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Comment by p4bl0 | Hacker News Reader

That's cool if they can make it work.

I don't understand how Google's indexing work anymore. I've had some website very well indexed for years and years which suddenly disappeared from the index with no explanation, even on the Search Console ("visited, not indexed"). Simple blog entries, lightweight pages, no JavaScript, no ads, no bad practices, https enabled, informative content that is linked from elsewhere including well indexed websites (some entries even performed well on Reddit). At the same time, for the past few years I've found Google search to be a less and less reliable tool because the results are less often what I need.

Anyway, let's hope this new policy can improve things a little.

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> no ads

There's yer problem....

Google isn't interested in helping people find pages with no ads.

This relates to Chrome, not to search. In regard to search, they have taken a new direction that I don't think is going to change any time soon. Some time in the last 2 years, they started removing any thing that doesn't get significant natural traffic (ie: have a 30 year old user manual for something odd that people only search for once in a while? -> removed). Last few months, I noticed that they will not index anything that seems broad (ie: if similar content exists, they won't index it regardless of your page authority).

Basically, they are turning search into Tiktok. If you try to make a search, you'll notice that now they give precedence to AI overview, Youtube, News stories, Maps, Products, etc. Anything but content.

tl;dr: content is dead in Google search.

> This relates to Chrome, not to search.

To me, it appears to relate to search

> Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site's performance in Google Search results.

Good point. Chrome has a “feature” where if your website is google-flagged, it’ll display a danger alert when visiting it. For some reason I confused that with this.

If you're referring to Google Safe Browsing lists, all major browsers check agains the same list. I've managed to get mine listed there and immediately banned on all major browsers.

Not only that but I think Google listens to "cyber security" companies lists and feed from them. My website got in some of these lists (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/a4c9f166d2468f5bbb503ec79...) and I had to go through like 6-7 of them to whitelist my domain again. Something about code and input triggered something in some of these list's filters that my website is hacking related.

Try Marginalia Search but be warned it doesn't index the entire web

Obligatory Kagi mention

Kagi costs money and isn't that great to begin with

Counterpoint, Kagi is profitable and it achieved that milestone solely via user subscriptions, so its incentives are aligned with users, and not advertisers.

And I've found it so good that I haven't used Google, except by accident, in the past 18 months.

People just keep pitching Kagi as revolutionary, especially software engineers and people on HN.

I respect a lot of them, people I respect a lot, and I saw people like Jon Gjengset use it. so I gave it a few months of daily use. I just eventually drifted back to Google. The results weren't better for anything I search for. It felt different, but not better in any measurable way. $10/mo for a different feel is a strange value prop.

DuckDuckGo sits in the same spot for me. I want to like it, and I don't think one company should own web search, but when I need to find something Google finds it first. I wish the answer were different, but that's just how things are.

This hasn't been our experience; can you please reach out to me with specific examples? My email is in my profile.

>$10/mo for a different feel is a strange value prop.

Thought Kagi would want the strange part to be, say:

"strange to let advertisers cover your monthly search bill, trading your privacy and using Google--we're only ten bucks a month!"

So, pay for peace of mind.

(do recognize $10 is an entire e.g. daily wage for some)

Google doesn't sell your data despite widespread misinformation/conspiracy theories, and I have more confidence in their opsec than Kagi

Only in a very pedantic sense. Google definitely sells the service of doing things based on your data. It is, in fact, their biggest and oldest revenue stream.

Costs money is a good thing. You want to be the customer, not the product.

Kagi is just a front end for Google with extra anti-slop filters. These are useful, and when you pay you become the customer instead of the product.

What aggravates me is that somewhere at Google headquarters some asshole thinks he's a fucking genius for turning the web into nerfed walled garden

KPI go up and pats on the back all around

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

We know perfectly well who they are.

I'm actually surprised when I hear someone technical say they still use Google Search (the search product specifically - they still reign supreme with Maps, etc). I used to love it, but that was quite a long time ago.

I personally use Brave Search and perplexity for those very rare instances when brave search doesn't instantly find what I am looking for. Literally the only thing I (rarely) miss from google is super-deep support for boolean search operators, but then I just tag a !g (exactly like DDG's brilliant bangs) on the end and that works. (I also tried Kagi and did like it, but didn't find compelling differences over Brave Search, especially compared to brave search's excellent and free AI.)

As I read your comment, I was thinking "Really? Is it that surprising?" Then I remembered you said "someone technical", and no longer am surprised. Although I work with some technical people, I'm also surrounded by fools. Just the other day, I watched someone at work open a new tab to Google search, type "Google" and then click on Google search in the results, bringing them to the same page they had just left. With how quickly they did it, I can only imagine it is muscle memory and they haven't noticed yet that their new tab is Google search, or that this is better somehow.

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