Hi Google, please stop pooping the bed: a desperate plea from the indie web

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Perceived Decline in Google Search Quality

  • Many commenters say Google results are significantly worse than ~8–10 years ago: more SEO sludge, affiliate spam, ads “above the fold,” and irrelevant “AI/semantic” guesses even for exact-phrase queries.
  • Examples cited: incorrect fact answers, generic product-recommendation pages, and spammy affiliate lists ranking over more substantive content.
  • A minority report Google still works fine for them, especially for basic facts and media lookups.

Alternatives and User Migration

  • Strong enthusiasm for Kagi; several say they rarely or never “!g” back to Google after switching. DuckDuckGo and Brave Search get mixed reviews; some find them improved, others still fall back to Google.
  • Perplexity is praised for deep technical queries and “dialogue-style” refinement, with caveats about hallucinations.
  • Niche “indie web”–oriented engines (Marginalia, Wiby, Exa) are recommended for discovering small sites, but seen as specialized or limited.
  • Some argue “just stop using Google,” others call this a “load‑bearing just” that ignores how hard it is to move the general public.

Impact on Indie / Small Sites and SEO

  • Many small-site operators report severe traffic drops tied to recent Google updates; others say their indie sites are stable or growing.
  • There is debate whether Google is unfairly demoting “good” indie sites or reasonably down-ranking affiliate-heavy pages that resemble spam.
  • Some argue that optimizing for Google has always been fragile; building for humans and diversifying traffic sources is safer.

Debate Over What Counts as “Indie Web”

  • Tension over using platforms like Substack or analytics/ad networks while claiming “indie” status.
  • One side: “Indie” means self-hosted, owned infrastructure, minimal tracking.
  • Other side: “Indie” is about individual creators and small teams, regardless of tools, monetization, or CDNs.

Economic Incentives, Enshittification, and Regulation

  • Many tie Google’s behavior to ad-driven incentives, “late-stage capitalism,” and “enshittification”: prioritizing revenue and big brands (e.g., large media, big retailers) over user value.
  • Some call for antitrust action or “search neutrality” laws; others doubt regulation will meaningfully change incentives.

Proposed Responses and Limits

  • Suggested responses: switch search engines, pay for non-ad search, block trackers/ads, build and use small-web search engines.
  • Skeptics note network effects, habits, and monopoly power make broad change difficult; individual defection helps personally but may not fix the ecosystem.