Comment by flomo
21 days ago
Right, the classic google search results are still there. But even before the AI Overview, Google's 'en' plan has been to put as many internal links at the top of the page as possible. I just tried this and you have to scroll way down below the fold to find Barry's homepage or substack.
No, the search queries are likely run through a similar "prompt modification" process as on many AI platforms, and the results themselves aren't ranked anything like they used to be. And, of course, Google killed the functionality of certain operators (+, "", etc.) years ago. Classic Google Search is very much dead.
At some point, Google search was so good that you didn't really need the operators, like you weren't just prodding some primitive AltaVista to give the results. So I think "almost nobody used that" came long before the en-plan of filling the top 50% with internal links.
Was there ever an announcement regarding the elimination of search operators? Or does Google still claim they are real?
Nothing for "" afaik. + was killed to make Google+ discoverable (or so Google claimed at the time).