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Is the internet broken?
number-1 - 19/7/19 at 05:54 PM

Is it just me...or is finding the right information on the internet harder to find?

I seem to remember a few years go, you could type into google what you were after, and it was there at the top if the results. Now i feel like i waste hours of my time reading stuff that isn't what i was looking for.


chillis - 19/7/19 at 06:16 PM

Years ago search engines displayed the closest matches to your search terms with just a little advertising bias, they looked at the website meta tags and presented the results, now every time you search your past searches together with heaps of data collected and stored about you and you interests and past internet use factor into the search algorythms plus seach engines dont look for meta tags anymore they just search though the whole website, so you often get results based on words or phrases that turn up in obscure places.
So yes you can't just search for what you want any more


HowardB - 19/7/19 at 06:36 PM

did you see the BBC news report on how Youtube algorithms are blamed for the rise of the Flat Earth believers,....

yes_really_flat_earth



Benzine - 19/7/19 at 07:45 PM

I find it useful to put key phrases in quotation marks (they then have to be included) and also to put a minus before words to exclude. Another thing I often type at the end of a search is 'forum' to get real forum results instead of advertising /businesses.


Mr Whippy - 21/7/19 at 10:22 PM

Well is the Internet ever cleaned...? Its just filling up with garbage and so is youtube

As above flat earth or fake moon landing or 911 conspiracy or free energy vids seem to be on almost any search results


nick205 - 22/7/19 at 08:10 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
Well is the Internet ever cleaned...? Its just filling up with garbage and so is youtube

As above flat earth or fake moon landing or 911 conspiracy or free energy vids seem to be on almost any search results



I fear the same - the internet is a marvelous thing, but I doubt anyone does any real housekeeping and removes stuff that's either out of date, pointless, incorrect, not an advert etc, etc.

I find internet searches take longer although I read "Benzine's" post with interest and shall give some of those tips a go when searching.

Google Chrome web browser did me fine for years, but 6 months ago I switched to Mozilla Firefox on my laptop. That said I still use Google as my search engine within my Firefox web browser.

[Edited on 22/7/19 by nick205]