Comment by ufmace

It's been well known for a long time that Google extensively customizes search results per individual based on dozens of unknown factors. It's entirely possible they get those particular search results right for one person and wrong for someone else, and nobody will ever know why.

Which makes things worse in a way - just like with LLM AIs, you can never be sure that what they give you is actually right unless you already know, so there's much less point in using them at all.

I'm not entirely sure what to say to someone who genuinely hasn't noticed that Google search results have gotten a lot worse in the last 5 years or so, regardless of whether any individual search result was right or wrong.