Discussion
Google has fallen ill.
I am trying to order a phone accessory from Sweden, but when I search for this product, instead of normal search results, Google serves page after page of links to the same website, kamda.se.
I have a feeling Kamda must have A LOT of traffic this week.
Has anyone else seen this weird Google behaviour?
Six months ago I often had to switch from duck duck to Google to get good results, but lately I have to switch from Google to duck duck to get results. Feels like something changed.
Also YouTube seems a little off these days. Not to be paranoid, but if they want to cencor some content, they will implement changes slowly
It's kind of random what search engine I use. Often I just ask copilot instead, but thats when I intentionally wants an AI result.
AI is great when you're looking for information on something you just vaguely can express. Like an old movie you can't remember the name of.
But Lois Rossman had a video recently where he had discovered that to get his repair business appear in google search, he had to use tha ai generated SEO texts or something.
Maybe AI has begun altering the search results to slowly make us all into slaves.
@randahl Same search works fine on Startpage.
@randahl using ecosia and duckduck. So can’t/won’t help here. Sorry 😉
@randahl might be a sign that it's time to switch search engine?
Try for example DuckDuckGo or Qwant or Ecosia
@randahl To me (non-expert) looks like someone has discovered a new SEO hack, maybe.
Reminds me of the days when google page rank was based on links, so dozes of right wing fake news blogs all published the same article and linked to each other, filling the top several results pages with that same information and falsely creating the impression of agreement.
(and then google updated their algos to block that abuse and republicans accused them of persecution for not pushing their lies)
@randahl good old (don't be evil) Google would let you block servers from your results. I would recommend a search engine that still let's you do that ;)
@randahl I also moved to dd-Go a while back to avoid that Goofle behaviour. Side benefit is I am not presented with creepy ads based on what I looked up in the last two weeks.
@randahl Haven't used Google search in years. Still use Android but hope to get off it, maybe next year. (To Linux phone capable of running Android apps)
@randahl
I avoid big tech.
Use Brave Search or Ecosia.
@randahl What does it do without the 'site:se' constraint?
@ChuckMcManis that normally limits search result to Swedish sites.
@randahl I understand that, sorry I wasn't more clear. Back when I was at Google, search queries with "advanced constraints" of any type went through a different flow than general search. I was trying to differentially debug if the hack was on the adwords side (ulanzi, ma56) or on the advanced flow side. I think it was in 2021 or 2022 where Google had allowed adword spend to capture the entire page.
@randahl Moved to duck duck go long ago. You can have with an ai layer, if you want (washes your ip) or noai.duckduckgo.com, etc
@randahl I'm not sure why you're restricting your search to the .se domain, or how popular that domain is within Sweden; but isn't it possible that Kamda is the only retailer with a .se domain who carries the MA56?
@BiscuitTaylor actually, the .se domain is the most common for Swedish shops. While .us is not popular for American shops because you have a tradition for using .com, European shops most often use the country code domain.
@randahl I tried:
And got similar. No idea how many are supposed to be in SE.
Ulanzi.com might be HK (Hong Kong?)
@buckfiftyseven yes, I am avoiding the Ulanzi sites because they are not EU based, so tariffs will apply.
I don't use Google, but in DuckDuck you can click the 3-dots and block up to 5 sites from results.
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
