The Verge published this spam article about the “best printers of 2024” to demonstrate how terrible Google’s search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search “best printer” on Google.

I love a good, informative troll.

  • frankgrimeszz@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    In my recent experience, it recommends shitty blogs loaded with adverts and keywords. Most annoyingly, it always recommends Fandom’s Wiki above better alternative wiki sites. My DuckDuckGo experience has surprisingly been more useful.

    That aside, my Brother laser printer is still working great. No complaints.

    • UckyBon@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      DDG tries very hard to push Amazon and Ebay to me. They’re not even available in my country 😅

        • UckyBon@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I don’t know why they would need my location/region. They’re already trying too hard to advertise stuff to me. Isn’t the internet like, international? Other search engines I never get that Ebay/Amazon stuff, it’s a DDG feature for whatever IP I get.

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
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      6 months ago

      If you have any tips or tricks for DDG please do share! I’m definitely getting better overall results there, but the local ones can still be a bit rough.

    • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
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      6 months ago

      My DDG searches have been absolute garbage for the past few months. About 75% of the time I have to re-search my keywords on Google to actually get a relevant result.

      It’s bad enough that I’m about to switch back to Google.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        It depends on what your searching. For me programming questions are way better on google.

        Also searching obvious questions like a country’s population, google still does its job there too.

      • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        That’s not been my experience. I’ve been using DDG for years, and when I first switched I would occasionally have to go find something on Google instead. That slowly fell off as the years went by because going to Google and getting better search results became rarer and rarer. It’s to the point now where I don’t even do it, unless I need to look at something on street view.

      • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Try Startpage. I have just started using it so I can’t tell you how it compares. I also need to look up who owns it. But I have been told it has the same privacy qualities of DDG.

        • frankgrimeszz@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I used to like it, but there was one incident where it fed me links to phishing sites. Like all the results were malicious. I suspect they had an internal breach or the session was somehow hijacked. That was years ago, but it made me wary. It’s usually okay.

          • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Good to know I haven’t fully switched yet. I am definitely going to look more closely at its parents company and where it has servers.

      • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I deleted their app and moved search engines, they got shit quick. So bad at their main usp. I was constantly fed hyper local results, local even with location off. And dont get me started on how bad it was for porn.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Oh my god the Fandom wiki for minecraft uses the same little tab icon as the actual minecraft wiki but it has a fucking “are you an adult or child” popup EVERY SINGLE TIME a page loads

      I hate it so much

    • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Use breezewiki extension. Redirects fandom articles to a frontend that removes their bullshit and replaces fandom with independant wikis when possible.

    • Pechente@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      My DuckDuckGo experience has surprisingly been more useful.

      Yeah, right!? I remember that one or two years ago DDG was consistently worse than Google but recently Google’s quality has dropped off a cliff. Now when I don’t get the desired result in DDG and switch to Google, the results are usually just as bad or worse.

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It has a partnership with bing. So sadly now it is mostly a bing clone. I have been using DDG for a decade. I noticed a distinct drop in search quality after the bing partnership.