If Google is a marketing and disinformation portal, not a search engine, then treat it as such

24.11.2025/23.47

I really dig where Strypey is going with this, from Mastodon (shared under CC BY-SA 4.0): A platform that respond to keywords with “AI” slop and advertising is not a search engine; a neutral tool for sifting through an index of web pages. Which is what Goggle Search offered to build its initial reputation and […]

Google searches aren’t straightforward any more

26.04.2025/04.04

I haven’t used Google as a default search engine for 15 years, so odds are I haven’t witnessed its enshittification as gradually as most people. To me it is a surprise when I see new bugs and errors. Have these errors simply increased so imperceptibly over time that people just accept them? This […]

Baidu’s “AI” image enhancement tested: clever, but like a hallucination

31.03.2025/09.43

Baidu has been offering “AI” enhancement of its images for a while, and yesterday I bit the bullet, created an account, and trialled it. It was a press image that I had in high-res, but Baidu’s image search, strangely, only had a low-res version of it. Could its “AI” turn it into a high-res image? […]

Duck Duck Go is probably scared of Mojeek

12.01.2025/02.06

Duck Duck Go serving a page after using the !lucire bang. The second result is a frameset that has not been linked to in over two decades, a sign of Bing being a Wayback Machine. As some of you know, I used Duck Duck Go as my principal search engine between 2010 and 2022, […]

Google results are old

12.10.2024/04.28

That Google seems to get older and older. Here are the top 10 for site:lucire.com as of October 10, 2024. The home page isn’t there, and maybe that’s OK. But what is there is the index.html file to the 2000 folder, which was put there to catch any programming errors (e.g. forgetting to […]

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The trials of removing disinformation from Bluehost

21.09.2024/04.56

Here’s a company that seems to protect sploggers and disinformation spreaders: Bluehost. One of the disinformation splogs had a Cloudflare account, which hid their real host. I filed a DMCA report, as this splogger was stupid enough to use my photo. These seem to get through the Cloudflare system better than things classified as ‘other’. […]

Semrush, according to a customer: ‘Their data made no sense’

16.09.2024/00.57

From a user on Reddit, _cth_. Need I say more? Semrush doesn’t care about how bad their product is, or the effect it has on the public. Here’s someone paying US$14,000 per month for junk, so imagine how bad the data must be for the free or lower-paying users. I would be surprised […]

Enforcing long-held laws: Google is a monopolist, violating Sherman Act s. 2

07.08.2024/12.10

Congratulations to the US Department of Justice on its first scalp in its antitrust lawsuit against Google, filed in 2020. Judge Mehta in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with the plaintiffs in United States et al v. Google LLC that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly […]

If Semrush won’t help fight disinformation, maybe their host will

31.07.2024/10.30

With the hundreds of disinformation posts about me out there, I began contacting hosts. Medium, I’ve noted elsewhere, has been great. Quora has also removed disinformation. Hostinger gives its clients three days to prove their side of the story, after which the page gets nuked since so far, none of their clients have been able […]

Nexorank: stay well away from this ‘international SEO agency’

14.04.2024/09.52

Just doing a little experiment with SEO. Nexorank has a couple dozen entries in Google for a search for its name. They say on Linkedin: Exciting news for businesses striving to boost their online presence! 🚀 We’re thrilled to announce our partnership with SEO expert Jack Yan. 🔍 With his proven track record of […]