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Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

forbes.com

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Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#31

Post by simula67 »

Do people really think search is a solved problem ?

I still have difficulty finding information I need for work from company Intranets

I still have difficulty finding really local information

I still have trouble finding news that is objective and not slanted or click bait

I still have difficulty finding recommendations on finding recommendations for good books to read

It seems to be like Google has really dropped the ball on search since they acquired "lock-in" through Gmail, Chrome sync, Android etc.

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#32

Post by rurban »

simula67 wrote: post #31

Do people really think search is a solved problem ? I still have difficulty finding information I need for work from company Intranets I still have difficulty finding really local information I still have trouble finding news that is objective and not slanted or click bait I still have difficulty finding recommendations on finding recommendations for good books to read It seems to be like Google has really dropped th…

For cooperate intranets Google is not a possibility. There xapian, elasticsearch or lucene are the best, with xapian dominating the backend and the Java stuff the frontends.

For the others SEO optimizations are a real problem, yes. You can only try alternatives, like searx.to, bing or asking around.

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#33

Post by angry_octet »

rurban wrote: post #32
simula67 wrote: post #31

Do people really think search is a solved problem ? I still have difficulty finding information I need for work from company Intranets I still have difficulty finding really local information I still have trouble finding news that is objective and not slanted or click bait I still have difficulty finding recommendations on finding recommendations for good books to read It seems to be like Google has really dropped th…

For cooperate intranets Google is not a possibility. There xapian, elasticsearch or lucene are the best, with xapian dominating the backend and the Java stuff the frontends. For the others SEO optimizations are a real problem, yes. You can only try alternatives, like searx.to, bing or asking around.

Most corporate information isn't accessible via http. Even SMB is being deprecated, in favour of proprietary document databases, where companies are locked into to extremely expensive but feebly engineered "solutions".

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#34

Post by frandroid »

jjeaff wrote: post #20
condiment wrote: post #10

I use million short to search for howtos written by real craftsmen in their field. One example is an end-grain cutting board that I made recently. For most things Ike that, the top 1000 are dominated by made-for-Pinterest blogs or major sites that aggregate low quality content that's good enough to get hits but not good for much more than that.

What would we do without the garbage content that is eHow and wikiHow?

I had a friend who had a whole list of dozens of banned sites configured for his google searches, which made Google way more useful. And then one day, Google decided to cut that feature out, as part of their drive to remove power user features across their products.

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#36

Post by radmarshallb »

frandroid wrote: post #35

"Nice startup you have there. We have found that users like what you do, so we've added your algorithm as an option on our search engine. Your business case just vapourized." --Google

This would skip a lot of the sites that buy ads from Google in the first place. They'd probably rather just purchase it and shut it down.

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#37

Post by sytelus »

I tried out few popular queries where it's hard to find great content which is not extensively SEOed and this is working great! Sure, results are bit sparse but this is great tool to find good content that would be otherwise buried beyond 10 pages. Now I think about it, there are lot of URLs that is sourced by reputable authors on twitter, hn, Reddit etc - many of which would be example of "dark content" - i.e. Not easily found unless right keywords are entered. For example, search for neural network from scratch and you are unlikely to find great quality implementation like Layered [1] in any of the search engines. Instead you will only find what was extensively linked by others.

[1] https://github.com/danijar/layered

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#38

Post by vanderZwan »

serveboy wrote: post #13

I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/g-search-filt... for filtering Google. Can't live without it. It would be interesting to have a Github repo with some precompiled filters based on certain business domains. But for me at least, a couple of rules are enough to solve 99% of the problems.

I'm using DuckDuckGo and I just realised I should install something similar, thanks!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ddg-hide-unwa...

EDIT: You can actually achieve something similar with bookmarks, using keywords and '%s'

The idea is: take a link to a search query string of a search engine, and replace the query part with '%s'. For example, take the following search query on DuckDuckGo:

    cute hedgehog -site:www.pinterest.com -site:boredpanda.com -site:amazon.com -site:etsy.com
This results in:

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cute+hedgehog+-site%3Awww.pinterest.com+-site%3Aboredpanda.com+-site%3Aamazon.com+-site%3Aetsy.com&t=ffab&ia=web
Bookmark that, and replace the "cute+hedgehog" part with "%s", then edit the bookmark and add (for example) "ddg" to the "keyword" section, then typing in:

    ddg cute hedgehog
... will send you to:

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cute+hedgehog+-site%3Awww.pinterest.com+-site%3Aboredpanda.com+-site%3Aamazon.com+-site%3Aetsy.com&t=ffab&ia=web

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#39

Post by vanderZwan »

taxonomyman wrote: post #17

We're actively working to add lots of features on Million Short in 2018. I'd be happy to add any feature requests to our roadmap planning.

If I block ads on principle, but still want to support your site because I like the service, what are my options?

Also, adding a Dark Theme to the settings would be nice! (I'm trying to minimise the amount of light I'm exposed to at night to reduce eye-strain)

Re: Million Short allows users to remove up to the top 1M sites from a search set

#40

Post by Chriky »

rurban wrote: post #32
simula67 wrote: post #31

Do people really think search is a solved problem ? I still have difficulty finding information I need for work from company Intranets I still have difficulty finding really local information I still have trouble finding news that is objective and not slanted or click bait I still have difficulty finding recommendations on finding recommendations for good books to read It seems to be like Google has really dropped th…

For cooperate intranets Google is not a possibility. There xapian, elasticsearch or lucene are the best, with xapian dominating the backend and the Java stuff the frontends. For the others SEO optimizations are a real problem, yes. You can only try alternatives, like searx.to, bing or asking around.

> xapian, elasticsearch or lucene are the best, with xapian dominating the backend and the Java stuff the frontends

Elasticsearch uses Lucene under the hood, in my experience Lucene dominates the actual indexing and searching, although I'm not familiar with xapian.

By users, I reckon SharePoint search (FQL) is probably the biggest although it is way behind Lucene in features.

Google actually used to sell bright yellow branded racks that they would come and install on corporate networks to provide a "private Google" but I'm not sure if they still do.

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