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Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#181

Post by pedalpete »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #36

The short answer is YES, but the long answer is, if you're thinking about building a startup, this should NEVER be the question you ask. All successful companies that came out of nowhere and disrupted already stable industry never started out thinking "How do i build another X", "How do I disrupt X"? They all built something they thought was needed by the world and it went onto somehow "disrupt X". So if you're start…

Thank you so much for writing this @cocktailpeanuts, I'm surprised there is so much discussion around the 'yes/no' how to make the decision.

Ask better questions, and you'll get better answers.

So, the question shouldn't be 'Is there room for another search engine', but perhaps 'Would a better search engine ...', 'what comes after search engines'.

I think even looking at the 'flaws' of google aren't really going to give you a game changer. You'll find a whole that Google can easily fill.

Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#183

Post by angry-hacker »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #39
Analemma_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any search crawler that ignores robots.txt is going to be blocked by site operators in a hurry.

If Google today started ignoring robots.txt, not many people would start blocking Google's crawlers, assuming they continued to do their job efficiently. robots.txt is security by obscurity at best.

They do ignore robots.txt sometimes, the pages just font end up in serps.

Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#184

Post by gamzer »

dredmorbius wrote: post #90
kjhughes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To disable remapping of terms in Google, use verbatim search : On the search results page, choose "Search tools -> All results -> Verbatim"

There's no syntax of which I'm aware which tells Google to not "correct" or expand the results. When I'm seeking specific matches, I'm seeking really fucking specific matches. Google annoy me to no end.

I believe it was possible in the past using URL parameters (e.g. complete=0 to disable auto-suggest) but it does not seem to work anymore.

Here it was documented in 2012:

https://airstraining.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/google-search-...

There are (or at least were) others with related effects.

Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#185

Post by LiamBoogar »

atemerev wrote: post #84

Some ideas: 1) a good sitewide search engine. Google's offer is laughable, and Algolia is too developer-centric (requires pushing the data through API). What I'd want is a single input field where I can put my site's main page URL — and get a working search in a few minutes. 2) subscriptions / monitoring. I want to monitor some event or topic, and I want the updates to be delivered to e.g. my WhatsApp/Telegram/Slack/…

1) Swiftype (or any of Algolia's integrations - WordPress, ZenDesk, Shopify, Magento, ...) - here you talk about Algolia's developer focus, but the rest of your arguments are about the consumer experience. All search engines are built by developers/engineers, and Algolia delivers end-user experience on Twitch, Periscope, Medium, and even HackerNews (hn.algolia.com), which are exactly what you're looking for. You can actually use Algolia to create all the search engine experience ideas you have, and it takes less time (which you don't have)

2) Mention (http://mention.net)

3) Jelly (didn't work. Maybe there's a reason?)

4) Google / Wikipedia.

Unless you can build something 10x better than what exists,

Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#186

Post by dhimes »

matt4077 wrote: post #91
dhimes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone sees a search ad, they're actively looking for the item of interest and may be ready to buy. My experience with Google is the opposite of this. When people are searching google they are looking for information. When people go to Amazon they have their credit card in their hand. Most of my google-ad clicks (85% last check) are clearly not interested in buying what they are looking for. They are only on my…

I'm not sure if it works that way, but if you change to Pay-Per-Conversion, it would be in Google's interest to make ad quality depend on conversions-per-view. And – as just another anecdote – I have had continuing success over the last 8 to 10 years with search ads, while not having a single conversion with anything else (Facebook, youtube, twitter etc.) as far as I can tell.

What do you sell?

Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#187

Post by dhimes »

boto3 wrote: post #101
dhimes wrote: post #51

Here's what I want in a search engine: Charge me $15-25 dollars per year Let me decide what demographic information I wish to share- make it easy for me to control and help me protect my information. Because you are charging me money you can afford it and I trust you. Give me two search options: one, I'm only seeking information. two, I'm looking to buy. Do this for me as an advertiser: help me qualify the clicks I'm…

Google is making 50 USD per user, potentially an order of magnitude more from a US user from ads, so I am quite certain that your offer of $25 USD is a low baller :)

This is kind of their problem. I am not worth $500 as an advertising prospect on Google. If you come in with a way for advertisers to pre-qualify their prospects, they'll want to do business with you. We know we are throwing our money away with Google but they are the only game in town.

However, I am in a thread now with with matt4077 who says google is his best online lead generator, so there are obviously things to learn.

Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#188

Post by wildpeaks »

kjhughes wrote: post #34
thesmallestcat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are way more than two things that Google does wrong. Remapping my search terms into oblivion so it can pretend it's fast is the worst one. Especially when this happens to a query I've modified to quote "every" "single" "flipping" "term." I think Google is cheating, and that their usable index is much shallower than they'd have you believe. What's needed is a search engine with functional queries (as opposed to…

To disable remapping of terms in Google, use verbatim search : On the search results page, choose "Search tools -> All results -> Verbatim"

I wish there was a way to use both Verbatim and Date Range at the same time: you end up having to choose between recent but irrelevant results, or relevant but obsolete results.

Re: Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?

#190

Post by tinus_hn »

Animats wrote: post #58
Vinnl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7% for Bing? That's huge! (Also, how about DuckDuckGo? I've got the (admittedly gut) feeling that it should at least outperform Ask and Excite.)

DuckDuckGo didn't make the world list.[1] A US survey has them at 0.41%.[2] [1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as... [2] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/august-2016-search-marke...

They are a privacy minded search engine, it's quite possible such a survey would underestimate their share.
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