crafting a search term has changed over the years though. the old approach of "type 3-5 keywords into the box and get a list of pages that use those words close to eachother" isn't supported anymore, and the new approach is "type a phrase and we'll look for things semantically related".

at that point, the input box isn't that different from the chatbot box.

It's like hitting I'm feeling lucky every time.

That's part of it but it's not that we don't know how, it's that google search is ruined now.

Paid advertisements floating to the top, search engine optimization completely ruining any form of categorization, a deluge of spam websites that pump out irrelevant articles full of keywords (ironically now using GPT to make more articles).

If you want to actually get real people talking you have to append "reddit" to the end. But now Reddit is also becoming shitty for search.

Nowadays people realize if all you get from google search is ai and social media, then why not skip the middle man? Hence people using ai and even Tiktok in place of Google.

I personally use Claude to ask for niche questions and it actually gets to the point answering what I'm asking. (I double check using the terms it gives me to read more on Wikipedia and ect.)