Live data from Hacker News

How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

theverge.com

21–30 of 284 posts

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#21
Does anyone here even really use Google's search engine anymore?

I do search for stuff a lot, but to be honest I know perfectly when it will be a stackoverflow page I want, or a wikipedia page, or it will have that link to maps.

I can't remember the last time I searched for something and I didn't already know what domain I actually wanted to end up on.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#22

I have to disagree fundamentally with the author on this point: > but then Google was always ugly until relatively recently Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity. There is nothing ugly about getting people exactly what they need instantly. As for the main thrust of the article, I’ve already found Google’s results mostly untrustworthy. For some time search results have been so d…

> Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity.

What, no ads?

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#23

I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two keywords in my search (usually the most generic ones) and ignore the rest. In addition, the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work. It is like google is guessing what I want, rather than trying to find what I have entered as…

> the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work

I've seen people say this, but it still seems to work for me, and is even documented here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?visit_id...

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#24
I don't think it's practical. None of the search engines give me results of quality high enough for my daily software development problem, but Google. Tried them all. If you want to get stuff done, you google it. If you want to play socially responsible society member role, you try alternative browsers, until you run out of time, then you google it.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#25
post #16

I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two keywords in my search (usually the most generic ones) and ignore the rest. In addition, the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work. It is like google is guessing what I want, rather than trying to find what I have entered as…

Google ignoring what I had actually typed and instead showing results to a more popular query that was similar, but distinctly different, is what finally got me to switch over to DuckDuckGo. Now that I've gotten used to DDG I find Google unpleasant to use. The amount of ads and clutter on the page is distracting, and the organic results seemed ever more skewed towards ecommerce results.

Some of that skew might be their algorithm noticing that the great unwashed masses are looking for ecommerce. I should give DDG another try, it was not that great last time I tried (few years ago?)

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#26
post #21

Does anyone here even really use Google's search engine anymore? I do search for stuff a lot, but to be honest I know perfectly when it will be a stackoverflow page I want, or a wikipedia page, or it will have that link to maps. I can't remember the last time I searched for something and I didn't already know what domain I actually wanted to end up on.

> Does anyone here even really use Google's search engine anymore?

Yeah. Plenty of people do.

I know I do when searching for PDFs because DuckDuckGo randomly ignores "filetype:pdf" when it feels like it, and also sometimes ignores word in the the query that are within quotes.

It's also not great with localised results, at least in many parts of the world.

My first preference is DDG, but it's not perfect.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#27
post #12
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about everyone else but google is a proxy for other sites now where I can get relevant answers. So I have 2 clicks to the eventual site instead of 1. Similar to using site:www.reddit.com or something similar. I realize that's still using Google as a search engine but it is different than how I previously used it. Thinking briefly on it, the main thing I leverage Google for is phonebook like information or ge…

>Thinking briefly on it, the main thing I leverage Google for is phonebook like information or getting a quick definition/spellcheck. That is exactly right! I use it as a reference material, calculator, or map. There is no other use for google search due to optimization nonsense. For anything in-depth, I use technical resources and databases available through my local public library.

It's better than github search or Wikipedia search. Haven't even tried stack over flow search. I don't put "site:stackoverflow.com" too much, but I always put "stack" for a stackoverflow search or "wiki" for a wiki search. For general searches, I've shifted from putting in keywords I was pretty sure would be in the answer to just putting in the question in natural language.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#28

I have to disagree fundamentally with the author on this point: > but then Google was always ugly until relatively recently Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity. There is nothing ugly about getting people exactly what they need instantly. As for the main thrust of the article, I’ve already found Google’s results mostly untrustworthy. For some time search results have been so d…

> Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity. What, no ads?

Google has always and still does have the least-obtrusive ads. I don't like when ads masquerade as content, but if I have to receive ads, I'd prefer Google-managed ads over anyone else's. Even Stack Overflow fills their pages with hideous animated ads, and they're about the second-least-objectionable ad-bearing site.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#29
I've seen various stories about this for a week, and I kept wondering when they were going to roll the change out so that I could see. It turns out that I just don't see any of the ads/sponsored links at all normally, presumably because uBlock is hiding them. I guess I'm surprised that enough HN users would even notice this.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#30
post #23

I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two keywords in my search (usually the most generic ones) and ignore the rest. In addition, the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work. It is like google is guessing what I want, rather than trying to find what I have entered as…

> the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work I've seen people say this, but it still seems to work for me, and is even documented here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?visit_id...

Weird. It hasn’t worked for me in months. Maybe longer. Maybe I’m part of some UX strata.
Post reply on HN