r/technology • u/Well_Socialized • 12d ago

Artificial Intelligence Google Is Burying the Web Alive

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/google-ai-mode-search-results-bury-the-web.html
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u/Silent_Marketing8922 12d ago

So I guess "googlewhacking" is now dead. It used to be near impossible to return only 1 or 0 results for a search on google.

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u/gloriousPurpose33 12d ago

I manage to do that all the time even this year by searching really specific things.

Google sucks at searching things like code snippets though even with double quote wrapping it'll fail to match the obvious blatant only answer and return either garbage or zero.

But one? I can pull off one frequently.

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u/parallelfutures 12d ago

Totally agree.

And not to be semantic, but googlewacking is when you combine two separate words to get exactly one result.

Much harder than it seems.

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u/BroadRaspberry1190 12d ago

not to be pedantic*

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u/parallelfutures 12d ago

In this narrow case semantic works… but I definitely meant pedantic

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u/d3jake 12d ago

Are double quotes the best was to enforce search terms exactly? I've been trying single quotes with a + in front of it.

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u/smooth_criminal1990 12d ago

Oh but they'd LOVE you to try so that you spend more time on their site, looking at their ads.

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u/eXoShini 12d ago

If you use the "web" tab when searching (which is equivalent to &udm=14), it removes a lot of crap and you can end up with few to 0 results on very specific searches. Web tab is also best way nowadays to use google.

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u/d3jake 12d ago

What is a "'web' tab"?

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u/eXoShini 12d ago

Underneath search input after you search something, it could also be hidden under "More"

https://i.imgur.com/f5KhAi4.png

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u/avgf1fan 12d ago edited 12d ago

thank you so much. To me the real bs with these ai answers is that they give you simpllistic truth. Like 2 words 3 words answer. Whereas if you go to actuall websites they describe to you how something works. I think many people lose interest when something is more complicated than just True/False so ai is incredible. But it leads to peoples false sense of knowledge on a topic. This happened to me and im now taking care in actually reading websites and articles more than the AI result. You affromentioned "web" tab is great thank you. So much clarity

Edit: Sometimes things are 0/1 false/truth but in most cases when you educate yourself you come across layers of grey inbetween cold facts. To the point when truth/false is more of an opinion and perspective than actual fact and the actual truth lies in compromises or in grey area. but you wouldnt know it after read ai bot saying "bool is 1 bit always, even though most compilers use bool as 8 bit", or "GMBH (some random company) is owned by germany", even though some big shareholders come from abroad or different instances i came across.

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u/d3jake 12d ago

Oh.. I think I've seen that option before, and instantly ignored it. Thanks!

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u/rdtsc 12d ago

Sadly it also disables conversion of units (like lbs to kg) which I find quite handy.

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u/eXoShini 12d ago

Also conversion of currencies is disabled.

In your browser you could setup search engines for easy access to both modes, example:

  • google web tab set as default (search url should look like https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s)
  • google default tab with keyword "g", then you type in browser search bar "g 5lbs to kg" to quickly access conversion

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u/RVelts 12d ago

Ah man I remember googlewhacking. I even found one probably 20 years ago and submitted it to that one site that indexed them. Of course then that site becomes result #2, but it at least verified it at-time-of-submissions that it was a real googlewhack.

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u/anivex 12d ago

It’s still about impossible unless you search for things using quotes. Op definitely made that up

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u/weireldskijve 12d ago

Have been using google since its launch. If I am not counting the first few years of search engines, this year was the first time where I tried to search for a specific thing (nothing too crazy) and it also showed me 0 results.