WEBVTT

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why do search engines suck now wait before we get ahead of ourselves do

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search engines suck now are they actually getting worse or have they just

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changed in a way that I personally hate just by glancing at the first page of a

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Google or being search it's easy to find a long list of potential complaints paid

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sponsors crowd out the first few search results there's annoying little widgets

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everywhere and it keeps giving you barely related suggestions for what to

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search next like a lame Choose Your Own Adventure book but why does this search

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page have so many ads isn't an interesting question it's because money

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the more interesting question is why it feels like it's gotten harder to find

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the information you want despite all those supposedly helpful

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widgets the answer is also because money

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but it's worth unpacking why it's

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difficult to get a lot of rigorous data on this subject but at least a few researchers have tried to answer whether

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or not search engines are in fact getting worse one recent German study

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did a survey of over 7,000 product review Searchers on being Google and

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duck Dogo over the course of a year and concluded that you could still find

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useful information but it was being drowned out by a torent of lowquality

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content especially SEO spam top rank

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Pages typically were heavily optimized and littered with affiliate marketing

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links and they also showed clear markers of lower content quality there's not a

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ton of academic papers on this issue but there's plenty of data on the web

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showing how users have changed their behavior to sidestep lowquality highly

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optimized results one possible indicator that search engines suck now is the

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growing use of Reddit as a def facto search engine sadly redit own internal

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search function has long been considered what the experts call absolute trash but

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that hasn't stopped Savvy users from just sticking the word Reddit on

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otherwise unrelated Google search queries it's a well-known tactic for

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cutting out SEO ified garbage and vapid listicles because it effectively

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bypasses the weaknesses of both search engines and Reddit itself

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Reddit isn't perfect just ask any redditor but on the modern internet it

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does a rare and special thing it allows users to direct their question to a

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bunch of big old nerds who care more about being right than they care about

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making money off the interaction if you search site colon reddit.com search

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engine bad you'll find plenty of posts complaining about the decaying state of

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modern search engines going back over a decade there has however been a pretty

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major uptic in such posts over the last 2 years separately Google Trends data

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shows that Reddit has been steadily gaining popularity as a search term

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since 2010 when news aggregator dig shot themselves in the foot with a

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controversial redesign and started bleeding users that growth remained

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steady until December 2021 when users started appending Reddit to their

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searches at an increased rate over 40% of reddit's growth as a Google search

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term since 2010 is from the end of 2021

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onward a bit over 2 years now there are

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a lot of potential confounding factors here but this could be at least in part

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a consequence of widespread dissatisfaction with search engines an

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interesting contrast to reddit's Upward Trend as a search term is Wikipedia

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which long predated Reddit as the kind of word you add to the end of a search

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query in order to cut through the noise Wikipedia is a far more popular website

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currently ranked seventh for Global traffic to reddits 16th but it's been on

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the decline as a search term since 2010 in part because Google heavily prioriti

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IES Wikipedia already both in search results and as part of its knowledge

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panel widget but this might also indicate that the decline in quality for

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search engine results isn't hitting every search subject equally there's not

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a ton of money writing on a search query like when was the War of 1812 so the top

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results are mostly authoritative reliable history sources but if the most

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important goal of search engines is to find useful results why haven't they

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fixed the problem we'll tell you right after after we thank delete me here's

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your issue your personal info is floating around online without you saying so it's totally not cool right

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delete me is here to save you from scammers blowing up your phone with Robo

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calls and sketchy emails manually removing all your accounts from the web

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is tedious but delete me software and expert Squad can wipe out all that info

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in a jiffy on average they're removing over 2,000 pieces of data for customers

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in their first two years that's some serious cleanup so if you're tired of

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your personal info playing hideand-seek online go to join delet me.com tequ and

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use code Techquickie for a sweet 20% off it's not that search engine

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companies don't care that spam is cluttering up the first few pages of

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results they've been in an arms race with spam since the very beginning it's

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just that the spam is now apparently winning according to the authors of the

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German study that we mentioned earlier search engine companies Banning spam

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sites and readjusting their parameters had a positive but ultimately temporary

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impact there was still a general downward Trend in terms of text quality

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and relevance for all three search engines studied which could imply that

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this isn't a problem with search engines but a problem with the internet itself

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appearing on the first page of Google can be life or death for a company so

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there's massive Financial incentive to game that system the same as how there's

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a massive Financial incentive to gain ratings on sites like Amazon where fake

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reviews are notoriously rampant companies both big and small have

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realized that word of mouth personal recommendations from a financially

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disinterested human being are far more effective than traditional advertising

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which means that the shadier among them put a lot of effort and resources into

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infiltrating so-called organic user generated systems of validation drowning

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out authentic user reviews not to get too metaphorical but the only way to be

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heard in a room where everybody's already yelling is to scream even louder

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everyone's incentive is to make more and better

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garbage large vertically integrated companies like Google don't really help

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this hyper competitive low effort environment when they leverage their

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platform to prioritize their own products over competitors Google has had

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long-standing beef with Yelp since at least 2011 when the FTC investigated

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allegations that Google search algorithm consistently favored Google Places over

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Yelp that allegation was serious enough that Google actually agreed to allow

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online services to opt out of data scraping Yelp further contributed data

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to a 2015 academic paper claiming that Google manipulate search results to

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favor itself small companies perceive often accurately that the platform they

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essentially have to use is a potential competitor that can and will replace

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them with a storebrand version at any time those fancy widgets and Rich

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Snippets exist so that the engine that can take you anywhere you want to go is

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now a place that you never have to leave so what are you going to do build a

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better product pay for your position at the top or find a louder way to scream

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that's why even though we said earlier that it's not necessarily search engine

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company fault that they've gotten worse it also kind of is you know how captas

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have gotten harder and harder over time well that's in part because they were

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used to train machine learning which then led to the Bots becoming more

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sophisticated which then led to the need for stronger and stronger captas and so

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on what we're seeing here is likely something similar Only Internet wide

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where search engines are struggling to distinguish between quality content and

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spam from AI systems trained on traditionally trusted sources like

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Wikipedia The increasing cheapness of relatively sophisticated spam tools has

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resulted in numerous odd Trends some funny like when Oodles of products on

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Amazon wound up being named I'm sorry I cannot fulfill that request it goes

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against open AI use policy and others

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disturbing like the rise of procedurally generated clickbait obituaries often for

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private citizens many of whom aren't even dead you used to have to be at

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least a deess celebrity in order to get that kind of treatment search engines

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have not lost the fight against spam at least not yet but as machine generation

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continues to progress and proliferate your search experience probably isn't

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going to get any better thanks for watching guys if you like this video maybe you like another video I have

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about how streaming is basically becoming cable you can click on it it's

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somewhere