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Google Search Really Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Just tried looking up if it’s safe to light a fireplace fire after having had a sinus surgery. (It’s very cold here in Seattle tonight and I had septoplasty/FESS/turbinate reduction yesterday afternoon.)
All my results were about smoking cigarettes and a result for whether it’s okay to box after surgery. Not a single source to suggest a fire being safe or not.
This is why I use Bing Chat for specific questions.
"Hello, this is Bing. I’m sorry to hear that you had sinus surgery and that you’re feeling cold. 😟
According to some sources, it’s best to avoid exposure to smoke, dust, and other irritants after sinus surgery, as they can interfere with the healing process and cause inflammation. Therefore, lighting a fireplace fire may not be a good idea for your recovery."
Bing Chat provides sources to the claims so you can verify:
https://www.realself.com/question/cambridge-ks-pain-sinuses-weeks-after-fess-surgery https://www.healthline.com/health/phantosmia
That is really good to know! Thanks so much for the heads up on this! Never knew this was a thing.
You can also use perplexity.ai if Bing ai is not your cup of tea.
Was just going to say, I've been defaulting to perplexity way more recently. It is really good (even the free tier)
Your story is obviously anecdotal but I think it pretty much aligns with what what we've all experienced. You search for something and get results for something else. You change your search to try to get results you asked for and get........ literally the exact same results. It's infuriating.
Yep. Unless you’re looking for direct info like- what actor was in that one movie- type of thing….
For me the specific question remains unanswered. There are a lot of results about the health effects on respiration, but none about specifically after a sinus surgery. Might be a question so specific that the internet at large has no answer to it.
What I do not get (on Google, search from Germany) is what you describe, my results are all relevant on the first 3 pages barring 2 results about the surgery instead of the fireplace.
Yep. It might just be a really weird ask. Like… no one has ever considered it. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here without a fire.
Can't you ring up your usual doctor to ask? Or well, I guess you'd need to call a lung specialist, but they ought to be able to answer that, no? Or your surgeon who did the surgery.
Well, I have an ENT that performed the surgery, but he’s not available overnight for questions.
No the surgeon isn't available to talk to, but you can call and speak directly to a ENT department nurse for after surgery issues. This is a far better option than ANY search engine answer.
Use the right tool for the job.
What about DuckDuckGo?
DDG uses Bing's results. Bing has deteriorated less than Google but it's also becoming worse every day.
And it started out much worse, so eh, it still works worse for me than Google.
Bing AND Yandex
It doesn't use just bing anymore: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
That page is pretty misleading, though: it's mostly talking about 'Instant Amswers' which is its AI (presumably) paid partnership answer bot thing at the top of the results. Further down, it says: "Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing."
So, although they don't use Bing exclusively, that's where the majority of non AI-answer-bot stuff is coming from. And I'm guessing the AI is Bing/Microsoft powered anyway, although I can't be sure.
I don't the answers section very very hit or miss
Often it will link you to a highlighted section with noting relevant.