Drama and protests from users of social media discussion website Reddit have highlighted weaknesses in Google’s search functionality, the search engine giant has admitted.
In the past couple of weeks, virtual protests have taken place across various sections of Reddit. Thousands of subreddits, which are individual community forums on the websites, have become unavailable to users. This is due to Reddit’s plans to renovate the payment structure of its application programming interface (API), which has threatened the use of third-party apps on the platform.
However, the effects of these protests have not only affected regular Reddit users, but more casual Google search users too. Often, many searchers will add the word ‘reddit’ to the end of their Google searches in order to find a subreddit that matches their query. The idea is that information, perspectives and discourse found on Reddit is typically more authentic than traditional Google search results.
For example, if you search ‘Embarrassing first date’ into Google, the top result you’ll find is a Buzzfeed list of 15 Embarrassing First Date Stories, a page that aggregates and summarises other people’s tales into a tight, easy-to-read list of content. By simply adding ‘reddit’ to the end of the search, you will be presented with a number of different Reddit threads, with hundreds, if not thousands, of comments from Reddit users telling their individual stories in various lengths and tones.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has admitted that users are appending their searches with ‘reddit’ to find more comprehensive answers to their queries. The search engine has, therefore, declared that its newly announced ‘Perspectives’ feature may be the solution to these problems. Perspectives is a search tool designed to give users access to more authentic and comprehensive search results provided by real humans.
However, the company has also admitted that this new feature, along with the development of artificial intelligence, will not be enough on its own to solve Google’s search issues.
Not only do users tend to prefer comprehensive, human results, but Google also appears to be focusing on these matters. For authentic online content that is always written by real humans who understand your business, speak to Engage Web today.
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