Hacker News Reader

Comment by thsr | Hacker News Reader

Google Search now is just links and links to SEO-optimized, keyword-stuffed meaningless blogs and articles. It feels like more and more of it is GPT3 generated

View on HN

There's so much affiliate marketing garbage it's unbelievable. I can't understand the motivation on Google's side. I'm sure it's good for YouTube if people are forced to use those types of platforms for content discovery, but then you're going from being the dominant player in one market (web search) to one of many in another market (content creation).

I'm sure that having search become absolute trash is great for Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, etc., but I just don't get how it benefits Google. Do they not realize it? Does the SEO optimized junk make it so hard to rank for keywords that people just buy AdWords?

Based on my own experience, I think it's easy to say that Google search is much worse than it was 10 years ago. Search in general is so bad that I actually use Bing and Google when I need to find things. I guess maybe that's market growth and I'm just the sucker that tolerates it. Lol.

It benefits google because crap organic results means you are more likely to actually click on an ad. They are already a virtual monopoly you and I might use Bing or Duckduckgo but it hardly makes a difference.

What kind of stuff are you searching for? If it's as crap as you say it is, doesn't this just mean there's a massive opportunity to create some genuinely useful content around the stuff you're talking about?

I don't know if there's much opportunity in terms of creating useful content that's ranked well by Google. I agree there's an opportunity to build better content, but I don't think Google will work as the main source of discovery.

I run into the issue most when I'm searching for solutions to tech problems. A good example would be to search for instructions on how to upload PSTs to MS365 or how to perform a server to server IMAP sync when migrating from a legacy mail provider to MS365.

You'll find a ton of "blogs" that claim to have instructions, but usually the instructions suck and the entire point of the blog is to sell 3rd party software that does the same thing as Microsoft's built in tooling.

> Based on my own experience, I think it's easy to say that Google search is much worse than it was 10 years ago.

My suspect is not that Google is much worse now but rather than people are, overall, writing much worse content—from a user perspective—because they try to optimise their content for money and SEO first and then _maybe_ people second. Maybe.

As a result, if you're trying to find, for example, a genuine review of a product it is close to impossible to find an article written by someone who simply wants to share his or her thoughts.

And it's honestly quite depressing to see.

"Feels like" being the key phrase. The reality of the modern Internet means there's no need for GPT3: You don't need AI that can write like a human when humans are being pushed by market forces to write like robots.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com