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Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#51

Post by akvadrako »

sumtechguy wrote: post #31
notreallyserio wrote: post #15

Way, way worse. There was a time you could force Google to only return pages with a specific term by wrapping it in double quotes (or further back, prefixing with a plus). This was useful when trying to learn about a specific error message/code. Now, it's a total crapshoot, and you may not get a single useful result at all.

For many searches like that I use 'tools->all results->verbatim'. Seems to help.

I've been using the verbatim mode by default for a couple years. It does improve the results substantially.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#55

Post by deadalus »

Yandex destroys Google when it comes to 'search by image'. The AI recognition is incredible and it can pull results from some very weird places.

Bing video search is obviously the best choice when it comes to porn.

Brave Search is getting very close to Google for almost 90% of text searches.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#56

Post by hoffspot »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #6
fsflover wrote: post #2

Yes, since a long time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 . > Any pro tips on how to google Pro tip: try DuckDuckGo, https://ddg.gg .

Google's search quality has definitely gotten worse, but DuckDuckGo is still worse than Google. I have DuckDuckGo as my default search engine but occasionally will Google something that DuckDuckGo can't find and Google has it on the first page.

I have this exact same usage pattern. I try to use Firefox and DDG exclusively but when a site borks or the search results are unusable in DDG, it's back into the Google ecosystem with me.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#57

Post by micromacrofoot »

jeffbee wrote: post #48
micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avo…

Isn't this just a defect in the corpus? There is likely no quantitative, objective information about the warmth of winter coats in articles that would include the phrase "warmest winter coat" because someone who undertook an objective analysis would be uncomfortable using that phrase, which has no real meaning. With your refinement, adding "reddit" to the end of the search, you just get a bunch of randos holding fort…

The first results used to be blog posts, forum discussions, etc... I'm not expecting scientific accuracy (it's a bonus if I find it)... I'm expecting personal investigations and opinions. I'm ok with that. I'm not ok with content marketing supplanting it. The entire front page of a search is often some "blogs" listing products with affiliate links and no actual experience. The information is outrageously shallow and the search results as listed try to hide this.

> "R-values of winter coats"

This is a valid alternative... but I don't want to be an expert on winter coats to be able to Google basic information. I'd have to weed through a fair amount of marketing content to even find that the phrase "r-value" exists. In the past this wasn't necessary.

The internet used to be primarily a place for people to connect and share information... and now it feels like primarily a place to be advertised to. There's also the fact that many ads have evolved beyond simple billboards to psychological manipulative clickbait.

It's completely anecdotal and tangential to this topic, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the way marketing manipulates people has created unhealthy amounts of skepticism that further fuels the affinity for conspiracy theories... which tend to be so toxic that they're almost inoculated from marketing.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#58

Post by jazzyjackson »

drainyard wrote: post #42
flacebo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "people also searched for" box is not just useless, but also very much messing with usability for me. Every time I click on a link, go back, then trying to click on the next link, this box shows up and I accidentally click on that (because it shows up with a little delay and an animation). This filter takes care of that box completely: www.google.com##.exp-outline www.google.com##[style="display: block; opacity:…

I cannot stress enough how infuriating it is when a page loads content under my mouse cursor at such a delay that I can manage to point at a link and click on it _before_ the new content is loaded so that I click/tap an unexpected link. This happens _all_ the time on the Twitter app search bar.

bad enough when it’s accidental, more infuriating when it’s done with a profit motive

theverge.com presents a “show comments” button that shifts out of the way to reveal the worthless taboola links, I honestly don’t know how it isn’t considered click fraud

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#59

Post by freediver »

If you email me, I will send an invite to Kagi Search beta which deals with the problems you mentioned, namely:

- A ranking algorithm that penalizes commercial and ad/tracking bloated pages

- Ability to "mute" or "prefer" domains

- Ability to search for discussions

- Customize type and appearance of search results

Kagi Search is a new startup in the search space and we are currently in the closed beta.

https://kagi.com

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#60

Post by jeffbee »

alangibson wrote: post #28
aceazzameen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, we just need one that works the way Google used to work. You know, something like the old algorithm that made Google famous and made competitors obsolete.

The hard part of what Google does is spam and abuse prevention. If you only indexed known-good sources I think the hard part would basically be done. Providing good search results, rich queries, sentiment analysis etc is all old hat by now.

"Known-good" sources have a serious habit of getting owned by malware and replaced by organized crime schemes. Anti-abuse can't be handled by whitelists, it needs to be an online system.
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