Google's recency bias in search results hurts them too. There are many older resources which are still valid out there, but you won't find them (easily) via Google Search. Instead, you get the SEO spam which doesn't match the search as well, but is newer.
All of the Google sections seem to be terrible for their use case. Images are lacking filters and are filled with Pinterest results which send people into a cycle when trying to get to the actual image to save. News will sometimes show old news when it's obvious there should be new information about whatever you're searching, leading you to have to specifically indicate sort by date. Videos will prioritize certain domains even if the video itself is irrelevant to your search (ie searching up an actress, it'll show an IMDB video first, even if the video is very old and is just a generic trailer for some movie they were in ages ago). If you search something relatively generic, the new search bubbles will now hide the other categories (ie searching adele will hide categories like shopping or books). The finance option literally just redirects you to Google Finance now, doesn't even retain your search.
They've really let the core search experience be deteriorated so extensively, that we can't blame all of it on SEO.
I haven’t given it much thought until just now but it really is surprising how terrible Googles image search is. There are so many images on the Internet yet the image search often fails to retrieve good examples even on straightforward searches. Never mind difficult searches, higher resolution images, or if you want to quickly download an image. It was never very good and it’s gotten perceptible worse.
Side-thought: I have at times wished Google had a time machine function, for example, "show me the results that this search would have returned in 2008".
It would open up a whole new world of chronological meta analysis; a new dimension of cross-referencing.
[I understand that Google has, or had, some limited incarnation of this, in the form of it's Time Range search, but - and without looking deeply into it - I suspect that is an algorithmically different procedure than the one I am describing. That is, I expect that applies a simple filter to a current search, rather than being The Actual Old Search Results]
there have been many times when i'm searching for things i'll go into the "tools" and limit results from 1990-2010 and find exactly it with a handful of results, vs if i don't a ton of blogspam and other crap hiding it
Is Google biased, or are it’s users biased? If someone is looking up something technical or diagnosing a problem, the most recent post on StackOverflow would be more relevant. Old stuff can be important, but if users searches mostly comprise recent stuff - what’s the point?
I have some old articles on my blog that always decrease in readership. I do a pass every year, change a paragraph here and there, change the alias/url, and then get 5x the readership for a few months. Rinse and repeat. Most of my traffic comes from Google. Also, most of my content is in such a specific niche that it doesn’t really age much in 5 years.
So recency bias kinda works against people discovering useful content. But whatever. Google is in decline anyways.
I just ran a Google search on some code I was working on 15 years ago, posted to blogspot.com. It was about card game X, using programming language Y. The relevant keywords appear in the blog post. However, it completely failed to show up in a Google search. Just... nothing, even when I scrolled through the "more results" stuff. There were relevant and more recent links to the same topic (and likely better implemented, but let's leave that aside).
I did find my page on a Bing search after getting it to not ignore an important keyword, so that's something.
There are way too many google searches where the best result was the top 10 years ago, and still should be the top. Instead it’s something from this year that has no information.
Googling is now like talking to that person who repeats your question back to you as a statement, as if they added to the conversations. The results are some social media manager who’s job it is to make “content” by writing filler.
Content is clearly being auto generated. Even the new Zelda game. Trying to search anything and it’s Tons of pages that all are extremely verbose with a consistent grammar style and not actually saying anything useful.
Most people aren't looking up techniques on how to work with cutting edge software. Sometimes, even usually, they're more likely to be looking for almost anything else.
I think it's user bias. It's shockingly hard to get Google to default to docs on Java 17 over java 8. Users want 8 so Google servers that even if it isn't as new.
Can you give an example? For many things (software, hardware, buying things,...) older resources might still be valid but dated. For more settled subjects, e.g. encyclopedic, I also have not had Google be worse than Bing.
Google results didn't start to decline to be worse than Bing, Google results declined irrespective of and without reference to Bing. Google results are far worse that Google results once were.
Doesn’t help that they just give answers to a query. Answers often being very wrong. Then instead of more results they show related questions, which are often non-sensical.
This is not even getting into censorship of any political thing that google employees dislike.
