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?

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    10 months ago

    It is entirely a google thing. Reddit might’ve helped google hide its limp as it was declining, but it’s google that encouraged websites to write blog spam for SEO, by their very creation of their SEO algorithm. Google has indirectly shaped the internet in this manner.

    I remember crunching the numbers with Kagi a couple months ago and most of their plans aren’t worth it, not unless you actually use it at the specified amount. However maybe the packages have changed now, I remember it being something like $5 for 300, $10 for 700 and $27 for unlimited.

    It also doesn’t block you when you run out of free searches when you have a package, instead they charge you like 2c per search. So you have to carefully feather your usage to maintain the value - don’t use it enough and the cost per use is high, use it over your limit and the cost per use is high. Frankly, I don’t want all that hassle, particularly with something I’m paying for.

    With your new numbers, the $5 package is 1.67c per search, and you’d need to more than 600 searches for the $10 package to beat that rate. However, assuming 2c per search after your 300 in the $5 package, you would hit $10 after 550 searches. So, if the 2c per search is correct, you should upgrade to the $10 unlimited plan only if you’re doing more than 550 searches.

    • FlatFootFox@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      I think they realized their price structure was confusing/annoying towards the end of last year. Now it’s just $5/mo for 300 searches or $10/mo for unlimited. (There’s also still an expensive $25/mo plan for early access to some of their LLM experiments apparently?) You got me curious and I couldn’t find any mention of per-search overage billing. This feature request thread from 2022 just makes it sound like Kagi search gets shut off.

      I bouncing hard off of Kagi when they had the original pricing structure you described. Bringing back aughts era SMS overages or just mentally having to count searches doesn’t exactly found like a fun time. I’m going to give the $5 plan a try this month to see how far that gets me. $10/mo is still a tough sell for Internet search. If I really find it substantially better, I might convince my spouse into trying the two seat $14/mo unlimited “Duo” plan for a while.