The Decline of Search Engines is an Opportunity

# The Decline of Search Engines is an Opportunity Source: [https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/260609.html](https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/260609.html) 9 Jun 2026 The degradation of search engine capability is fairly undeniable at this point\. Google has been unusable for years, DuckDuckGo/Bing is steadily getting worse, and while Yandex is looking more impressive by comparison, it's still a few steps behind the old state of the art\. And youtube\.\.\. oh my god youtube\. At this point I instinctively avoid searching youtube at all \- the visceral disgust I experience upon seeing the countless of variations of the same empty face staring out at me against the same manicured titlecards, as if everyone is following the same "How To Drive Engagement With Your Videos" instruction guide \(which they almost certainly are\) is probably best shared with a mental health professional \(note to self: does my profile picture trigger the same in others?\)\. So, what is a long time netizen of the Information Super Highway to do? Kagi is often recommended but AFAICT relies on the 3 providers mentioned above\. LLMs[1](https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/260609.html#footnote-1)can search for me, but a non\-deterministic summary built on search results which are often themselves slop is just a Mad Cow Disease for the Mind\. No, if we want to solve this, we need to think outside the textbox\. Hyperlinks\. The answer is hyperlinks\. In my early days of the web I was constantly finding cool sites by clicking on the ubiquitous "links" page other cool sites always had\. Sometimes they were irrelevant, sometimes they were dead, but sometimes they really hit the mark and I found stuff I still remember to this day\. We're constantly bemoaning the centralized web\. But are we not Web Masters? Can we not simply link to the websites we enjoy? Every search engine turning to shit is an incredible opportunity if you look at it right\. So with that I introduce my`<blink\>NEW\!</blink\>`[links page](https://lewiscampbell.tech/links)\. This is not a "web ring", I'm not "following you back"\. It's just stuff I like\. I don't expect any of these sites to link back to me\. And if you decide to link to me, please don't expect me to link back either\. But nonetheless, link\! Link to whatever you want\! Make your own link page yours\. Take back the World Wide Web, one hyperlink at a time\. 1. This article has now been tagged "vibecoding" on lobste\.rs\.[↩](https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/260609.html#footnote-ref-1) --- Think I can help your company?[Get in touch](https://lewiscampbell.tech/contact.html)or[visit my consulting site\!](https://outdata.net/)