Wow. I know Google Search has been undergoing some drastic enshittification lately, so it's not surprising that the quality of search results has noticeably been going down.

And I've also been noticing it struggle more with stuff that it used to find a lot easier.

One thing that Google has been tweaking in particular is weighing the responsiveness of websites (loading speed), and ranking slower performing websites lower in the list of search results. The Internet Archive, being funded through charity donations, isn't always the fastest in serving up cached websites.

But search results (even from stuff on the Internet Archive) not being found at all anymore? That takes the cake.

Good to see DuckDuckGo performing better.

Any Kagi users here willing to share their experiences with the OP's search terms in particular?

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-06-11, 16:17:

I just ran into an oddity. […]
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I just ran into an oddity.

A good while ago (actually, almost 10 years ago) I made a topic here called 3D Action Gamers' Archive preserved by the Wayback Machine, with a working Wayback Machine link to a nearly-complete snapshot of the 3D Action Gamers' Archive from 1997, files and all.

Now I have that Wayback Machine URL noted somewhere, but often I'll just Google this topic using the keywords "3D Action Gamers' Archive", and until recently the result would just pop out (with the search limited to vogons.org, that is). However, when I tried doing this just now, Google plain told me it found no matches:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%223D+Action+ … te%3Avogons.org

I checked with DuckDuckGo, and of course it finds the topic straight away:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=%223D+Action+G … gons.org&ia=web

So I'm wondering, is this something on my end, or did Google just exclude this particular result from its search output? If the latter, I wonder why?

I ran into the same problem as you recently. google search gives no results. duckduckgo works as normal. So it's not just on your end.

edit: I was looking for "axiom ax6122tb"

I've found Google search to be increasingly useless over the last couple of years. It's nearly impossible now to find anything from small sites (in effect, to actually search the Internet). All you get is a million results of clickbait sites and fake Amazon reviews, even if you specifically tell it to filter out that stuff. Of course, once you get a few pages into the search results, the results drop from "millions" to thousands, and then you get to page 12 and Google tells you the rest has all been filtered out because it's not relevant. Tell it to show that stuff, and you maybe get another couple of pages of garbage, and then you reach the end of the Internet.

It's best to just not use Google anymore. They're too busy developing military drones and scamming investors with "AI" to care about search anymore.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-06-11, 17:06:

I've found Google search to be increasingly useless over the last couple of years. It's nearly impossible now to find anything from small sites (in effect, to actually search the Internet). All you get is a million results of clickbait sites and fake Amazon reviews, even if you specifically tell it to filter out that stuff. Of course, once you get a few pages into the search results, the results drop from "millions" to thousands, and then you get to page 12 and Google tells you the rest has all been filtered out because it's not relevant. Tell it to show that stuff, and you maybe get another couple of pages of garbage, and then you reach the end of the Internet.

It's best to just not use Google anymore. They're too busy developing military drones and scamming investors with "AI" to care about search anymore.

they want you to use their AI Gemini as a replacement for google search. Military drones huh? thats new whats it running GoogolOS?

They're replacing everything with AI, which does everything worse, but brings in money from the stupidest people on the planet (investors)

twiz11 wrote on 2025-06-11, 17:14:

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-06-11, 17:06:

I've found Google search to be increasingly useless over the last couple of years. It's nearly impossible now to find anything from small sites (in effect, to actually search the Internet). All you get is a million results of clickbait sites and fake Amazon reviews, even if you specifically tell it to filter out that stuff. Of course, once you get a few pages into the search results, the results drop from "millions" to thousands, and then you get to page 12 and Google tells you the rest has all been filtered out because it's not relevant. Tell it to show that stuff, and you maybe get another couple of pages of garbage, and then you reach the end of the Internet.

It's best to just not use Google anymore. They're too busy developing military drones and scamming investors with "AI" to care about search anymore.

they want you to use their AI Gemini as a replacement for google search. Military drones huh? thats new whats it running GoogolOS?

Just tried it.

I can't find any specific information about "axiom ax6122tb." It's possible this is a very specific model number that isn't wide […]
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I can't find any specific information about "axiom ax6122tb." It's possible this is a very specific model number that isn't widely publicized or is part of a niche product.

Based on the search results, "Axiom" is a brand that appears in various contexts, including:

Musical Instruments: Axiom is a brand of flutes and other instruments, often cited as a good budget-friendly option for students.

MIDI Controllers: M-Audio's Axiom series were popular MIDI keyboard controllers.
Marine Electronics: Raymarine produces Axiom series chartplotters and sonar devices.
Disc Golf: Axiom Discs is a brand of disc golf discs.
Backpacks: Triple Aught Design has an "Axiom" line of backpacks.

If you can provide more context about what "axiom ax6122tb" refers to (e.g., what type of product it is), I might be able to find more relevant information.

It's depressing. I use Google for my business (email, storage, etc.), and they recently sent me an email saying they "have to" increase prices because of adding AI services. Of course, it doesn't matter if you opt out of those services (I seriously doubt that you can really opt out), you still have to pay for them. It's getting annoying as fuck to constantly refuse AI garbage over and over. "Use AI to compose your reply"" "Use AI to manage your schedule!" No! It takes me almost no time at all to do this routine stuff, and certainly less time than checking every single thing "AI" does to make sure it doesn't just, I dunno, send insulting garbage to my customers or fill my schedule with "DO WORK" or whatever.

As for military drones, Google's parent company Alphabet has long had ties with the US and Israeli military, and one of Alphabet's subsidiaries is a company called Wing that develops drones. There's no direct connection as far as I can tell, so it's up to you to decide whether "Wing" is happy to just keep developing drones to deliver Amazon packages or whatever.

I've been noticing this more and more lately, not just with google: things are just plain broken. Obvious and simple things that should be working like this search don't work anymore. Which makes me think that they can't not know it, it's too obviously broken. So there must be something else going on that people with some niche hobby and usage behavior are not benefiting from.

Google has moved almost entirely to "Here's the results we THINK you want" vs. "Here's what you actually searched for" and is essentially useless for me at this point.

Completely dumbed down and tailored to presenting you with sales pitches rather than information.

Have you tried startpage? It is to Google what DuckDuckGo is (or was?) to Bing.

I myself completely abandoned Google search and Gmail for about 5 years.

Google is just broken. I cannot count the number of times I've searched for a couple of words in quotes, and Google gives me results that have nothing to do with what I'm searching for (the results do not even include the exact phrase I've specified). It's worthless. It's like going to a library and asking at the desk for "A Tale of Two Cities" by "Charles Dickens" and they hand you a DVD of "Charles in Charge."

keenerb wrote on 2025-06-11, 17:44:

Google has moved almost entirely to "Here's the results we THINK you want" vs. "Here's what you actually searched for"

To me, they hide whatever result they don't like, whether it's something on the company policy level, or [tinfoil hat on] the employee/s in charge of the search engine might personally find "questionable".

RandomStranger wrote on 2025-06-11, 17:50:

Have you tried startpage? It is to Google what DuckDuckGo is (or was?) to Bing.

I myself completely abandoned Google search and Gmail for about 5 years.

oh i use startpage and it works but then its a server side app so your better off using rss feeders and a combination with bookmarks and extensions which allow you to pull from news sources and automatically update bookmarks in case they break (404/etc)

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-06-11, 17:06:

and then you reach the end of the Internet.

For a while now I've felt like Doctor Crusher in that episode of TNG when she gets stuck in a collapsing warp bubble.

'Computer, define the nature of the universe.
'The universe is a spheroid region 700 metres in diameter.'

TechCorp grifters: AI will allow most tasks that were done by humans to be automated. This will reduce head count across all your verticals, horizontals and diagonals resulting in huge bonuses for all executives. Quality may be impacted during initial deployment of AI.

Executives: You had us at "huge bonuses for all executives".

google went to crap a couple of years ago.

The thing with google in comparison to Altavista or Yahoo was that it was better at sorting out the best matches. On the others you kind of needed to be your own filter. I mean used to get a lot of search results, now the 'bad' results are not even there anymore. not exactly sure when thus happened.

I actually haven't used Google frequently enough recently but this doesn't surprise me. I've been routinely using DuckDuckGo for ages now and while reading this thread it clicked how little I go to Google to "get better results".

Unfortunately even with other search engines its getting harder to sift through all the SEO rubbish, reposts and AI generated pages.

keenerb wrote on 2025-06-11, 17:44:

"Here's the results we THINK you want"

More like "Here's the AI/ad-ridden slop we want you to consume".

I'm not sure what exactly happened but its clear that google as a search engine and company has not only left behind its cool image of being the go to "on your side" tech company and become some kind of data collecting freemium operator

Google used to be the best search engine and i remember being able to create quite sophisticated search terms, now it seems to find less. My experience of the big three (excepting Yandex, no experience there)

Google - finding less and less in depth, and more and more 'commercial'
Bing - finds lots, relevance to search term varies!
DuckDuckGo - finds reasonably accurately based on search terms, actually finds things google and Bing doesn't! (has slowly become my go to, silly name though 😀 )