Why Everyone's Googling "How to Google" (And What That Says About Everything)
The Search for Search Itself
Yesterday, I fell down a rabbit hole. Started with a simple question about local coffee shops and ended up... nowhere useful. Just ads, affiliate links, and AI-generated garbage pretending to be reviews.
Sound familiar?
Turns out I’m not alone
I spent the evening digging through Reddit threads (ironic, right?) and discovered something wild: people are literally searching for how to search. Not kidding. The most popular queries right now aren’t about finding information—they’re about finding how to find information.
We broke the internet, folks. And I mean that literally.
The Great Google Exodus Nobody’s Talking About
Google is killing search because it’s not profitable anymore. Here’s what’s actually happening out there. Regular people—not tech nerds, just regular people trying to find stuff—are jumping ship from Google faster than rats from the Titanic. They’re migrating to DuckDuckGo, Brave, something called SearXNG (which sounds like a prescription drug but whatever).
One Reddit user nailed it: “They seem to be relying more heavily on individual keywords and not on the entire sentence and it is not working.”
Translation? Google stopped listening. It’s just playing word association games now.
But here’s the kicker—and this is where it gets properly dystopian—people on Reddit are freaking out about their own platform dying. Why? Because Google’s new AI summaries are cannibalizing everything. Those neat little answer boxes? They’re killing the need to actually visit websites. Including Reddit.
(Side note: Remember when we used to complain about Wikipedia killing research? Those were the days.)
The TikTok Tea Leaves and Other Modern Mysteries
Meanwhile, over on TikTok, creators are staring at their analytics like they’re ancient scrolls. “What does it mean when my username is a top search?””Does 28% of my views mean people are stalking me?”
The thing is, they’re not being paranoid. They’re trying to decode a system that was never meant to be understood. It’s like reading the Matrix, except nobody’s Neo and we’re all just… confused.
And content creators? Lord help them. They’re using tools with names like AnswerThePublic (which, let’s be honest, sounds like a failed reality show) to reverse-engineer what humans want. We’ve gone from creating what matters to creating what ranks. From art to algorithms. I love the site btw
What We’re Really Searching For
Here’s what breaks my brain about all this: We’ve created a system so complex that we need search engines to find search engines.
Think about that for a second.
It’s like needing a map to find the map store. Or GPS to locate your GPS. We’re lost in our own creation, and the irony is killing me.
You know what this reminds me of? My first day in ministry school. Professor asked us: “What’s the difference between knowing about God and knowing God?” Seemed like semantics at the time. Now? Now I get it. We’ve built a world that knows everything about everything but can’t actually find anything.
The Death of Digital Serendipity
Remember stumbling onto weird websites at 2 AM? Finding that blog post that changed how you thought about something? That one forum thread that solved your obscure problem?
Dead. All dead.
Now we get “10 Best [Whatever] in 2024” lists written by bots, optimized for keywords, containing exactly zero useful information. It’s Content Farm Hell, and we’re all trapped in it.
The worst part? We did this to ourselves. Every SEO hack, every keyword stuff, every “growth hack”—we optimized the soul out of the internet. And now we’re surprised it’s soulless.
So What Do We Actually Do?
Look, I don’t have all the answers. (Nobody does, despite what the AI summary boxes claim.) But I know this: the solution isn’t a better search engine.
It’s remembering how to wander. How to explore without a destination. How to value the journey over the arrival.
Maybe we need to stop searching and start… browsing? Discovering? Hell, just clicking random links again?
Because here’s the truth nobody wants to admit: The best things I’ve ever found online? I wasn’t searching for them. They found me. In the spaces between intention and accident. In the glorious, inefficient, beautifully human mess of just… looking around.
The Bottom Line
We’re searching for how to search because we’ve forgotten how to seek. And those are two very different things.
One’s about efficiency. The other’s about wonder.
Guess which one we lost?
What are you really searching for? And more importantly—are you brave enough to find it? Whwt do you think about search, answer, and why people think Google is search engine
Thanks for hanging out in your inbox with me
Kevin
Founder Kevin Baker Consulting WorkSoul
Click/like/restack, okay? It’s the only way to get the algo interested to get this in front of more people
Kevin writes about leadership, technology, and the human experience at the intersection of both. When he’s not yelling at search engines, he’s helping leaders remember what actually matters. He runs Advisory Table peer mentoring groups, is a consultant, and educator.
You can find me here:
📍 X (Twitter) – @KevinBakerBiz 📍 Threads –@kevinbakerau
📍 Website: www.kevinbakerinc.com 📍 All my links
About the banner image: Children are still forming their worldview. They’re teachable, curious—and vulnerable. The image warns us: if we, as adults, accept polished AI “answers” without reflection, we may raise a generation that never learns how to wrestle with nuance or question what they’re given.
#DigitalWisdom #FutureOfSearch #HumanAgency #TechEthics #SearchVsAI