What websites search function do you hate most?

[snokenkeekaguard@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

I haven't used google in 3-4 years. Is it even worse now?

[kolanaki@pawb.social]

It's been going pretty steadily downhill for about 10 years now, but with the addition of the AI bullshit on top of the other SEO issues, it's basically useless now.

[snokenkeekaguard@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Ah. Even duckduckgo added ai.

Plus they dont use the best models which makes it even worse

[digdoug@lemmy.world]

I work in ecommerce, so the answer is "ours". I get far too many calls saying "Do you sell x", or "How much is y", and because of how terrible our website's search function is, I can't just say "use the fucking website, that's what it's there for" like I desperately want to.

[otacon239@lemmy.world]

There’s at least has an easily acceptable option to disable it

[tal@lemmy.today]

with a passion. It just doesn't do what its supposed to, its not searching anything at all. Ive literally tried and written every word of the video title plus the channel name and it didnt show up bc I put onen word in the wrong spot.

If you want to just treat each search term independently, that works for me. Searching for battle of the solomons eastern has a top hit of "Battle of the Eastern Solomons".

[tuckerm@feddit.online]

Reddit is the first one that comes to mind for me, too. It was always easier to use a search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo and do thing I'm looking for site:reddit.com instead of actually using Reddit's search feature.

[tuckerm@feddit.online]

In addition to what you mentioned, another really annoying thing about Youtube's search is that it sometimes gives totally different results from one minute to the next. You can search for something, then type those exact same words just a few seconds later, and you get a completely different list of videos. So if you ever do get a list of good results, you need to leave that browser tab alone and open a new one to keep those results "safe."

[outwit1294@lemmy.today]

I currently hate all search engines. If I have to type reddit at the end of every search, it is not really a search engine.

[actuallygoingcrazy@sh.itjust.works]

Yeah but only if you keep cookies enabled. The default Librewolf settings has the bullshit AI come back every time, so its still somewhat of a pain.

[bizarroland@fedia.io]

Amazon

I've never gone to a website and searched for socks and been shown bicycles before.

[timlovestech@badatbeing.social]

Agreed, which I know is on purpose trying to get you to spend more time on the site and see more things that could be impulse buys.

[plzgivhugs@sh.itjust.works]

Honestly, at this point Reddit's search doesn't even really feel worse than the competition. Its terrible at fuzzy searches, yes, but the fact that it has functioning search operators that it consistantly respects is so useful. Being able to search "(add OR insert OR update) AND (rest OR restful) NOT sql" is so useful.

Of course, a good fuzzy search would also be great, but no one offers that anymore, so...

[ledericas@lemm.ee]

when i want to search for specific things on reddits search bar, it kinda "hallucinate searches" totally unrelated to what you want.

[plzgivhugs@sh.itjust.works]

Try using the title:() operator. For example, title:(warrior OR knight). It can also be combined with others, like title:(sale) OR flair:(offering). I'm sure theres also options for content and metadata, but I don't know them off the top of my head.

[nesc@lemmy.cafe]

In the last two years it became extremely bad at actually searching what you typed, and not what 'ai' interpreted as what you actually want to see.

[zecg@lemmy.world]

It's a stable target ar least, Ublock Origin and filter like:

www.google.com##.hdzaWe

[typewar@infosec.pub]

Damn, I too went to this same route of Google -> duckduckgo -> Searx. While it is true searx is unreliable at times, if you enable more engines and find an instance that has anti botting features, it should be pretty solid

[pirate@feddit.org]

It's getting to the point where it's better to just straight up ask Claude, not gonna lie.

[green_mouse@piefed.social]

I don't know about Google, but DuckDuckGo sometimes even shows completely opposite things, even when I write Reddit at the end... finding something very specific or niche is a challenge.