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?

  • tpihkal@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    11 months ago

    I’ve been using Bing and choosing Google only as a second resort or for any shopping I do. If Google wants to be an ad filled shopping mall, I’ll treat it as an ad-blocked shopping mall.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      In that case you should be using DuckDuckGo; it uses the same database as Bing, without the tracking of Bing, and with the ability to use ! commands to pull in results from other places (!g=Google, !w=Wikipedia, etc.).

      • tpihkal@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        11 months ago

        When I’m specifically shopping for things I expect to be tracked and advertised to. I’m just selectively deciding who gets to advertise to me.