Ask HN: Google Search is completely unusable. How do you work around it?
Over the last few years, Google search has lost its practical usefulness for technical or niche queries. I don’t understand how it got this bad.
Even the most basic search for a problem only returns results that share an out-of-context word with the query. When using quotes around an important keyword to force it into the results, Google still ignores that request silently, only for me to find out when I use Cmd+F on the page and see the word isn’t there.
It feels like Google is gaslighting me, as if I'm the first person to have the particular problem I’m researching, even though I’m sure documents about it exist on the internet.
Is it just me? What are you doing about this? Is Google salvageable in any way? What do you use now?
Even the most basic search for a problem only returns results that share an out-of-context word with the query. When using quotes around an important keyword to force it into the results, Google still ignores that request silently, only for me to find out when I use Cmd+F on the page and see the word isn’t there.
It feels like Google is gaslighting me, as if I'm the first person to have the particular problem I’m researching, even though I’m sure documents about it exist on the internet.
Is it just me? What are you doing about this? Is Google salvageable in any way? What do you use now?