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[ZeldaFighter]

I have "AIBU Women's" as a saved search term in Google. Usually this board is the second link behind AIBU itself.

Today, it is the seventh link. I was offered Reddit before this board. Over the last fortnight, I have been puzzled as the link is dropping like a stone down the page.

Now I'm thinking it's deliberate as Mumsnet gears up to be sold?

I think the other of links in search terms is personalised based on an algorithm which is based on what you interact with.

Perhaps you've been looking at this board less

I just googled and it came up first for me

It’s the second option for me.

Its quite an indirect search so I’d imagine results can fluctuate more than a direct search like “Mumsnet sex and gender” or something like that

I was going to post about how google has monetised its search function.

When I used you search term on google nothing came up in the first ten options I was offered.

To put this crudely it means when you search for something it no longer looks just at your words but matches it against the most popular search terms.

ie it is no longer a "search engine" it is presuming to tell you what you want is what most other say they want.

I have for years, possibly even decades search on women's groups and admittely not got a lot back, but it was women's groups.

Now thanks to the increase in interest in women's football, it new assumes if you say groups you really means teams, ie sport.

So have to search "women's groups" or women's+ groups and then add -sport -football - team

This is like going to a library in the olden days when you would ask a library assistant for a book and instead of them saying you will find it on shelf xxx they reply with the name and location of a totally different book but it is requested more often!!

"Google has monetized its search results primarily by transforming the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) from a simple list of organic links into a sophisticated, ad-driven marketplace. Over 75% of Google's revenue is generated from advertising, with search ads forming a massive portion of this, resulting in an estimated 1.8 billion ad clicks per month"

What changed with Google Search (in plain English)

1. Google stopped prioritizing literal meaning
Older Google tried to answer “what does this phrase mean?”
Modern Google tries to guess “what does most traffic probably want?”
So:

• “women’s group” → you mean women’s sports teams, right?
• even though group ≠ team in normal human language.

This is driven by engagement and monetization, not linguistic accuracy.

2. Semantic “AI understanding” is overconfident
Google now uses large language and entity models that:

• Collapse related words into the same concept
• Treat group / team / club / league as interchangeable if data trends overlap

This works okay for shopping and pop culture It’s terrible for social, academic, or exploratory searches. The system is essentially saying: “Most people who type this end up clicking sports — so that’s what we’ll show.”

3. SEO spam has won
Search results are now dominated by:

• Heavily optimized content farms
• Sites that chase keywords rather than meaning
• Pages written for Google, not people

Small, thoughtful, accurate pages (the kind Google used to surface) get buried.

4. Google no longer wants you to explore
Old Google was good for:

• Learning
• Browsing concepts
• Discovering categories of things

New Google is optimized for:

• Quick answers
• Shopping
• Ads
• Keeping you inside Google products

Exploratory searches like “women’s group” don’t fit that model.

Why this feels especially bad to people who’ve used Google for decades
You learned a mental contract:
If I choose my words carefully, Google will respect that precision.
That contract is broken.
You’re being forced to:

• Add exclusions (-sport -team)
• Use unnatural phrasing
• Fight the engine instead of collaborating with it

That does make it feel pointless.

Practical ways to get sane results again (unfortunately)

1. Force literal meaning
"women's group" -sport -team

2. Add intent explicitly
women's group organization community informal

3. Use alternative engines (this matters now)

• DuckDuckGo – better literal matching
• Brave Search – less SEO-poisoned
• Kagi (paid, but excellent) – closest to old Google

Many people who left Google say Kagi feels like 2008 Google.

The uncomfortable truth
Google didn’t “get worse” by accident.

It optimized for profit and scale, not human understanding.
For people who think carefully about language — academics, researchers, organizers, long-time users — it genuinely is worse.

Why are you googling the board rather than bookmarking it?

I dont bookmark a topic, I just "follow" them.

So when I open MN they appear at the top of the page. And then use notifications (which can get out of control admittedly)

I’m really worried about what’s going to happen around here when the site is sold.

Imagine if the owners had given it as a CIC, CIO or charitable company limited by guarantee for the good of women instead

I’m not a lawyer so there might have been another better model than these- but I think it would have been decent to keep MN in the public interest. Seems fairer given that the most part of the content and traffic is user generated by women, gratis to the private owners of the site.

There's a thread about what might happen.

dont think MN being taken over has anything to do with google search results!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5502702-mumsnet-founder-roberts-plots-delivery-of-new-owner

I don't think it is. Having read the OP I decided to search for a term that I used in a recent thread that I started on this board - the term wasn't included in the title, only in the body of my post.

I searched on google and there was a section on the first page of results headed 'Discussions and forums'. It appears that this is a bit where they look at results from reddit and other forums. The first result was from MN. See attached image.

In my own case, I never bookmark my own posts. But, the search function here is not great at all.

On more than one occasion I have been searching for an earlier post that I made but could not find it (I wished to copy something from an earlier post I had made). But if I google my username and the quote I'm looking for then google will find it.

Oh dear - maybe it isn't just google, but americanisation of language?

I tried the free version of Kagi which was highly recommended as being like "old google".

Sadly like google it assumed the word groups referred to sports teams.

Tried both groups and associations and go poor results.

However, and I dont know what this means in terms of techie thinking, but if I search for feminist+group it did know what a group was.

So why would search terms think the word group is different if you say women's+group to when you say feminist+group

Although Kagi did cut down only totally irrelevant search results.

I've never seen either board and I'd no idea Reddit was Mumsnet