i keep seeing people say that LLMs are good at search.
NO. WRONG.
You have just forgotten how good search used to be.
Google broke it's own flagship product, and so you are accepting a demented chatbot's half baked gishgallop because we no longer have functional web search.
NO. WRONG.
You have just forgotten how good search used to be.
Google broke it's own flagship product, and so you are accepting a demented chatbot's half baked gishgallop because we no longer have functional web search.
Comments
It is still my default.
The results are cleaner, but they still collect every piece of data they can.
Sometimes snippets in search results are more than a year old, and it's not uncommon to click through to a page not found or something with new content.
Depends on the AI. For example, NotebookLM will do an initial search, determine where it needs more information, and continue to refine and change what it's searching for until it finds what it needs
The paper excerpt is an argument against putting paid content in organic results, not against showing ads alongside them.
The experience has seriously gone down hill.
Google's default experience is abysmal, but they still have the old google in there.
It's a Google search with no AI and that disables loads of other junk they've added over the years.
Still not perfect, but way better, especially when you're looking for an actual webpage
You can kind of make google work if you can sort through the static long enough
And pretty much know what shape the answer should have
Let Google kill itself off. Fuck them for: Doing More Evil!
https://Ecosia.org
Said the man who has been given nothing but flavorless gruel and a cold, hard stone floor to sit on for the last twenty years.
What used to be genuine content written by enthusiasts is now either hidden marketing or created to maximise affiliate link clicks.
I thought it was me....
That and/or Brave.
I would consider paid for search, which is a sad state of affairs, if it would let me find those obscure bits of internet I value.
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111707582903886811
https://www.osnews.com/story/139270/do-not-use-kagi/
https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html
#Kagi
The loss of reliable, non-billionaire controlled search engines is a major loss to freedom.
There's money AND power at stake for them, hence the ridiculous level of push to universalise acceptance of AI.
"Solves" wages, and impoverished, unhealthy people are easier to control.
ChatGPT is not good at search, you have just forgotten how good Google was 6 years ago
Because I had already begun doing this on my own without anyone’s suggestion, independently deciding it was the only way to find any actual info.
Too bad Reddit is now full of ChatGPT responses, we’re doomed.
DuckDuckGo as browser and search engine
Bluesky instead of Twitter
Signal instead of WhatsApp (not for all friends yet)
No Facebook, instagram, TikTok or others
💪
but they have their LLM thing going on so sure good for them
DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com/
AltaVista https://search.yahoo.com/
AskJeeves https://www.ask.com/
Oh wait, that was the Trump administration using AI to write its court briefs.
When Wikipedia starts to seem reliable, you know we’re in trouble.
I'm far from the only one who thinks so:
https://www.theverge.com/web/631636/kagi-review-best-search-engine
Not because I don't want to pay.
But because I access THOUSANDS, and cannot thus choose only 3 or 4 (at $10/month? Seriously??!?) to pay for.
We need a COMPLETE overhaul of Digital IP Rights, #Copyright & funding.
I have a MUCH better system: EVERYthing accessible + ALL creatives paid.
No, typing out a full sentence on Google won’t get you good results.
Yes, there are options like +, -, *, etc. to refine your searches.
Yes, keywords still works.
Maybe not on Google, I haven’t used it in years. But I find what I look for.
I wouldn't use it for regular research though.
I invite you to question why they might do that.
(Hint: search services haven’t been their primary purpose as a company in a very long time now.)
It does in fact take an enormous amount of text and then produce statistically-probable text based on its data set, however, it has no capacity to determine what, if anything, in its data set is factually correct. It mixes correct and incorrect “fact” indiscriminately.
the linked page's score. Worked great until people started making pages with thousands of links to boost their site in the algorithm. This was the start of SEO which now ruins search.
So maybe they're not better, but require less thought, so easier?
The degradation of Google's search algorithm has many angles.
Other services started being upset that reddit and Wikipedia dominated their search results some years ago.
So yes. You see reddit less. By design.
So when they started being accused of just being a means of accessing YouTube, reddit, and Wikipedia, in an anticompetitive way, they artificially lowered the rankings of Wikipedia and reddit and perhaps some others.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Maps, ok - so far.
But answers... HONEST answers...
You'd do better with a magic 8-ball.
Doesn't help that Google is a publicly traded for profit Corp though obviously.
Let that sink in.
Just a few years ago, you could sort by distance, so you had a clear idea of which was closest yo you, and the radius widening from there
But, if they do that, they can't have the promoted restaurants pop up first. So they removed
Shit, I was looking for a specific pizza spit the other day. Typed in the exact name and everything. Yet the first result I got was a paid ad for an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT spot
If people can see that the place down the street pops up before the place that paid money to post, far lower chance paid post will turn into a conversion
Google intentionally degraded the user experience to boost profit, which is disgusting
Add the word fuck to your search and it wont do that
Does it use the API in response to end-user prompts to search, or does it use the API to train?
We can argue about whether or not we think they are good/effective but it's not quite right to say they don't search.
I miss being able to find a specific title, person or thing.