You know the smug types who are always saying "just google it"
and blame users for bad engineering?

Here's a google video (youtube) where the comments are better
than the dull video, like often happens. The excerpts of the
comments concerns the low quality of google searches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48AOOynnmqU

"I also noticed that around 2007 the "tech" emphasis of google migrated from returning valid results to 'paris hilton' results. e.g. I feed it a 9 digit Tektronix part number and I get pictures and ad's for cream cupcakes."

"A huge problem I've had with Google is being unable to escape shopping-related results."

"but now using academic/technical terms gets me entirely unrelated results"

"Google now limits the number of available pages of search results to about 5 max. What happened to the huge limitless internet? What happened to being able to search the 30th or 50th page of a search result, and finding really interesting stuff on smaller sites?"

"I can literally type the entire quote in quote marks, because I can't remember who it was a quote from, and Google basically insists it doesn't exist."

"Youtube search results are also basically useless. The quality of search results is almost as bad yahoo search used to be back in the day. Google is increasingly becoming more useless by the day."

"Other search engines nearly all use Google to harvest their results."

"So true, every time I am searching for something, instead of giving a list of videos related to my search I get 3-5 on topic, and then absolutely random sh*t related to my VIEWS HISTORY and NOT to my search. I don't know whom does it help, I wholeheartedly hate it."

"One jarring thing I noticed is that negative search operators just do not work. Either it broke or they removed it for some reason. Trying to search up something and adding "-[thing you dont want]" was incredibly useful and now that it has been removed from google and youtube is insane."

"I remember when I could reliably find the precise bit of technical information I needed by just stringing together the keywords involved. What I wanted was usually one of the first two or three results. Now it feels like pulling teeth and often ends in complete failure."

"Recently I was trying to troubleshoot what should have been a simple tech problem (think like "how do I change the volume on my phone" something stupidly simple like that.) and I was literally crying with frustration at how there was NOTHING relevant to my question on the search, just ads, articles infested with ads, and infuriatingly smug FAQs with terrible ui and no useful info. I finally found one obscure page of a person complaining about my question... no answers, several years ago."

"I am an advanced "googler" who knows pretty much all the technical syntax and search term refinements. In the last 3 or so years I noticed I can no longer find what I am looking for and result quality dropped massively. My advanced searches with exact refined syntax get utterly ignored and Google switched from displaying what the user asked for, to displaying what Google wants you to see - no matter the input. This is EXTREMELY noticeable if you have used search engines for multiple years and observed their functionality."

"Google search has thrown specificity completely out the window. It ignores the order of the words you put entirely even when using "quotes"."

"I've lost count how many times I have complained to my friends about how I can't find anything anymore when I search for things online. Good to know I wasn't imagining it."

"I remember having conversations on usenet in the mid 90's where we believed the internet would turn to shit once Governments and Corporations took notice. We completely under estimated just how shit it would become."

"Google substitutes what THEY think I mean. I look up "schematic diagram" and I get results for "user manual". I can never find what I'm looking for if it's a schematic."

"As you say, some topics are just unsearchable."

"The other issue with Google is they abuse our goodwill. They ask us to report errors "to improve it for everyone". I haven't noticed them acting on my input to Google Maps despite repeated corrections. So not only are they not paying for our services, they are using our services without the reward they promise: to make it better for everyone."

"It's nice to see people are finally noticing. There is absolutely no chance that nowadays that every single problem doesn't have at least one other person searching for the answer and yet, it feels like you're the only one having the issue because of how useless search engines have become."

"I've been noticing this growing frustration with Google search for awhile now, but it really got me riled up recently when I was seeking out a replacement charger for my battery powered drill. I tried everything, using all the "search tips and tricks" and searching specifically for my model number. I still got results for every model from the brand and even a few from other brands at one point. And so, so many sponsored results or shopping results despite looking for the corresponding part number for my model, and not actually looking to buy the drill itself again.Insanely frustrating and I ended up just having to buy a new drill because....I could not find the result that I know has to be out there somewhere."

"Their reverse image search feature has gotten a lot worse, too. It's like they're intentionally reducing the quality of search results."

"When searching something very specific, it's just not possible with Google anymore"

"One annoying trend, that has happened over the last decade or so, is that new brands, bands, or celebrities have hijacked searches, by appropriating what used to be common terms in the English language. You try to get information on something rather ordinary, and find out that it's now a proper name or trademark for something or someone."

"googling is not fun anymore (an neither YT search). On one side there're all those auto-generated buzzword sites drowning all the sites with truely helpful content. On the other side there's Google that seems not to be interested in showing neutral results anymore. As soon as you start searching for pretty specialized websites it is hard to find anything at all."

"google isn't just filling the page with sponsored results, they are also very heavily prioritizing online stores. It's become extremely difficult to search for certain topics because sometimes you have to wade through hundreds of results of products (mostly t shirts in my experience for some reason) to find what you're looking for and even putting things like "-buy -shop -store" which would normally stop webpages with those words from showing up doesn't work anymore. And then when you finally find it it's most likely gonna be, like you said, some meaningless garbage meant to game the SEO system."

"I cant find any techy, nerdy , smart, academic, results anymore :'(
"

"As someone who´s learning programming, I can´t help but notice that I rarely get help from Google when searching up questions. I´m starting to think that this is done on purpose in order to hold us back."

"Why should you have to waste your time figuring things out for yourself when someone else has already done the work and documented it, but you can't actually find it because the available search engines suck? How many hours of people's time has been wasted repeating reverse-engineering work that others have already done because that prior work wouldn't show up in search results?"

"I've also noticed that companies seem to be creating their own negative attacks (top ten reasons that said product is unsafe) and which they easily show how stupid those question are in another article."

"Google like many big tech firms are also political and rife with censorship and I feel they changed the algorithm a few years back and neutered it."

"AI does not generate anything new. It simply agrigates large data sets, interprets it, repackages it, and apes it."

"(Google) are increasingly acting like custodians who think they have the right to tell you what you should and shouldn't be seeing social/politically/etc wise."

"A god-damned exact phrase search that only returns exact phrase matches is too much to ask for, I guess. This seems to be a problem with all conventional search engines, not just google."

"Whenever I search on google now the result is either the opposite of what I searched or a result related to some political stance that google has"

"Google feels like your fishing for answers out of a shallow puddle"