Google search failed to even find a hollywood movie, even after 1 hour of attempts. I don’t really care about the movie, but I am terrified by the prospect that google now ceased to function on this basic level. Why is this happening?

I understand the explanations of seo and other stuff like spam content. But why are there NO relevant results at all.

I wouldn’t mind having to start wading through results at page 2 or even 10 but now it utterly fails to find even the most basic things.

Things you found on the first attempt even just a year ago. Now they are effectively hidden.

To me functionally the entire internet has now vanished. I cannot access anything that I am searching for. Might as well not exist at all.

Has anybody found a way around this?

Is this on purpose? Is this an attack on the free internet, herding people to just the top 5 sites like facebook, youtube, tiktok, and so forth?

Are there search engines that still work?

  • june@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Funny enough, GPT is where I’m going for searches like this now. Whenever my search query doesn’t pull the answer up with one or two clicks, I head to GPT and it finds the info for me.

      • CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        You can ask it for sources etc now, it actually does the searching for you now instead of making shit up

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          By definition, everything it does is “making shit up”. Sometimes that shit is useful, sometimes not. Citations isn’t going to magically fix that, because it’s baked into how a generative AI based on an LLM works.

      • june@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I always have it provide sources and I vet them. Same as I do Wikipedia. And it hasn’t been wrong about a movie having a post credit scene or not yet, and now I don’t have to read through all those shitty-ass articles that bury the lead somewhere after providing a shit ‘review’ of the movie.

        It’s a very solid tool when used correctly, and GPT4 is head and shoulders above 3.5.

      • sosodev@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You have a brain right? If you ask it for low water pressure shaving tips I think it would be pretty easy to tell if it’s suggesting nonsense.

        • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          The problem is that you’ll start trusting it based on a few examples that it was correct, and you’ll be burned by a seemingly correct answer that is really wrong. I tried testing it with simple science and engineering questions and it was garbage.

          • sosodev@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Interesting, I’ve had the total opposite experience. GPT-4 is reasonable more often than not. I don’t find the “it’s sometimes wrong” argument very compelling because the same is true for 99% of other information sources. I’ve always had to use critical thinking when look for answers online anyway.