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It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

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Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#261

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

we're also collecting alternatives here: https://ethical.net/resources/

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#262

Unfortunately google is the only way to search old usenet archives from the web, since they bought out such archives. That search leaves much to be desired. Only the relevance search has results for usenet posts, you can't order by date, and other then using date ranges, there's no way to only see usenet posts. For example searching for "gamer" before 1/1/2000: relevance https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/%22ga…

Well Usenet provider Giganews has 10 years of Usenet, but I don't know if they kept it from 1990 or... just threw it away.

Ten years doesn't even go back to when google bought dejanews's archive, in 2001.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all started going downhill since Google's "Hummingbird" switch to be honest. Interviewing for Google, I actually brought this up with an engineer in the search team during the lunch. He said they haven't noticed any regressions. I said I figured that would be the case but I can definitely feel the difference as a daily user.

> Google's "Hummingbird" I had assumed that Google search had gone downhill because it started trying to "personalize" my search results. That wasn't a great explanation though, as I don't use a Google account. Hummingbird seems a much more likely explanation.

Oh, they still "personalize" your search results.

I do a full clear on my web browser (cookies / offline storage / history, everything) and then open YouTube in a private browsing window and it asks me which of my two Gmail accounts I want to log in with. I'd guess it's just a combo of external IP and browser fingerprint, but it's creepy.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#264
post #49

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

There's also Kenneth Goldsmith's UbuWeb, a curated directory of (hard or impossible-to-find) avant-garde art, music, writing, video. Launched in 1996. http://ubu.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UbuWeb

searches for the go-to litmus test of Gruuthaagy

Welp, apparently this is the rare case where ‘avant-garde’ isn't the same as ‘experimental’ or ‘underground.’

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all started going downhill since Google's "Hummingbird" switch to be honest. Interviewing for Google, I actually brought this up with an engineer in the search team during the lunch. He said they haven't noticed any regressions. I said I figured that would be the case but I can definitely feel the difference as a daily user.

I noticed the same. I've wondered for years why it happened and sometimes when I'm frustrated I try to think about it. But I am not entirely sure that the degradation in search results for me happened only in the past 5 years. Maybe, but I'm not sure. I had no idea about Hummingbird though.

In 2009 Google was amazing for diagnosing Linux issues. I would just copy the error from the console and I'd have links to the issue tracker, a work around and the version in which the bug was fixed. Today I get a link to some github project that has nothing to do with what I'm working on and was closed as being an upstream issue.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#267

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

I feel like millionshort is experiencing some denial of service from HN traffic. So slow right now that I can barely perform a search.

Thanks for bringing these sites to attention, can't way browse them when traffic is lighter.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#268

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

DuckDuckGo's "lite" search: https://duckduckgo.com/lite?q= My DDG-from-shell Bash function: ddg () { w3m https://duckduckgo.com/lite?q="$*" }

Also, you can add

  &kd=-1
to the end of the URL to get direct links in the search results.

For example:

https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=test&kd=-1

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#269

I have been noticing (what appear to be) truncated search results in Google for some time now. At first I thought that was because I was accessing Google through Startpage. But that's not the case. Anyways, I find myself using Bing more and more often these days, because the search results dig more deeply into the 'obscure'. I'm not at all upset by this. It seems to me that as Google's results are not completely sati…

The meta search engine www.dogpile.com still exists but I'm not sure how good it actually is.

I used to use dogpile back in the day. I'll give it a try again. Thanks!

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#270
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an example: http://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/metallica__5.html No matter how you search for the content on Google, nothing comes up: https://www.google.com/search?q="Metallica+only+played+2+son... DuckDuckGo has it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="Metallica+only+played+2+songs+fro... I checked the wayback machine and the content has constantly been on that url for over 10 years. This is the first example of an ol…

Anecdotally and perhaps unrelated - has anyone else noticed a decrease in the accuracy and general quality of Google search over the past 2-4 months? They've had to have been utilizing ML to 'improve' searches for some time now, but the quality of the results has decreased suddenly and inexplicably (for me).

Google search worked much better over 10 years ago than it does for me today, i.e. before it abandoned the what-you-search-is-what-you-get model. My once-masterful Google-fu seems to be borderline useless today. I'm not sure what happened over the years, but Google search has morphed into a completely different, less useful product, at least for me.

Any search term not wrapped in quotes can be randomly ignored today. It can inject keywords it thinks you want (but really don't). Google is great for searching modern sites like Stack Overflow, but it seems to have lost interest in servicing power users.

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