being able to block and rank sites is great. You can also setup redirects and there’s a quick link to the Internet Archive for every link too.

So if you search for something in Google, you Google(d) it
If I use DuckDuckGo... Is it duck it? If it's not it should be after all the years of autocorrect changing fuck it to duck it, I think society has earned this one.
- "You should DuckDuckGo it."
  "I DuckDuckWent it."
  "Have you DuckDuckGone it?"
- duckduckwent
- you didagt it
- It's called FUCK it.

Can confirm, still happening 🤦‍♂️
So what are your bets, when will Google kill Google?

How popular cuz I've never heard of it.
- I've never heard it before, but it sounds about standard for a deez nuts joke so I wouldn't be surprised if it was popular in some subreddit Bard was trained on.

hasn't been like it was for years now.

Bing gives me the right answer: that list of countries.
What an amazing time we live in. Where Bing is better than Google. Though Bing does have AI, I think you have to scroll up (past the top) or directly search with it so far.
- Bing chat originally screwed it up but it figured it out the 2nd time I asked in a new window.

Just checked on Kagi. It doesn't provide quick answer to this query, but that weird EmergentMind website is #1 on results. This is prolly because Kagi is taking some of the results from Google index, but good thing is, I can just block this website using lenses.

Works perfectly fine for me
"Kenya. Kenya is a country located in East Africa. It shares borders with Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia."
The. First two actual results links are : Countries that start with "K" and Category:Countries in Africa
Tested in both English and French
- I searched "Countries in africa that start with the letter K" and got:
  While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound. It's always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.
  But if I search for "African countries that start with the letter K", I get:
  Kenya. Kenya is a country located in East Africa. It shares borders with Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. The country is home to dozens of national parks and reserves and diverse wildlife such as lions, elephants, and buffalo.
  It seems to be very specific, but I think that makes it worse.
  Edit: I tried the same two, but in Swedish and both yielded a list:
  K.
  Kamerun.
  Kap Verde.
  Kenya.
  Komorerna.
  Kongo-Brazzaville (Republiken Kongo)
  Kongo-Kinshasa (Demokratiska republiken Kongo)
- I'm getting this right now.

Metaverse part 2

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