Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 125 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#111

Post by arthev »

karimdag wrote: post #72
arthev wrote: post #67

Given that google is the de facto standard ATM and often returns irrelevant results, I'd wager that search isn't solved. "That does not by itself mean there's room for a new search engine, but lately when using Google search I've found myself nostalgic for the old days, when Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. Google used to give me a page of the right answers, fast, with no clutter. Now the results seem i…

> the Scientologist principle that what's true is what's true for you. Care to elaborate more on that ?

That was a quote. There was a link behind the quote.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#112

Post by jrumbut »

asperous wrote: post #71
arthev wrote: post #67

Given that google is the de facto standard ATM and often returns irrelevant results, I'd wager that search isn't solved. "That does not by itself mean there's room for a new search engine, but lately when using Google search I've found myself nostalgic for the old days, when Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. Google used to give me a page of the right answers, fast, with no clutter. Now the results seem i…

I would suppose that this change is less google changing and more the web changing as people pump out content marketing and SEO. Also might be "olden days were greener", I sure remember a lot of keyword stuffing back in the day.

There was, if anything, more search engine spam then. It's just that you got the tools to remove it yourself and then after 12-15 tries you got beautiful search results. Now they've gotten rid of that refinement process in favor of initial results that aren't spam but also aren't that exciting.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#113

Post by kjeetgill »

Grue3 wrote: post #56

No, it's not solved. Google utterly fails at it. I'm a person with simple needs. I mostly search in English, sometimes in Russian (which is my native language) and sometimes in Japanese (which I'm learning). These languages use completely disjoint sets of characters so it should be obvious to Google what I'm trying to do (since I'm logged in and they know all about me). There's also a setting that allows me to pick l…

Utterly fails is a little bit _too_ hyperbolic no? There are still immature frontiers, sure, but for most day to day search it's pretty magic to me still.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#114

Post by dredmorbius »

slyfocks wrote: post #36
nikanj wrote: post #29

If anything, it's an abandoned problem. A lot of companies bought really expensive enterprise search systems, which are sitting dormant because the results are so bad. With advances in spamming, internet/email search is getting to be a harder problem every year. I remember when Google was quite effective in finding what I need, but nowadays it's dismal. As an example, I googled for "storename return policy", and got…

Lately, it has felt like Google has become more optimized for less intelligent/tech-savvy users (i.e. people who search using natural language e.g. “tell me the store policy for target please”). In these cases many of the words used are either irrelevant or counterproductive. I’ve noticed Facebook’s search has started catering to the lowest common denominator as well. Searching for (made-up example) “Louis Potter” us…

The tyranny of the minimum viable user.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#115

Post by vram22 »

arthev wrote: post #67

Given that google is the de facto standard ATM and often returns irrelevant results, I'd wager that search isn't solved. "That does not by itself mean there's room for a new search engine, but lately when using Google search I've found myself nostalgic for the old days, when Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. Google used to give me a page of the right answers, fast, with no clutter. Now the results seem i…

>Now if I accidentally put the cursor in the wrong place, anything might happen.

That literally happens to me sometimes when using Gmail (in regular, i.e. JS-enabled mode, not in HTML UI mode).

Sometimes when I move my cursor around with the arrow keys (e.g. up or down), the cursor suddenly vanishes when it reaches some part of the email I am writing or replying to.

Sometimes it happens near the quoted part of the email (the part I'm replying to), or something else. Irritating. Then I have to scrap the email and rewrite it, and maybe if I am lucky I can copy (some of) the text I've written and paste it into the new version.

I think it is some issues with their JS or CSS, also maybe related to monitor size and resolution.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#116

Post by dredmorbius »

I'm increasingly thinking that a problem with search is inconsistent and nonstandard (or nonexistent) conventions, protocols, and APIs.

It seems to me that a fair bit of the search problem could be addressed by sites themselves serving wordlists, tuples, statistically improbable terms (there's another term for this that's escaping me), etc., rather than consenting to being heavily crawled by numerous spiders.

Vastly improved content metadata (particularly for largely fixed "article" content), including author, date, and (a reliable) topical categorisation would help. For realtime information, APIs are probably more reasonable than text search, though those would likely be front-ended by specific applications.

This still leaves the very nontrivial problems of reputation, relevance, black-hat SEO, and information manipulation (propaganda, misinformation, misdirection, disinformation), and just plain street-grade idiocy.

But several elements of this strike me as amenable to either localised or distributed solutions.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#117

Post by PaulHoule »

Balgair wrote: post #107
arthev wrote: post #67

Given that google is the de facto standard ATM and often returns irrelevant results, I'd wager that search isn't solved. "That does not by itself mean there's room for a new search engine, but lately when using Google search I've found myself nostalgic for the old days, when Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. Google used to give me a page of the right answers, fast, with no clutter. Now the results seem i…

Is it the MBAs that do this to good products? Google maps was better 7 years ago too. The best way I have heard this process described is 'the elves leaving middle earth' : https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear... Anyone else know why Google is going full Kodak? EDIT: It's the SEO/spammers/viruses type folks, isn't it? Seems like a good candidate.

Actually it is in Google's favor to "lose" the SEO wars.

So long as the paid ads are more relevant than the search results, the less likely you are to scroll past the ads and find the "real" search results, which are either repeats of the paid results or spam.

Google can always blame the spammers and they can control them entirely by turning them off when they feel like it so there is no motivation for the spammers to invest in improving their sites, or not for anyone else for that matter. (Google can always turn you off)

After all if you want more visibility in Google, Google wants you to buy ads.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#119

Post by gremlinsinc »

Search can cover other domains too... what about an AI that can search books/research articles/lectures/videos to diagnose a medical disease - some of which aren't actually published live to the internet (perhaps behind paywalls) -- then it takes a person's current symptoms and comes up with the best diagnoses from it's search across multiple media types.

How about search in the context of AR... if people overlay data on top of the world we live in, in AR apps, will there be searchable things there? There's room for search related projects in the future, but it just matters what the data is, and why it's being searched.

Normal search 'engines' for web documents --- that itself seems pretty much 'won' by google, until something better comes along (an implant that has better search than google, and I only need to think about what I want to search for then I automatically download the data to my brain for the top 10 results)

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#120

Post by basch »

basch wrote: post #109
slyfocks wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately, it has felt like Google has become more optimized for less intelligent/tech-savvy users (i.e. people who search using natural language e.g. “tell me the store policy for target please”). In these cases many of the words used are either irrelevant or counterproductive. I’ve noticed Facebook’s search has started catering to the lowest common denominator as well. Searching for (made-up example) “Louis Potter” us…

facebook used to let you do direct knowledge graph searches "restaurants liked by people who like Joe's Pancakes and Green Dragon Mexican Pizza" "movies liked by people who are friends with people who like Back to the Future and Arrested Development" "people who live nearby and like Green Dragon Mexican Pizza and Arrested Development" "friends of friends of friends who like Arrested Development and Joe's Pancakes" "F…

https://code.facebook.com/posts/153625638171563/under-the-ho...
Post reply on HN