In the wake of recent Reddit shutdowns, Google’s top executives have as reported acknowledged user dissatisfaction with the current search experience.
In response, Google is taking steps to improve its search engine results. Google recently launched a new “Insights” feature to provide searchers with more comprehensive answers.
Insights shows content from forums and videos on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and Quora. Google hopes that adding content from more sources will improve the quality and breadth of information searchers receive.
However, it’s unclear whether the new feature goes far enough to address user complaints about Google Search.
The Reddit shutdown and its impact on Google search
Historically, Google searchers have added queries with “Reddit” to find useful resources on specific topics.
However, the effectiveness of this tactic took a hit when thousands of Reddit forums went dark earlier this month.
Moderators of the most popular forums turned their pages private as part of a widespread protest over Reddit’s decision to start charging developers for access to their data.
Google executives, including Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s search chief, and Sundar Pichai, the CEO, have acknowledged the problem in a company-wide meeting.
According to CNBC, Raghavan admitted that users are not happy and emphasized the need to make them happy, responding to an employee’s comment about negative user feedback due to too many ads and irrelevant results.
Pichai believes that users are looking for “more complete answers,” so they add the name of forum sites like Reddit to their searches.
He said people don’t want “blue links” as much as they want comprehensive solutions.
Google’s approach to improving search
A key initiative in Google’s quest to improve search results is the newly introduced feature, “Insights”.
Raghavan suggested that introducing “Perspectives” could be a way to deliver better results without requiring users to add “Reddit” to their search queries.
However, Google recognizes that solving the search quality problem isn’t as simple as rolling out Insights or relying more on AI.
While Google has made significant strides in generative AI, launching Bard, a ChatGPT competitor, and working on an effort known as Search Generative Experience, executives admit that AI alone won’t improve quality.
The future of Google search
While Perspectives is one of the steps Google has taken to address the problem of generating authentic discussions and comprehensive answers, it is not the only answer to the problem.
Lara Levin, a Google spokeswoman, told CNBC that search “meets the overwhelming majority of user needs” and Google is continually improving Search to meet the evolving needs of its users.
He added that features like the Insights filter are part of how Google ensures people continue to find the most useful information on Google from a wide range of sources and formats.
Despite these efforts, many believe that Google should focus on doing traditional search results are more useful, arguing that those results are what made Google what it is today.
Source: Rohit-Tripathi/Shutterstock
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