Using perplexity has easily killed 50% of Google usage for me.
Another behaviour you mention: searching outside of Google. It's impossibile to find decent restaurant tips on Google, for one, because it's a heavily SEO-polluted type of search. So i will simply visits websites i trust and city-search there.
Great piece! I want to also just note that Marginalia also has a "similar website" finder, though I'm believe it is more 'low-tech' than Exa in terms of actual methodology but worth exploring and comparing the two.
Ver Interesting, but kind of moot as we await an imminent tsunami of AI generated content to render search obsolete. How are we going to be able surface genuinely human interaction from out of the hall of mirrors? Information from trusted individuals only, and these will be few and far between.
My guess is that we'll go back to website directories (like https://href.cool, for example) for genuine interaction. Human curation is important, even more nowadays where most recommendations on modern platforms and silos are made to maximize some internal parameters (like screen time or revenue) instead of what users really want, need or search for.
i would make the same argument whether we're talking about a nonprofit or the government (i was just picking the more extreme example). the SEO optimizers would still enshittify it if it were large and influential enough. fewer ads never hurts, though.
Thank you for the recommendations for alternative search methods!
Thank you so much for this article from a fellow folklorist!
Excellent resource this piece is, very much appreciated.
Using perplexity has easily killed 50% of Google usage for me.
Another behaviour you mention: searching outside of Google. It's impossibile to find decent restaurant tips on Google, for one, because it's a heavily SEO-polluted type of search. So i will simply visits websites i trust and city-search there.
Thanks for this ! Really interesting idea.
I can say AltPower Search works spectacularly well for my humble use cases.
Loved
looks like my cup of tea.
Great piece! I want to also just note that Marginalia also has a "similar website" finder, though I'm believe it is more 'low-tech' than Exa in terms of actual methodology but worth exploring and comparing the two.
https://explore2.marginalia.nu/
Ver Interesting, but kind of moot as we await an imminent tsunami of AI generated content to render search obsolete. How are we going to be able surface genuinely human interaction from out of the hall of mirrors? Information from trusted individuals only, and these will be few and far between.
My guess is that we'll go back to website directories (like https://href.cool, for example) for genuine interaction. Human curation is important, even more nowadays where most recommendations on modern platforms and silos are made to maximize some internal parameters (like screen time or revenue) instead of what users really want, need or search for.
i would make the same argument whether we're talking about a nonprofit or the government (i was just picking the more extreme example). the SEO optimizers would still enshittify it if it were large and influential enough. fewer ads never hurts, though.