Google Search is completely unusable. How do you work around it?

What are some queries that you're having trouble with?

Whenever I see these complaints raised (and it's posted here at least weekly), the OP never includes any examples, just wide brushstrokes.

If the double quoted "exact phrase" functionality of Google were to have recently been broken, I can assure you wouldn't be the first to notice :)

I've seen complaints about Google search but haven't experienced the problems, and I use Google search fairly often. For example I just searched for "how to reduce an array in golang" and got a page of relevant results, with no ads or junk links. Sometimes I will see sponsored links and junk sites like Quora or TripAdvisor for more vague search terms, but writing a more specific search usually gets what I want.

I use Google search logged in to my Google account and I have eliminated third-party cookies, browser fingerprinting, and targeted ads as much as I can with the OS/browser (iPadOS/Safari) settings and Google's privacy and advertising settings.

Do you have specific examples?

I have been using ChatGPT or http://kagi.com.

Google only for shopping or things related to my local city, which is very small.

I see this question/complaint posed on HN almost weekly at this point, but I cannot relate.

Has Google’s UX gotten worse as it has elevated more and more paid ads over the years? Yes. But, not being able to find “even the most basic” things with Google is not an issue I encounter.

I use DDG instead of Google Search. My current strategy is keywords and notes. I don’t do much question like searches. Instead, I treat it like a library. Whatever I want to know, I try to find the exact terms for it and a set of terms to restrict it down. If I don’t succeed after a few tries, the resources may as well not exist.

Another thing is I tend to read more primary materials like books and docs. I have a bookmarks file for any interesting links I encounter.

This will probably get a lot of hate, but for most of my questions where I'm looking for a simple answer on something, I just use ChatGPT. Gives me the answer much more hassle-free than a search engine would.

There's one surprising way I still find a lot of great material on Google, which works especially for niche research topics, is to view Image results. I click on any interesting image in the results and then I check the site it's from. Many times I've found super interesting stuff that would not appear in the first pages of text results.

DDG has been, for several years, consistently more useful to me than Google has been since the middle of the last decade.

I switched to DuckDuckGo years ago, then upgraded to Kagi when it became available. Search results are snappy, relevant, and customizable.

For technical questions, Kagi’s Code Research Assistant is my first stop. It combines web search and AI summaries. While it says “code” on the tin, and does generate useful code snippets, I get a ton of value from it on super user issues and library/tool research too.

The answer is to STOP using Google Search which has become increasingly user hostile over the years.

The sad truth is that Google Search 2024 can’t even compete with Google Search of 10 years ago.

The problems:

1. First page of search results is entirely made up of Ads and blogspam

2. Impossible to do specific searches now that Google ignores Boolean instructions

3. Google Search is spyware, posing as a free service, sucking up your PII to profile and target you

Solutions:

1. Use another search engine. The competitors have become surprisingly good. I use search.brave.com but DuckDuckGo and even Bing are better than Google now.

2. Use an LLM instead. I use Perplexity.ai for 95% of searches now. It combines an LLM summary with search results and includes footnotes to sources. The best part is that voice input is 10x better than raw ChatGPT and Google as it auto-corrects using context from your query. Other LLM search engines also work but Perplexity.ai have nailed the experience IMO.

Look for the “Search tools” dropdown menu. Change “All results” to “Verbatim” mode: https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/google-verbatim

Reminds me of searching in confluence: search for 2 words and get results where only 1 is present.

I no longer use Google search, and I use DDG instead. But not always satisfied with the results.

I also search with keywords and not full sentences, else I ask an LLM.

I virtually never use Google Search. DuckDuckGo, or searches on various social networks (fediverse / Threads) plus a handful of aggregator sites depending on what I'm using, handle that need. DDG's results are slowly getting worse as well, but that's because of the massive deluge of slop and content farms out there. They can only mitigate that so much…

The only way I am able to use it is with an ad blocker on a browser. I can't use Google on mobile any longer.

Append "&udm=14"[1] to all your Google searches to minimize all the cruft the company has dumped into Search recently.

[1] https://udm14.com/

If I’m searching something for research I use Google scholar.

If I’m searching for shopping or pop culture type stuff ordinary Google is fine

If I want information that requires a deeper dig then DDG is a good place to start.

I pay for Kagi.com

I use startpage.com and the results are fine

I solve 90% if my questions with Poe.

Kagi

I now create all the knowledge I need from the first principles that I learned before Google Search went bad.

allintext:

> feels like Google is gaslighting me

when someone wants to believe something, facts will not hesitate to arise from the misty waters