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Comment by evanchisholm | Hacker News Reader

This is so untrue. Most high schoolers run a Google search for their queries first. Most of the time just looking for a Wikipedia page. Occasionally smart ones will Google and append "reddit" to the end of their search when looking for opinions but a lot of highschoolers barely know what reddit is. YouTube would probably be next up and then maybe TikTok. But Google is still 100% the first place to go.

Source: I'm a highschool student and spend a lot of my time with other highschool students.

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I don't disagree, but that's actually what I'm talking about. It apparently wasn't clear that I was making a distinction related to using Google to find information as opposed to using Google as a portal to sites that hold the information you're after. Your response shows that it's taken for granted that of course people wouldn't use Google to find a link to someone's website (which is the topic of the post).

Use Google to find a Wikipedia result.

Use Google to find a Reddit result.

Use Google to find YouTube videos.

Use Google to find TikTok videos.

20 years ago it was "Search Google and click on the links it provides".

You seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that the first four words of your examples are "use Google to find"

No they aren't, they are trying to make a distinction between how Google used to be good for scouring the wide web but now it's results are poor enough that you are better off narrowing your search to single known good avenues.

By poor I mean the results may be relevant but of low quality, thanks to commerce and SEO spam often dominating the results.

In some ways this is actually a decent reflection of the reality of the web. It is mostly spam and ecommerce, with human communities taking refuge in certain platforms.

Your first-hand perspective is valuable here. Thanks for pitching in where you’re an actual “expert”.

Out of curiosity: How did you find HN?

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