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?

  • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
    341·
    11 months ago

    Google was really valuable before web services were so monopolized and consolidated like they are now. It’s almost more useful to use the specific websites search function for many things now. Before this, you could run searches and it would have all these personal and small websites indexed. Oh look, here’s a guy who lives his whole life as Peter Pan and has a website about it, cool… now it’s just a profile on some social media site same as anyone else.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      12·
      11 months ago

      It’s almost more useful to use the specific websites search function for many things now

      Except Amazon’s search of their own store has been so enshittified that it’s normally better to search for a product on Amazon using Google.

      • this_1_is_mine@lemmy.world
        4·
        11 months ago

        I do the same except once I find it I go to that specific manufacturer and I buy it directly from their website more often than not

        • burrito@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          11 months ago

          So AliExpress? I swear 95% of the stuff sold on Amazon is just crap people are reselling from AliExpress.

        • wrekone@lemmyf.uk
          2·
          11 months ago

          That’s a good way to do it, whenever possible. Unfortunately most of the results on Amazon these days are from companies with word salad names, like ENGRTSIAL or LOFRABTAN.

          • SeaJ@lemm.ee
            3·
            11 months ago

            Do not use Amazon unless you know exactly what you want. The reviews are almost all fake. What’s annoying is that if you search for review sites on a type of product you do not know much about, they funnel you back to Amazon’s “highly rated” ones and get a kickback of you but the no name garbage. Also annoying is that those words salad companies are all the same manufacturer for the most part. They set up a ton of different names to flood the search results and then throw up a bunch of fake reviews. Some of that shit can be dangerous. Louis Rossman just did a video testung out some highly rated fuses and one of them by Nilight did not blow until 5x its amperage rating. That can easily lead to a fire. He also did one on crimping cables a bit ago that absolutely failed to crimp. Amazon removed his negative review.

    • mwproductions@lemmy.world
      7·
      11 months ago

      Oh look, here’s a guy who lives his whole life as Peter Pan and has a website about it

      Holy shit, I haven’t thought about that guy in something like 20 years! I wonder what he’s up to these days. I like to imagine he and the berries and cream guy are pals.