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

Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

mdolon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 289 posts

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#221

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #62
flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

I’ve found DuckDuckGo can be better at some searches, and at others far worse. I was recently trying to search up how to do something in Excel and every result from DDG was some “excel-help” website that was actually just parroting common search terms as the headers on non-articles full of ads. The entire search space has apparently been hijacked by what is essentially a fake help site. I see results like that on goo…

I've found DDG to be fine most of the time, but I wish they'd up their game on advanced operators. DDG seems to have a "feature" where it will ignore quotes around terms iff there were zero results for the original query, but not tell you that it did so. It's really annoying to get to the second or third page of results and realize that this happened.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#222

Post by cogman10 »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #62
flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

I’ve found DuckDuckGo can be better at some searches, and at others far worse. I was recently trying to search up how to do something in Excel and every result from DDG was some “excel-help” website that was actually just parroting common search terms as the headers on non-articles full of ads. The entire search space has apparently been hijacked by what is essentially a fake help site. I see results like that on goo…

These things have been around for a while. Back in the day, it was a major problem with yahoo. Every search you do would have 5 or 6 links to the likes of ask Jeeves which was in turn just showing you what ask would return if you put in the same search terms.

It's maddening.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#223

Post by acdha »

seoaeu wrote: post #84
flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

It is always weird to me that people think the quality of Google results compared to the past are a deliberate choice by Google, and not the consequence of an adversarial process where marketers spend billions of dollars trying to distort the rankings

I'm somewhat sympathetic to this but Google is an enormously profitable company which also is a world-leader in software development and ML, which you would not know from looking at search results.

It also seems relevant that Google has actively removed features like the ability to report SEO spam or block domains — if they cared about the user experience, you'd think there'd be an easy menu with advanced 1990s technology like “Never show results from this domain” or “Report this result as spam”. Yes, there are lots of SEO spambots out there but there are also millions of people who would zealously report spam sites for the many queries which are basically useless now.

As a simple example, on the weekend I was searching for manuals for my discontinued refrigerator. There are a ton of bottom-feeder sites which will list any part number imaginable and some which are even using fake forum sites with templated exchanges between users where someone gives a link to a malware/phishing/porn page followed by several other fake users thanking them. Google has chosen to make reporting things like that almost impossible, so unsurprisingly they remain common. I suspect that's due to their desire to avoid paying humans to distinguish between valid complaints and fake complaints from competing SEOs but either way from my perspective the results are unambiguously worse than they were a decade ago and I have no reason to believe anyone will care about this unless revenue slips.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#224

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #158
delecti wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible in Chrome and Firefox (and I assume other browsers, though can't say for sure) to add search shortcuts for other websites. If I know I want the wikipedia link, rather than searching google for the thing, I type "wp ", and it takes me either directly to the wikipedia page, or to the search results. I think the default is the domain followed by a space, so "wikipedia.org ", but that can be changed.

this has always befuddled me. why use google at all to search a specific site rather than searching on the site directly? why give google the traffic? because lazy/convenience of google being the default page for new browsers and/or google the default search associated with the location bar?

[deleted]

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#225

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

matsemann wrote: post #54
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #24

As for the search in question: instead of "best commuter bikes for under $500", do yourself a favor and buy a beater bike for $100-200. The comfort is the same if not higher, but you stop thinking about your bike at all, and if someone steals it you buy another one next day without shedding a tear. My favorite ones are by fahrradmanufaktur, very solid, a new one will cost you a few thousand bucks, but after 5-7 years…

With the bike shortage the last two seasons, used bikes in OK condition can be almost more expensive than a new bike (since the new, unused bike is sold out everywhere). At least where I live, there is no chance to get what I would call a usable/durable bike for "$100-200" at the moment.

I bought a couple of them and parked them in different areas of the city to make it easier to reach any location using the subway + bike combination. I choose the ones with flaws that would deter normal buyers but relatively easy to repair, or with a damaged part that I'd replace anyway. I asked a local repair shop if it's fine if I ask the seller to send a bike directly to them and they happily agreed. So I look for an occasion, buy it, they ship it to the repair shop, the shop guy calls me and we talk about what to repair/replace, and in a few days I have a nice bike that will last many years with proper maintenance without spending a fortune.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#226

Post by dfxm12 »

dylan604 wrote: post #158
delecti wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible in Chrome and Firefox (and I assume other browsers, though can't say for sure) to add search shortcuts for other websites. If I know I want the wikipedia link, rather than searching google for the thing, I type "wp ", and it takes me either directly to the wikipedia page, or to the search results. I think the default is the domain followed by a space, so "wikipedia.org ", but that can be changed.

this has always befuddled me. why use google at all to search a specific site rather than searching on the site directly? why give google the traffic? because lazy/convenience of google being the default page for new browsers and/or google the default search associated with the location bar?

Most importantly, searching through Google generally gets me to my intended destination faster than loading some site and doing a search. Like you say, the URL bar in any browser I use also defaults to searching in the default search engine, so if it's Google, it's faster just to type it in there. So, from a new tab, I can just type in "wiki handball" to find the wikipedia page for handball and click to get what I want faster, instead of going to wikipedia.org, waiting for that page to load and then searching for handball and clicking.

DDG has the bang searches though, so typing in !wiki handball is faster still.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#227

Post by jacobr1 »

ipaddr wrote: post #211
dylan604 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this has always befuddled me. why use google at all to search a specific site rather than searching on the site directly? why give google the traffic? because lazy/convenience of google being the default page for new browsers and/or google the default search associated with the location bar?

Because search is hard. Most domain sites search titles and descriptions of articles for keywords. Google will index the entire page and be able to provide more and better ordered results. Or use to. Now the quality and quantity of results forces site owners to implement their own search or use third parties.

This is still the case for plenty of websites. Searching google with "site:example.com search terms" often still gives better results than using a site's own search tool.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#228

Post by Traster »

dazc wrote: post #9
Traster wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of best bikes for under $500. There are plenty of incentives for journalism publications like MCN (motorcycle news) to do reviews of the products in the sectors they cover. There are plenty of publications about Cycling, it's a very popular sport. The problem is that the monetization of the affiliate system creates a massive incentive for people to c…

The likes of motorcycle and car magazines/review sites are also incentivised by money, it may not be quite so obvious how though? Let's say I want to do an honest review of bikes under $500, where am I going to get the bikes from in order to do this? Shall I go out and buy them?

This is covered by standard journalists all the time - Linus (from LTT) talks about this all the time. Of course manufacturers give samples to test, but that's table stakes, there is absolutely not an expectation of specific positive coverage.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#229

Post by wpietri »

flenserboy wrote: post #156
wpietri wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "most useful", I have to ask, most useful to whom?

Agreed — Google search is most useful to Google. I'd prefer it be most useful for the actual user of the service, but that makes me crazy, I guess.

You seem be saying there's a single "actual user", and that user happens to be identical to yourself.

In practice any product with more than a few users is going to have to separate out the different needs, situations, and personalities of the users. Personas and market segmentation are two of many ways to slice up the user base.

Some products can use that slicing to only address small niches and just say "to hell with everybody else". Indie games, for example, often address very specific audiences. Ditto a lot of books. Academic books especially might be written for an audience in the thousands or even hundreds.

But products like Google are going for extremely large audiences. Inevitably, needs will conflict. They can try to sort that out in product, and I think they've done a surprisingly good job of guessing what people actually want based on them typing a few words into a box. But when there's a conflict, it's no shock to me they're going to favor the vast majority of their audience over the relatively small niche of persnickety software developers like myself.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#230

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

noneeeed wrote: post #46
dageshi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is always going to be better. Niche subs are where actual experts who've tried entire ranges of products hang out, amazon is where one random guy bought their first crappy product and left a 5 star review because they don't actually know whether what they bought is good or not.

Or even worse, leaving a 5 star review because it is what they ordered but they haven't actually used it because it's a present for their nephew...

My pet peeve is nagging to leave a review as soon as possible after the purchase. I mean, what can I write at that point? I received the product. It is blue. The seller shipped the product quickly. That's all.

Personally, I'm exclusively interested in reviews by people who have used the product for at least a couple of months, preferably years. But I guess the review score would be much lower and the impulse to buy would be weaker. And its a shame as there are products that deserve excellent reviews.

Post reply on HN