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Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#421

Post by georgemcbay »

RattlesnakeJake wrote: post #27

I use DuckDuckGo, with the occasional reddit !g appended if I'm looking for something experience-based. For me, searches fall into one of three categories, none of which are a good fit for LLMs: 1. A single business, location, object, or concept (I really just want the Google Maps or Wikipedia page, and I'm too lazy to go straight to the site). For these queries, LLMs are either overkill or outdated. 2. Product revie…

I still use google but I pretty much always append site:reddit.com to the query.

The answer I'm seeking is not always on reddit itself, but google limited to reddit is far more likely to give me quality starting links than google unbound is.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#424

Post by owenpalmer »

I wish search engine algorithms/SEO were versioned, which would allow you to get a more consistent experience. The same applies to system prompts of closed LLMs.

The most important part for me is understanding how to communicate with each system, whether it's google-fu or prompting.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#425

Post by shmerl »

Yes. But I noticed a trend of people asking stuff like "why doesn't this work" in various community forums, which ends up being them sourcing the method from the likes of ChatGPT / Gemini, etc. Lesson - don't do that, especially when you are going to be wasting others' time on explaining why things didn't work. Search things properly. Read documentation. Even if you use AI, never trust its results.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#426

Post by theamk »

ethbr1 wrote: post #180
eddd-ddde wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a different kind of data. Even without LLMs, sometimes I want a tutorial, sometimes I want the raw API specification. For some cases I absolutely prefer an LLM, like discoverability of certain language features or toolkits. But for the details, I'll just google the documentation site (for the new terms that the LLM just taught me about) and then read the actual docs.

Search is best viewed as a black box to transform {user intention} into {desired information}. I'm hard pressed to construction an argument where, with widely-accessible LLM/LAM technology, that still looks like: 1. User types in query 2. Search returns hits 3. User selects a hit 4. User looks for information in hit 5. User has information Summarization and deep-indexing are too powerful and remove the necessity of s…

Could never understand that obsession with summmarization. Sure, it may be be useful for long-form articles or for low-quality content farms, but most of the time you are not reading those.

And if you are reading technical docs, especially good ones, each word is there for a reason. LLM throw some that information away, but they don't have your context to know if the stuff they throw away is useful or not. The text the summary omitted may likely contain an important caveat or detail you really should have known before starting to use that API.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#427

Post by theamk »

supportengineer wrote: post #46
Okawari wrote: post #35

I still prefer tranditional search engines over LLMs but I admit, its results feels worse than it has traditionally. I don't like LLMs for two reasons: * I can't really get a feel for the veracity of the information without double checking it. A lot of context I get from just reading results from a traditional search engine is lost when I get an answer from a LLM. I find it somewhat uncomfortable to just accept the a…

Am I the only one who double checks all of the information presented to me, from any source?

Wait, so if you go to python.org and the doc page says, "Added in version 3.11", you double-check this?

What do you even use for double-check? Some random low-quality content farm? A glitchy LLM? An dodgy mirror of official docs full of ads? Or do you actually dig the source code for this?

And do you keep double-checking with all other information on the page... "A TOMLDecodeError will be raised on an invalid TOML document." - are you going to start an interactive session and check which error will be raised?

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#428

Post by theamk »

lopatin wrote: post #348
tiborsaas wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does a web search so you got more lucky. I searched for it because I found it on the product page of the manufacturer and I was interested in finding a place to buy it. Google offered me a few hits with existing businesses, with ChatGPT I need to do another query. Out of curiosity I tried it and it did take me to a wholesale company (single result), but the Google results are better with cheaper options (multiple…

Deep Research is great for specific stuff like this. https://chatgpt.com/share/67f5b165-b7c0-8000-b81c-4dc869e163... It did take more than a few minutes to do the research, looks thorough though.

that has zero information about prices or where to buy though?

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#429

Post by [deleted] »

drpixie wrote: post #361
bayindirh wrote: post #250

I use Kagi exclusively and refuse to offload my brain to a thing which has no accuracy guarantee ever. The emitted answers to the queries it has given can be completely bogus, and developers of these things low key expect me to believe what their black box say? Nah, never. Instead I use a search engine and do my own reading and filtering. This way I learn what I'm researching, too, so I don't fall into the vicious cy…

100% agree. Google recently (unrequested) provided me with very detailed AI generated instructions for server config - instructions that would have completely blown away the server. There will be someone out there who just follows the bouncing ball, I hope they've got good friends, understanding colleagues, and good backups!

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#430

Post by esperent »

caseyy wrote: post #417
esperent wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trust is completely gone I mean, for everyone else it was never there to begin with. Hallucinations are constantly raised as the biggest issues with AI. According to the tests, and my experience, newer AI models are objectively better, not worse than the ones from a few years ago. They still have a long way to go/may never be fully trustworthy though. What I have lost trust in, and what I and many feel has beco…

I think the old ones were more trustworthy, as the LLM wasn't used for knowledge retrieval. Instead, it wrapped around a search API and summarized the "10 blue links". That's not the case anymore. Now they produce the search results, hallucinating along the way.

> That's not the case anymore

Isn't that what ChatGPT/anthropic web access does?

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