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Are search engines, like Google, relevant at all anymore? Why use them? A relevant debate. It's not 2010 anymore.

Why would something like Google search possibly be irrelevant?

well..

a lot of these search engines use search engine Optimization, seo to rank sites. It's also not secret that they choose what shows up and what does not.

Things like that have been a thing for years, and since there wasn't a good alternative search engines remained relevant as we users tolerated their direction.

Now you have Lemmy, Mastodon, Sharkey, Firefish (if it's still a thing) connected to the Fediverse. On the Fediverse there is no such thing as looking up a website, but rather you look up actual specific content and get real results handed back to you. A lot of these Federated services are split and one person pays for hosting a smaller server, and the next another, slowly building up the bigger federated Fediverse.

On Lemmy you can just type in Windows 11, and no website to click on to, no bs, you get to hear about what's happening with WIndows 11 from different voices. Is the *Windows cool, a tragedy, is there that one guy that *disfavors it, or is in favor of WIndows 11?

It's all there and you as a user gets to decide for yourself if you like all the results you see, or some, or none of them and then move on with your day as it should be.

Thoughts? Opinions? Statements? Judge rulings?

nottelling , (edited )

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    Rob OP ,

    I understand that Google has a lot of data to shift through, and that maybe the Fediverse probably can't do everything it does.
    When a user tries to search for certain things on a search engine it's like Google goes out of it's way to hide a lot of it.

    I guess what I am trying to say is the Fediverse is best for finding discussion, and up to date topics, and opinions from more voices instead of the few that gain the seo system. When it comes to local stuff, I would probably use Google maps or something like that just so I can say I don't need a search engine for that, but that's just me when it comes to local searches.

    If one server were to get too big and do ads and all that, guess what, it's not like with Youtube for example where that's your only option you can just switch your instance and you won't be censored you just won't show up on that corrupted instance. The fact that the Fediverse is decentralized and federated absolutely will prevent this from being as bad as it was with the og old internet.

    The reason Facebook took over was essentially the fact that it was it's own platform, and you couldn't communicate with your friends from that old forum site from Facebook.

    When one or 5 servers get to a certain size I would assume some instances would block some of the largest instances, but would still be usable as it could still federate with other instances. The Fediverse designed to combat this type of thing, while the old internet, really had no way to combat this. Sure it thought well for people it just wasn't built to give people enough power to avoid bigger sites from controlling and censoring the entirety of what is said online and still have success and activity.

    While email was federated, it was also commercial in most used cases. Actually email itself hasn't really had any big take over or monopoly and emails seem to send even to this day from smaller email services to larger email services. So this seems to prove that federation can prevent what you seem to be claiming if people make the right steps with the tools they have.

    MonkderZweite ,

    Guess this guy never has to look up syntax stuff.

    EncryptKeeper ,

    Search engines don’t use search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is what people do to get their site to the top of a search engines results.

    Rob OP ,

    The search engine basically looks for seo complying sites and pushes them to the top with their algorithm, so search engines do use it, and so do users to push their sites to the top of resualts.

    EncryptKeeper ,

    That’s not how it works, like at all. SEO isn’t something to “comply” with. Their algorithm is what SEO is “optimizing” for.

    Passerby6497 ,

    You must not have hard problems to solve if fediverse content is able to replace a search engine.

    scarabic ,

    I thought this post was going to be about ChatGPT. Instead it’s about how fediverse search is a replacement for the entire internet, which is utter nonsense.

    Obonga ,

    This is a relative hot take at this moment but as the search results get worse and the fediverse grows it might become true. Time will tell.

    Rob OP ,

    I was thinking about the long term but I am open to seo getting better and being proven long.

    Rob OP , (edited )

    I wanted to add some extra context that I feel some commentators are missing and it could be my fault for not being as specific.

    The reason I think search engines are becoming more irrelevant is because seo, it isn't like the year of 2010 where you would find more relevant resualts as easily.

    If you read the title and the actual og post contents, you would find out i'm really just ranting about seo.

    I did mention in the comments a few times that i'm not necessarily against search engines as they were originally intended to be used, but what seo has become for the modern search engine. Because of that, that is why search engines are becoming irrelevant to me.

    So it isn't the issue with search engines at the surface, I do understand how they work, it's rather, what they had become on the inside behind the scenes with seo.

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