Is Google search getting worse?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are many anecdotal complaints about Google search not being what it used to be. A German computer scientist and his colleagues put this theory to the test recently focusing on product reviews. Today on the show, we bring their findings to Google's chief search scientist.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:04.0	A few years.
0:05.0	A few years
0:07.0	A few years
0:12.0	a few years ago, Muddy Weughman got a new laptop.
0:15.0	Mughty is working on his PhD at Bauhaus University Weymah in Germany,
0:20.0	and he wanted a new messenger bag so he could walk around with it.
0:23.8	But he searched for bags on Google, but he wasn't happy with the results.
0:28.7	All of the pages I stumbled on, they listed lots of backpacks and they were describing them, but I felt very dissatisfied and
0:37.1	disinformed after visiting them.
0:39.1	These were the kinds of spammy websites that had a ton of ads and links, but not really any insights. of
0:43.3	some kind of ads and links, but not really any insights.
0:45.3	A somewhat new and frustrating experience
0:47.5	because we were used to just going on Google
0:50.1	clicking the first link and that would work.
0:52.1	And that got Matty asking,
0:54.0	Is Google getting worse?
0:56.0	Ooh, a provocative question.
0:58.0	Yes.
0:59.0	Of course, there's certainly a lot of clutter now,
1:02.0	a ton of sponsored links that new AI generated box for
1:05.4	some searches which sometimes work sometimes doesn't. Sometimes helpful sometimes
	...

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