Will you stop Googling now, that it removed URLs and added favicons?
I am seriously considering moving away from Google (or writing a browser addon) which will revert search results back to clean and readable form.
It seems "ad blending" made a final step towards morphing into organic results. It was distinct background first, ads count limited, then it went further and further and now it's just a favicon saying 'Ad' which distinguish sponsored content from the organic.
Ugh, I only noticed the favicons today. It's such a clear attempt to blur the lines between the regular results (now with favicons) and the ads (now with something that looks very like a favicon, particularly when scrolling).
I've also noticed recently that the first search result page is absolutely filled with nonsense: "People also ask" "Refined by Brand" Map results, Sponsered banner etc. I did a search recently where there were only 3 actual results on the first page, the rest were peripheral items.
It's such a mess. Unfortunately no matter how many times I try to switch to DDG, the results just don't hold up. Particularly for localised results.
It makes me wonder whether Google is now "too big to fall" in regards to search.
I switched to DDG a few months ago, and quite frankly I can probably count the number of times I've needed to switch to Google on one hand, and nearly every time it's been related to looking up directions via web search and expecting Google Maps to open up. DDG and Bing are largely good enough already for standard web search. The standard has probably been there for a while, so I would argue that web search is largely down to experience right now - and DDG/Bing have Google beat here.
With that being said, I doubt the average person has even heard of DDG, and probably never uses Bing unless it's set up by default. If there was ever a time to market Bing and DDG as viable Google alternatives to the public, it's now.
It just looks awful. It's incredibly unaesthetically pleasing that they've replaced the green URLs with the black breadcrumb things.
Gah. That new design is horribly ugly. One other thing I've always hated about Google: if you just want the URL for a page, you can't right-click on it in the search results and copy the URL -- because Google will instead give you some Google-riffic hybrid URL that first refers you through a Google address so they can capture your clickthrough.
I've tried to steer most of my searching away from Google. (Of course, that's easy if you're already using a search keyword to skip the part where you go to the search engine's home page first.)
What is worse is that most of the advanced queries aren't working anymore
Google search has become less user unfriendly, turned their back on their old business model. It seems they've deliberately blurred the lines between ads and relevance.
Bing is now easier to use.
The more shady stuff Google pulls the less inclined I am to even consider using them.
I looked at it, was confused, then downloaded the duckduckgo search for Firefox.
I would, yes, if I hadn't given up on Google already.
The biggest issue for me is that github issues in the results don't have the issue title as title anymore but the name of the project. Makes it much harder to find an issue in all that noise.
No. The favicons are cool. The ads are no worse for content than the other links so it's not a big deal. Often it just makes something that is already in the top 3 have a duplicate.
As a business owner that relies on organic traffic, this is a huge hit
I won't
I stopped using Chrome / Google long time ago (> 1 year)
I started to dislike Google since AMP introduced
What do you mean? I don't see difference, can any1 take a screenshoot?
Me too. The recent change is really disappointing.
not at all. Every search engine I've tried has paled in comparison to Google's results.
nah, I just whipped 10 line userscript to fix it back