this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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If you want to find solutions online, stop using Google.
Sometimes I post stuff to my blog about things that I could not find a satisfying solution to and where I had to figure one out myself. I post those things because I want it to be discoverable by the next person who is searching for it.
I did a quick test, and my posts don't show up anywhere on Google. I can find them via Kagi, DuckDuckGo, and even Bing. But Google doesn't show my stuff, even when hitting specific keywords that only my post talks about. And if my site even shows up, it is only about +6 months after I posted.
Even tried their search console thing, it doesn't report any issues with my site. So it must be the lack of ads, cookies, and AI generated content which makes Google suspicious of it.
So, If you are an engineer looking for solutions to your problems online, just stop using Google. It's become so utterly useless, it's ridiculous. Of course you will miss all the cool AI features and scam ads, but there's always some drawbacks.
Reposting my post from Mastodon yesterday, it felt relevant. https://infosec.exchange/@hertg/112989703628721677
I gave up on Google over a decade ago - maybe two decades by now. Way back when I was using Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Astalavista, and others. When Google came, it somehow beat them all at finding exactly what I was looking for.
Later they stopped searching for the exact words you typed, but it was okay because adding a plus in front of terms, or quotes around phrases, still let you search exact things. The combination of both systems was very powerful.
And then plus and quotes stopped working. Boolean operators stopped working. Their documentation still says they work, but they don’t.
Now, it seems like your input is used only as a general guideline to pick whatever popular search is closest to what it thinks you meant. Exact words you typed are often nowhere in the page, not even in the source.
I only search Google maps now, and occasionally Google translate.
deepl.com is a decent alternative, if you want to replace Google Translate
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve heard of it, but haven’t tried yet - but I will.