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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

#271

Post by pmoriarty »

lsiebert wrote: post #225

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…

I wonder how much it would cost to buy those Usenet archives back from Google. I can't imagine they're very profitable for them anymore (if they ever were).

Maybe archive.org could take this on.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#272

Post by dontbenebby »

Interesting that DuckDuckGo has it first.

Increasingly I've found if I know what I'm looking for (ex: a specific article or web page), DDG is quite good at finding it.

Google still excels where I'm looking for info on a topic but not sure what I need. (You end up treating search terms like labels on a venn diagram whereas DDG is more traditional, using search operators to prune the list of possible sites)

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#273

Post by wishinghand »

kickscondor wrote: post #17

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 like that href.cool project! I also just got started looking into GM'ing a Dungeon World campaign so that DW Improv link came in handy.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#275

Post by dcbadacd »

reaperducer wrote: post #111
specialist wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to check your access logs, see if google how much google, others are spidering? I know very little about google's SOP, but had the impression they periodically rescan stuff.

I've built new sitemaps, submitted them to Webmaster Tools (or whatever they're calling it this week), requested a re-spider, everything. Duck Duck Go finds it and shows it. According to the logs, Google spiders it, but chooses not to show it.

Google's spider is weird anyways. I have a site that has sitemaps submitted like three months ago and it still hasn't taken a look at them.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#276

Post by lubujackson »

addicted wrote: post #99
andrewprock wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is fine, and search is fine. It's specifically Google search that's being destroyed by spam. It's odd to put forward the hypothesis that DuckDuckGo is now better at search (aggregation) than Google is at search. But that seems to be where we have landed.

I think it may be a simple consequence of the fact that Google Search is increasingly less of a searching engine and more of an answering engine. I think Google has been explicit about this (I may be wrong, but I seem to remember thinking about this because Google themselves said it). Essentially, I believe, they are no longer concerned about being a way to navigate all the material found on the internet. Instead, th…

That's exactly it.

A few years ago they made a push to answer questions to the point it was in their product description on their "how Google search works" page. To quote it exactly, it used to say their objective is to "return timely, high-quality, on-topic, answers to people's questions."

And that's kind of the whole problem and why there is space for a search that actually returns results from the web in a clear and logical way.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#278

Post by wyck »

WalterGR wrote: post #277
wyck wrote: post #109

Matt Cutts fallout.

What do you mean?

Matt did an incredible job at Google search and left in 2016, since then it's been downhill, not entirely because of him, but it's certainly a noticeable effect, especially if you followed Matt's google search related Q&A's, videos, etc when he was at Google.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#279

Post by voltagex_ »

kickscondor wrote: post #17

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…

Thanks, you've just convinced me to make my Pinboard bookmarks public (after I clean them up).

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#280

Post by voltagex_ »

antt wrote: post #265
Mirioron wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't have the time, money or energy to build a specific crawler, but a Linux search engine that indexed all the major distros, packages, mailing lists, forums and issue trackers would be amazing.
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