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Giving up on Google

robsheldon.com

31–40 of 192 posts

Re: Giving up on Google

#31

Wow, that blog design is beautiful. Anyways, I'd love to switch to DDG, but too often it tells me "No more results. Try Google.", and almost every time a subsequent search on Google provides me with many more (relevant) links for the same query. If DDG could be configured to basically be a proxy and fetch all of its results from Google, that'd be cool.

Those are usually cases where Google is changing the query and I am using it as is.

Re: Giving up on Google

#32

I really think this is a case of confirmation bias. We see Google approaching this dominating mass that's impossible to stop, so we begin looking for ways to tear down big brother and look for holes. So, we notice every spam entry. I work in search and I can't recollect a time EVER having been frustrated with what Google gave me - and having to go to another engine. And I live, eat, & breathe the thing. I understand…

>> I really think this is a case of confirmation bias. We see Google approaching this dominating mass that's impossible to stop, so we begin looking for ways to tear down big brother and look for holes. I think that this is a case where we were comparing Google to what existing before (Yahoo, etc), and thought "this is great". Now we compare Google only to what we think it 'should' be.

And we never imagine what the internet would be like without Google. You think spam is bad now? It's possible that in a world without Google web search just wouldn't work because Bing or Yahoo (or altavista, cuil, powerset, or whoever) just couldn't deal with the spam.

Certainly Google isn't perfect, but they do a pretty good job combating web spam that is explicitly targeted at them.

Re: Giving up on Google

#33
Maybe a minor quibble, but isn't DDG powered by Yahoo BOSS with features added on top? Yet, Rob then goes on to say "Yahoo can't be taken seriously" and points out queries where Yahoo does a poor job of handing synonyms - DDG has the same problem for the exact same query if you try it. Furthermore, the other queries which he suggests give irrelevant results on Google seem to give me irrelevant results on DDG.

Re: Giving up on Google

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should add some kind of "I mean this word and only this word" symbol. Maybe backslash, since it's sort of like you're escaping the word. So in your case, you'd change "NSTableView" to "\NSTableView" and it would work.

In fairness, they have that already. If you wrap a word/phrase with quotes, they'll not screw around with their fancy word clustering.

Not really. I've had this break for me all the time when searching for programming terms.

Proof: Google for "what we have here is failure to communicate" http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3...

The first hit is the wiki article on the quote (good), but the exact search string is not present on the page.

Re: Giving up on Google

#35
Well, as a single sample, I tried the first thing that came to mind in google and duckduckgo. "breast shimming" which refers to the process of adjusting the magnetic field of a MRI scanner to obtain images of the breast (relevant to a project I'm working on). Every single duckduckgo result is irrelevant. Most of googles results are relevant. It's too bad because google is somewhat hit or miss for me. Someone needs to sic duck duck go on pubmed.

Re: Giving up on Google

#36
post #25

Just last Friday, I was pleasantly surprised to find Duck Duck Go is the only search engine (of those I tried) that shows me a hex color when I search it, e.g. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%23004499 And not long before, I searched for my oldest still-surviving site (on Angelfire). I discovered that while Google returned 20 garbage sites, they didn’t include mine; my site was the only one DDG returned.

Jesus christ that's horrible (the hex color thing).

It looks so NASTY.

Re: Giving up on Google

#38
Giving up on a blog that can't display the article in full without JavaScript. Progressive enhancement folks!

(Web apps get a pass, but if your site only needs to display text it should not require JS.)

Re: Giving up on Google

#39

I really think this is a case of confirmation bias. We see Google approaching this dominating mass that's impossible to stop, so we begin looking for ways to tear down big brother and look for holes. So, we notice every spam entry. I work in search and I can't recollect a time EVER having been frustrated with what Google gave me - and having to go to another engine. And I live, eat, & breathe the thing. I understand…

I think part of the problem is that for many people google is the internet. Even for me (pretty technically minded) if a few google searches doesn't find what I'm looking for it isn't on the internet, or might as well not be. I don't think I've even tried turning to another search engine in several years.

Re: Giving up on Google

#40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, they have that already. If you wrap a word/phrase with quotes, they'll not screw around with their fancy word clustering.

Not really. I've had this break for me all the time when searching for programming terms. Proof: Google for "what we have here is failure to communicate" http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... The first hit is the wiki article on the quote (good), but the exact search string is not present on the page.

No kidding! I thought that the quotes made the term inviolable. I wonder if this is new.

A big issue with Google is that, behind the scenes, things change without any outward guidance to longterm users on how to adjust.

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