Ask HN: Has Google Search's index shrunk?
I've noticed that when I'm finally able to force my way past its behind-the-scenes AI query butchering, the number of pages that it's able to return is limited. Much more so than even a few years ago. Is it conceivable that Google has not only curtailed its forward indexing, but also purged some of its historical index (particularly of less popular pages)? I'll give my suspected reason: they're simply running out of cheap storage. From a layman's perspective, the loss of webpage caches, various aspects of their cloud storage situation (increased usage by users, increased pricing, incidents like the accidental loss of many users' location history), the data-heavy nature of their AI ventures, and the pace of data center buildout, all point (circumstantially) to data storage woes. But I don't have any direct insight or experience with these matters. So I'm wondering if anyone else is coming to similar conclusions, or at least has similar suspicions.
Yes, I’ve noticed this too; older blog posts, forums, and niche docs I used to find via Google just don’t show up anymore. I now rely on site-specific searches (site:example.com), Reddit, and even DuckDuckGo for deeper results. It feels like Google prioritizes fresh, SEO-optimized content and buries everything else. I don't think it's just storage. It might also involve cost-to-crawl ratio and directing users to commercial content. Long-tail web feels like it’s vanishing.
I'd strongly recommend to find a working SearXNG instance but if you don't want to deal with it, Bing's index (for whatever reason particularly the one used to power Yahoo) is currently pretty good at searching niche websites.
Google Search is 95% unusable as of 2025. I don't want to use it anymore (as opposed to always wanting to use it because it did the job best). Search results it offers are either paid or LLM generated garbage. From Google's perspective, it is insane to destroy the quality of a market-leading product like this, or it is very intentional to drive users to LLMs for much better user manipulation and cashing opportunities. Of course, at some point users must pay LLMs. They will become like O365, it is just mandatory to pay at least 4,99/month at minimum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-opBifFfsMY
I always used to do site: queries in Google to see what pages it finds for certain sites. Now I do it in Bing and it returns more results. Bing also seems to completely ignore robots.txt too (not proven, just anecdotal), so that may also be why (dont care as a searcher tho as it benefits me)
Why bother giving you good results? Discerning users, power users, have already given up with Google's search.
By going back they just use you like the more gullible wallet to bleed that you show them you are. You may think you're not, but to Google all you are is a likelihood to keep coming back to be siphoned of financial blood.
I don't know if it's actually shrunk (I suspect not) but it's become much more restricted in what results are actually given
That's a funny take. From users perspective both are exactly the same.
Yep. I’ve seen this too.
Every once in a while Google won't find what I'm looking for -- but when I cut-and-paste the same search terms into Bing it finds it on the first try.