No but only because I stopped using google search years ago.
It has been getting worse for the last decade.
for many years now – stopped using them back when they started to ignore +include, -exclude, and “phrases”
So wait, the search operators don’t work anymore? It seemed like it but is that confirmed?
They still work as intended actually, but most pages are so inundated with SEO garble that they’re effectively useless
They really don’t, though. Inclusion/exclusion operators work most of the time, but it’ll still return results with explicitly-excluded keywords. It also fucks up results by returning entries with similar words to your query, even when you double-quote a part of the search term. Advanced queries that use booleans and logical AND/OR don’t work at all anymore, that functionality has been completely removed. It returns what it thinks you want, not what you actually want, even when explicitly crafting a query to be as specific as possible.
I use Kagi for search now and it’s 1000x better, especially when researching technical issues; it’s like when Google actually respected your search terms and query as a whole.
They still work but they search the entire page, not just what’s visible in your browser. A search for "term" does not implicate you being able to find term on the results’ rendered pages.
So pages are just including every relevant term hidden somewhere like they making resumes in the early aughts with 4pt white text with bullshit at the bottom?
In general yes. I’m not going to pull exact numbers up but I think it started declining around 2018.
I’ve heard it said they switched to whatever was most profitable rather than what was actually useful or relevant. I still find good results when looking up niche tech issues, but if it’s more mainstream I get really weird results, so that might indeed be what’s happening.
Looking up niche stuff gets harder and harder it seems. It always seems to “translate” my very specific request into a very general search and giving me useless results. It highlights search terms in the results, which aren’t even in my original search query. Google just thinks it knows better and it never ever does.
I stopped using it years ago because they were going downhill and still collecting your private information. I run my own SearXNG now. It proxies from multiple sources, no ads, no tracking. I really enjoy SearXNG as it’s mine.
Yep same here, SearX is clunky and confusing compared to other popular search engines but it actually /works/ once youre familiar with it.
Public instances
Not that I could tell.
