Same here, Google has slowly become unusable for certain topics if you don't append "reddit" to your search.
It's way too hard to cut through the search engine optimized spam when googling something now. Especially for product recommendations all you get are random top X lists.
I started using DuckDuckGo actively in 2014. It has since been my primary search engine. It used to be very similar to google: minimalist, an ad placed as the first search result and that’s it. DDG has stayed pretty much the same. The few times I now wander on google to try to get different results, I just find it so unusable. Search results are swimming in an ocean of suggested content… I’m never going back.
I've noticed I'll type in the exact name of the website but forget the .com to tell my browser to go directly there, so it will do a search. My results show the site I was looking for halfway down the page, with the first half being ads and even competitors of the site! I'm not searching for items from the site but the site itself yet Google is so useless it shows me a bunch of similar stuff even when I gave it a specific.
Definitely relate to this! If I google something and one of the top results is a Reddit post, I’m usually pretty excited because it means other people having similar issues will be able to offer advice on my particular use case. And there’s so much content already on Reddit that you’re very likely to find something helpful!
Yeah, it's so useful because you get suggestions from real users along with discussion and a voting system. You're not just relying on an algorithm to point to a poorly written list with the right keywords stuffed in. Oh, you're looking for the best xyz? Here's a list of Amazon affiliate links chosen by an "expert." No thanks.
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
I think I'm going to still use reddit to solve certain problems when googling. It's still a good resource for solving specific problems. Just won't spend any browsing time there. Just in an out.
save