Yes, the results are inaccessible during the blackout.
The thing is google is still working just as it was ... the fact the results are dead atm is beside the point.
A person visiting old bookmarks to reddits that are unavailable at the moment could say the same, their bookmarks aren't working. I wouldn't author an article about bookmarks not working as such ...
Yes, Google is working as normal, but "normal" is terrible and posts on Reddit made Google results less terrible. If Google's results are so bad that I feel the need to limit the results to Reddit, then it's probably a problem with Google and the type of sites that it has incentivized over the years (i.e., spam).
You should see the basic search page google hands me to use and has been that way the last 7 or so years. Then again, I used to be a very heavy user of google, multiple switches or operators for each advanced search, a habit from the times when that's all I did all day long. Before they made it hard for me, I bypassed their BS limit of f'all they eased in instead of the 100 results a page if one wanted and I crawled though multiple search pages and a few dozen results to land credible information to exclude echoes.
I know google results have dropped off the deep end, but framing reddit going dark as being of significant impact to search results is not honest. Yes, the result these people want is now inaccessible - it's not a new thing, results that are inaccessible are not unexpected. It's no different to the many deep searches I've done in the past and found what might have been useful results, were actually private unless one agrees to sell up their tracking data or the site was behind a pay wall.
I'd agree, Google and the like incentivised spam by shrugging for a start and then realising clutter gets more clicks and ads served.
I understand a lot of people are annoyed that many useful reddits are dark at the moment, a honest conversation would acknowledge that, rather than handing out prizes to those who the most upset about the protest.
In your opinion it is not honest, and many people disagree with you. This is an example of the “dosis sola facit venenum” or the dose makes the poison. Some random forum post you came across in a deep search that no longer can be accessed is barely noticed. The size of reddit and how weighted it has become to google users is why google search results are now poisoned. If you want to understand the issue, you have to step out of your own specific uses and look at how a large percent of people use google searches.
If a grocery store loses access to a couple products a month, shoppers would barely notice. If they lose access to 20% of products that are normally on the shelves, that is significant and will effect customer behavior.
I know people have the last couple or so years been focusing results using reddit, but it changes little - results are there, just for the moment those results are dark.
If they want technical stuff they might soon learn to use inurl:stackexchange ...
Whether or not I have struck the few no longer available / exists pages was actually quite irrelevant, it was just stated to point out dead pages are not unexpected.
Edit typo.
If the grocery store is relying on one supply chain for a large percent of their products, and they lose access to that supply chain, it is the grocers' issue. Saying "well technically it is a supply issue and could happen to any business" is missing the point when shoppers are displeased with what is available. Saying it is really reddit's fault is missing the point that Google SEOed itself into a position where they did not have a robust supply chain to relevant results people were searching for and now their results shelves are empty.
However even that modified example, still doesn't really reflect on the problem the average user will insist what a great trick it was to use reddit to try and focus results. The average user unknowingly ignore a lot of other areas on the web that they could be using to focus what they're looking for. I guess that's one of the things A.I. will be able to do, something similar to what the old google search algorithm used to work where it seemed like google could work out of the number of search terms which word was a focus word (often a broad term to cover the field the rest might be common in.)
Like I stated in the last reply, a site going dark, it's not a google problem. Google's search has sucked for a few years ... and I know for all the hard to find or failed things I couldn't find since whenever, including reddit would have had zero effect.