Whatever happened to Google Serps?

[Brett_Tabke]

<rant tldr>
In the last month I have went from mildly annoyed, to gob smacked at how poor Google has gotten:

- Maps, more maps are showing irrelevant listings. Ask for restaurants near me and you get doctors, auto detailing, and dog walking with 2 McDonald's and a dry cleaners. It boggles my mind to think how useful Maps was shortly ago (their best product in history imho) to this useless pile of graphical vomit only good for directions.
- YouTube, scam ad after scam ad. I have done everything but ban my kid from YouTube. The latest big ad push is an ad to cure deafness with spoons.
- Just try to lookup a phone number. 10-20 completely bs sites. Far worse than an AI lying to you is when you get 20 lies, js trap sites, back button breakers, virus spewing, form scammers, email harvesters presented as links.
- SERPs. So many ads and sponsored posts it feels like Paid Inclusion is back! You really have to stop and figure out if you just clicked on an ad or a honest result.
- Paywalls are everywhere. Search on any current events topic and you are going to run into a pay wall, a popup wall, or subscribe to us wall.
- Mobile. What is the point of having a browser crawler if all you do is link to sites that are useless jumbles of ads?

Dunno, maybe they are trying to tee up AI as a savior of search because the 'web has gotten so bad' or something.

I hear an echo in the wind 'chickens coming home to roost'.

[engine]

It's trying to one thing to all, and failing in certain sectors.
I can't pin it down to one specific thing, but the addition of so much beyond ten blue links has created a hotchpotch of randomness.

> Paid Inclusion is back!

LOL, yup, I agree, it's been going that way for a long while as the true SERPs become increasingly relegated in favour of shareholder interests.

[phranque]

Just try to lookup a phone number.

right?
just a year or two ago those were very fruitful searches.
i think these searches work better if you put the area code in parentheses.

[lucy24]

YouTube, scam ad after scam ad.

. . . and that’s why, when I am obliged to use YouTube on the iPad, which has no ad blocker, I limit my viewing to orchestras like hr-Sinfonie or Halle that run ad-free.

[chewy]

Seems the decreasing audience of this site mirrors the increasing inability to easily make a living on the web.

Glad to see some surviving insightful long-time members speaking up.

Google and other's push for profit seems a bit excessive to me - but when you look at it from WebmasterWorld's perspective, it seems to be a #*$! slaughter.

Yet here we are...

[ronin]

It's the interest rates, isn't it?

Suddenly, all sorts of large-scale web platforms are under pressure to show quarterly returns in an environment where borrowing no longer resembles the never-ending flow of nearly-free money they got entirely used to.

Consequence: more ads, more paywalls, more scams, increasing dominance of paid search.