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Search Still Sucks

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Re: Search Still Sucks

#11

Post by zone411 »

credo wrote: post #3

Btw Matt Cutts' statement "Google's algorithms had started to work; manual action also taken." is weird. ( http://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/36502687868665856 ) All evidence indicates that JC Penny was ranked #1 until the NYT provided Google with the evidence that it had collected. Google then acted on the evidence. As a result of those actions, JC Penny's rank dropped from #1 to #71. It is funny that he should say…

No, you are wrong about the timeline and what happened when. It is explained pretty clearly in the NYT article: "True, JCPenney.com’s showing in Google searches had declined slightly by Feb. 8, as the algorithm change began to take effect. In "comforter sets," Penney went from No. 1 to No. 7. In "sweater dresses," from No. 1 to No. 10." That happened the day before Google took manual action. BTW, going from #1 to #7 and #10 is not just a "slight decline."

Re: Search Still Sucks

#12

Post by lsc »

mooism2 wrote: post #8
photon_off wrote: post #6

Search engines would benefit enormously from using data from social bookmarking sites. If you haven't lately used Delicious to search, I highly recommend it. The breadth of search isn't as far-reaching, but all of the results have essentially been pre-filtered by however many users have bookmarked it -- it's unlikely that many people would bookmark a spammy site or site with crap content. I think Google results could…

If black hat seos started to believe Google was paying specific attention to Delicious bookmarks, Delicious would be flooded with fake accounts faster than you can say "link farm". History of search: 1. New company releases new search engine, better than the competition because it pays attention to a previously ignored signal. 2. Seos work out how to game the signal. 3. New search engine is now as crappy as the searc…

This has interesting implications, I think, in the business of search.

It's almost like a negative network effect. The more people that use a search engine, the more people try to game it, and the less useful it becomes for finding what you want. This seems like it'd make things much easier for new competitors like duck-duck-go to bring a superior product... at least until they gained enough market share to be worth SEO time gaming.

Re: Search Still Sucks

#13

Post by [deleted] »

zengeek wrote: post #10

Apparently, this blog author has been ousted as "bribed by Microsoft for secret advertising disguised in posts" There has been a lot "google search sucks" submission from Techcrunch lately. This was starting to feel a little weird. So I googled "Michael Arrington Microsoft" and got this : http://techrights.org/2010/02/07/michael-arrington-microsoft... Are people aware of this ? is it old news ? Is HN being spammed ?

[deleted]

Re: Search Still Sucks

#14

Post by ugh »

zengeek wrote: post #10

Apparently, this blog author has been ousted as "bribed by Microsoft for secret advertising disguised in posts" There has been a lot "google search sucks" submission from Techcrunch lately. This was starting to feel a little weird. So I googled "Michael Arrington Microsoft" and got this : http://techrights.org/2010/02/07/michael-arrington-microsoft... Are people aware of this ? is it old news ? Is HN being spammed ?

Arrington was paid to appear in a Microsoft ad. Journalists usually don’t endorse companies or appear in their ads, especially if the also write about said companies.

That’s ethically questionable behavior but certainly not bribery. It has also no relation to the submitted article.

(I like how the author of the article you are linking to describes an interview with Ballmer as “spoke to Ballmer 4 months ago” which sounds much more suspect, especially considering the context. He certainly has a way with words.)

Re: Search Still Sucks

#15

Post by arethuza »

tomkarlo wrote: post #4

At this point there's so much noise in Google Results that they're becoming an option of last resort. Not only is there a lot of noise, there's no real usable information from others on the quality of the results. If I'm looking for a local vendor I go to Yelp, if I'm buying something I go to Amazon, and if I'm looking for coding help I go to Stack Overflow. I don't know that we necessarily need one site to replace G…

"the era of free text search being the dominant paradigm may just be over"

Perhaps it is the era of a global single instance search engine that is starting to come to an end - maybe we need a sensible way of having topic specific search engines and/or trusted content sites and allowing an easy way of treating these as if they were a global search engine.

Pretty much the same interface but a better implementation.

And yes, I know "meta" search engines have been around for a long time but, as far as I recall, don't try and identify the best places to perform your search - they just search run your search through a pile of generic search engines and aggregate the results.

Re: Search Still Sucks

#16

Post by zengeek »

[deleted] wrote: post #13
zengeek wrote: post #10

Apparently, this blog author has been ousted as "bribed by Microsoft for secret advertising disguised in posts" There has been a lot "google search sucks" submission from Techcrunch lately. This was starting to feel a little weird. So I googled "Michael Arrington Microsoft" and got this : http://techrights.org/2010/02/07/michael-arrington-microsoft... Are people aware of this ? is it old news ? Is HN being spammed ?

[deleted]

Hopefully you are right.

Yet, upvoters may not realised that a submission is not fair and balanced.

Re: Search Still Sucks

#17

Post by Strunk »

I totally agree! Googles search results is starting to suck. If I'm sitting with an errorcode for some sort of program, trying to search it on google, will just give me a couple of random generated botsites. I have moved permanently to Duckduckgo. :-)

Re: Search Still Sucks

#18

Post by rsardeha »

Google loves what you guys call spam because it allows Google to generate more revenues.

When a content farm pushes first pages results this causes the real manufacturers and businesses to use Google's advertising platform to reach their customers.

When you're looking for a kitchen appliance It's better for Google to return a landing page filled with Google Adsense ads instead of the official website of one of these appliance manufactures. Again for the same reason mentioned above.

It's all about the revenues.

- Reza Sardeha

Re: Search Still Sucks

#19

Post by noonespecial »

Travel searches, for example, are a joke, and startups like Gogobot are popping up to try to fix that.

This is how Google is finally toppled. Not by a "google killer" or another giant like Bing, but by a thousand tiny niche services that get "X" search right.

Re: Search Still Sucks

#20

Post by empire29 »

tomkarlo wrote: post #4

At this point there's so much noise in Google Results that they're becoming an option of last resort. Not only is there a lot of noise, there's no real usable information from others on the quality of the results. If I'm looking for a local vendor I go to Yelp, if I'm buying something I go to Amazon, and if I'm looking for coding help I go to Stack Overflow. I don't know that we necessarily need one site to replace G…

Precisely, and it's why I've moved over to duckduckgo and heavily use its !bang syntax...
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