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?

  • Dkarma@lemmy.world
    279·
    1 year ago

    But u can login to discord and if the room is public you can see the content. Even if ur logged into FB if ur not in the private group u can’t see the content.

    • CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml
      731·
      1 year ago

      Even if ur logged into FB if ur not in the private group u can’t see the content.

      Well yes, that’s entirely the point of the comment above: unlike old school forums, discord is just as useless as Facebook in helping search engines deliver useful content.

    • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
      52·
      1 year ago

      I think the point is you can’t put a search term into a search engine and get results from some random Discord. No body is going to go trawling through Discords to then use the search function to potentially find information from it. Now, if chats were somehow archived and could then be searchable, different story, but I don’t think that’s what people using Discord want from Discord.

      • UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works
        110·
        1 year ago

        yeah, this is a problem. But in practice i found that if your searching for one niche problem and your only lead is discord, the people there are going to be kind and help.

        I know the pain on having to join something’s discord to get info, but it’s usually fast after I join.

        • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          12·
          1 year ago

          But the bigger issue appears when you don’t have a clear place to go. It’s like we’ve gone back to before written records were common. Once that server goes and the people scatter, that information might as well never have existed. 5 years after Discord disappears, the only knowledge people will be able to find of it will be a handful of old messages complaining about some dude who scammed a bunch of people with low quality iron Doge coin.

            • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              3·
              1 year ago

              I can’t see downvotes, but I imagine that people just took it as you disagreeing and saying that it’s not a problem.

              I was thinking of stuff that’s super niche anyways, like if you’re trying to keep a program running that your company’s database relies on that hasn’t been supported since Windows 95 or something absurd like that. For most stuff, it’s still possible to find at least somebody with an answer, even if you have to go to a Discord server for it. But when nobody has documented stuff that’s super obscure? Good luck!

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
      29·
      1 year ago

      You can see the content, but it isn’t categorized, tagged or organized in any way. If you’re looking for some specific information but you don’t know which server/channel it was discussed on, you’ll never find it.

      • AWittyUsername@lemmy.world
        14·
        1 year ago

        Yeah I can’t stand discord. Impossible to find anything, constantly feel like I’ve joined a conversation that has been in progress for months so have to scroll up ages to get any sort of context.

        • SolOrion@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I don’t engage socially in random Discord servers, I’m almost certainly just there for an FAQ, to ask a question, or to use Discord’s- pretty decent- search function to find someone who’s had whatever issue I’m having before.

    • ax_the_dragon@lemmy.sdf.org
      5·
      1 year ago

      Sidebar from someone who is probrbly just to old to know: How would I go about finding discords that are relevant to my intrests? I am a member on a few servers, but the discovery was always the other way around: I found the invite-link on a website/community that dealt with the topic I was intrested in.

    • astreus@lemmy.ml
      83·
      1 year ago

      Aren’t you comparing apples and oranges:

      If the server is private, then you can’t search it. If the group is private, then you can’t search it.

      If it is public you can on either platform but must participate on the platform. That’s what made Reddit unique: lurking was real easy and didn’t require an account.