this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Not because DDG got better, but just because google got worse.

google is still better for site-specific searches, and google scholar still has minimal AI slop

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[–] lucg@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

Eyeing the replies, does not one other person here get results constantly flooded with content farms? They've gotten significantly worse

But then, I don't use Google so maybe this is still better than Google Search?

It started maybe three years ago, around the same time as LLMs became usable for this, but I'm pretty sure >50% are human-written still. Probably the LLM generates the structure (saves any time they'd have to spend coming up with plausible-sounding texts) and someone from a low-income country is contracted to make it look more legit

Of course, queries for topics that have a Wikipedia page get Wikipedia first, recipes get tons of big-name recipe sites, products get stores. But when there's no obvious market around a topic, 3~4 out of 5 results are content farms pretending to have useful information to show unwary visitors ads

(As an alternative, I still have to try Kagi properly. It seemed on par with DDG when I did a few searches last year, but then their payment processor refused me trying to load my account, support was unhelpful, and I've gotten sidetracked since)

[–] skeezix@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

The problem with DDG is that when it doesnt find much it simply throws random shit at you. It’s infuriating.

[–] inconspicuouscolon@lemy.lol 1 points 4 hours ago

I also get those content farms constantly. I don't want to use google but lately I've been using it over duckduckgo more often.

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 hours ago

The other annoying thing is the air summaries. I've disable AI features but that's still on. I hate it so much

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 2 points 8 hours ago

On ddg? Only one or two, which I can filter out.

Google always will return a content farm though.