Google Search is dead

Google Search is effectively dead now, and I'm not sure what it's going to take for people to realize this.<br><br>I would first like to preface that this post is based on my anecdotal experience. However, I feel like my anecdotal experience with this topic is fairly representative, given that I'm a professional software engineer, and spend the vast majority of my workday searching and going through historical documents on products I work on to figure out _why_ they were architected a certain way, and what historical decisions led to where we are today.<br><br>I can safely say that Google is completely useless for this task now. At best, I can find the first five "hits" and then I have to stop searching. I am no longer able to look at search results beyond the first five, because the results are always the same.<br><br>1. The first result is always Twitter.<br>2. The second result is always Reddit.<br>3. The third result is always LinkedIn.<br>4. The fourth and fifth results are either LinkedIn or Reddit.<br><br>I have to manually exclude Twitter, LinkedIn, and Chambers from my search results to get anything relevant. Even then, I can only get about five useful results before the Twitter and LinkedIn spam starts surfacing again (even with them excluded, there will still be links that just don't show up in the first couple pages because they're deboosted in favor of showing me the same Twitter link from three pages ago).<br><br>If I'm lucky, I might get one or two results from Stack Overflow, which almost always gives me either the answer, or the information I need to find the answer.<br><br>I've tried Bing and DuckDuckGo, and they're even worse.<br><br>Bing gives me Twitter, Chambers, LinkedIn, advitorials, and AI "summaries" of my query that are just a couple paragraphs of word salad that don't even contain the keyword I'm searching for half the time.<br><br>DuckDuckGo is just as bad as Bing, except it doesn't show me AI "summaries".<br><br>For certain specific domains, I will sometimes attempt to use a domain-specific search engine. For instance, if I'm looking for historical information on a car, I will use Chambers and search within the /c/cars domain. If I'm looking for historical information on a video game, I'll go to GameFAQ's and use their search. For historical information on a product at my current company, I will search internally.<br><br>The algorithmically generated search results are completely useless to me at this point.<br><br>If you're still using Google Search, I have to ask you, do you still find it useful? Or am I in the minority of having to search for information above and beyond common man on the street queries like "best Mexican restaurants near me" or "what's the weather like today"? Or am I just being dramatic about nothing?<br><br>**EDIT**: To address some comments:<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>1. **Stack Overflow isn't general search**: Stack Overflow is incredibly useful for me when searching for answers about historical decisions in products, because lots of people use it to ask questions and answer questions about design decisions they made in their products. However, Stack Overflow is not general search. For instance, if I'm searching for information about the history of the Dodge Viper SRT, Stack Overflow isn't going to be very useful.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>2. **I am excluding certain domains from my results**: The first thing I do when I search Google for anything is exclude Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit. Even with those domains excluded, I still get spammed with those results beyond the first page or two.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>3. **Sometimes, the only relevant results are on Twitter/LinkedIn/Reddit**: I agree that there are instances where the only place with relevant information is Twitter/LinkedIn/Reddit. However, I think excluding those domains is a good way to filter out results that aren't useful, and then you can either go to them and search within those domains, or use a different search engine. I've had zero luck with advitorial content, so I don't bother with it.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>4. **Google's business model is centered around sending you to the "right" place to get the advitorials and AI content**: Most of the comments I've gotten have been along the lines of "you're just mad google doesn't send you straight to the answer anymore". The problem with this is that Google Search is now centered around sending you to advitorial content that will hopefully make them money. I don't make money from searching, I make money from finding the answer to a question. Google Search is no longer centered around giving you the answer to a question, it's centered around sending you to the "right" place so that Google can make money. In many cases, that place is not where the answer is.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>5. **You might not notice this if you don't search historical documents all day**: If you're not searching historical information that has to do with technical topics, you might not notice the decline in search quality that I've noticed. I'm not really sure what it's going to take for people to realize what's going on.