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Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

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141–150 of 221 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#141
post #14

It isn't so much about whether "Google cares" or otherwise. There are a lot of sites and a lot of vested interests trying to game their search rankings, and a huge number of keywords that the game is playing out in. Sometimes low quality sites will have the advantage and sometimes high quality sites will have the advantage. Google is working with a bias to high quality, but they are fighting a broad fight against per…

How do you know this? Any links to read more?

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#142
post #137

Can someone explain to me why the video results are so bad? Half the time I'm looking for YouTube and YouTube never shows up? Was this due to a lawsuit or something? Half the time it's some random website that has a 2minute video before two 30second ad rolls, never what I want.

Not a snark, but why would you search for youtube videos on google, rather than on youtube?

YouTube's search isn't very good.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a long time since I had to append "wikipedia" to my search results, but within the last year or so, I find myself doing it more and more.

I use DuckDuckGo, it's really easy to end searches with "w!" and go straight to the Wikipedia page.

I didn't know you could put it at the end! I always bang first and ask questions later.

[edit] Just noticed you also live in Portland like me. If you're a bartender, I bet I've met you haha.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. No. The stuff just works. From the experience of having several critical business SaaS tools go thru constant UX changes that disrespect the user and make the product less stable, I'm actually glad Google still have some respect for the user. That's why i will gladly buy gsuite for the businesses i provide advice to, yet actively considering replacements of core business infra of which im a power user....for…

Just works? Have you tried moving a file in g drive?

I need to do this regularly. The UI for move file is atrocious!

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use DuckDuckGo, it's really easy to end searches with "w!" and go straight to the Wikipedia page.

I didn't know you could put it at the end! I always bang first and ask questions later. [edit] Just noticed you also live in Portland like me. If you're a bartender, I bet I've met you haha.

> I always bang first and ask questions later.

Definitely change your ways. It's always better to bang at the end.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#146

I've noticed in the past 2-3 months that results from StackOverflow, Wikipedia, and official programming language documentation sites seem to have been abruptly downranked. They used to typically be in the top 3 results for me for appropriate queries, but now they frequently aren't even on the first page.

Yes and on the other hand sites like codegrepper and other such scraper/scam sites are frequently showing in my search results - which are just SO results. I don't know if they're gaming Google's search or google is actually condoning this (like they've been condoning pinterest's shenanigans for almost 10 years now)

There is a ublock origin list which you can import to filter search results:

https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#147

Also talking about SEO it is all so gamified. how can I just write something relevant and not do all the “tricks” and still reach to audience

Isn't it just the nature of competition? I've got a wordpress website where I don't really do any SEO, but it is of much better quality (IMHO) than my competitors who are not great with tech, and I am getting a lot of top ranked google/google images results.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#148

I think the utility of generic search engines is coming to an end. Services like Google, Bing and DDG are numbered in usefulness. Instead, I am guessing (maybe hoping) that we see a return of the moderated directories, like Yahoo or DMOZ of old. A 2.0 spin on these directories, with lessons learned from all the years. Imagine that you just go to StackOverflow and search there directly for your answer. Want a funny la…

I've been coming to a similar conclusion. Increasingly I've had to use `site: ` syntax with DDG, but DDG has clearly become significantly worse in recent months. This was confirmed by others in another HN thread recently. Even if I use the site-syntax or use quotes to specify exact match (which DDG used to honor), I'll often get nonsense results whereas Yandex somehow manages to find results that aren't on DDG or Goo…

I've been using a browser extension aptly named "Search the current site". Just click the icon and type a search term, while being on that website. It will append site:domain to your search.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#149

I think the utility of generic search engines is coming to an end. Services like Google, Bing and DDG are numbered in usefulness. Instead, I am guessing (maybe hoping) that we see a return of the moderated directories, like Yahoo or DMOZ of old. A 2.0 spin on these directories, with lessons learned from all the years. Imagine that you just go to StackOverflow and search there directly for your answer. Want a funny la…

I hope to see the rise of distributed search. It's not that generic search is the problem, just that companies have different, and often counter, priorities than users.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. No. The stuff just works. From the experience of having several critical business SaaS tools go thru constant UX changes that disrespect the user and make the product less stable, I'm actually glad Google still have some respect for the user. That's why i will gladly buy gsuite for the businesses i provide advice to, yet actively considering replacements of core business infra of which im a power user....for…

Just works? Have you tried moving a file in g drive?

I wonder if they ever got Google docs to print/convert to pdf without disrupting the formatting.
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