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?

    • Mighty@lemmy.world
      93·
      10 months ago

      yeah no. i am WILLING duckduckgo to work as a search engine, but the results are so bad, it doesn’t do phrases well. i just searched “blue sign construction”, thinking i’d find infos about blue signs in construction sites. literally the whole first site is about “bluesign”, something to do with textile production. and the picture results are 99% just construction signs in all different colours.

    • Bob@feddit.nl
      2·
      10 months ago

      I get the feeling this’ll be an unpopular suggestion but I’ve used Ecosia for something like ten years and it’s never failed me. I use Duckduckgo on my Linux laptop because it came bundled and it’s still not worth changing.

        • Bob@feddit.nl
          2·
          10 months ago

          I’ve long felt like it gives me better results than Google too but I’ve never really tested that idea!

          • Daefsdeda@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            10 months ago

            When using noscript I see bing in between and I think they make use of their API. But yeah I also have the idea that it works better.