Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

Post by getcrunk » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

mwigdahl wrote: post #202

oblio wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because of how aggressively it tries to use synonyms That's a double edged sword. One of the main reasons regular people fail to find stuff on Google, or at least failed in the past, was that you'd need to be a walking thesaurus to do it effectively (which techies generally are, for example). They needed to help the less educated, too.

Does it help the less educated to flat out ignore exclusion terms that are _explicitly_ provided?

Post by MiddleEndian » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #252

acdha wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 techn…

I wish there were a way to tell Google that I never, EVER want to see an image result from pinterest.

Post by delecti » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

MiddleEndian wrote: post #282

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.

For whatever reason, this feature is not actively promoted in Firefox (or Chrome). If you add a bookmark in Firefox, one of the fields that shows up is "Tags" which is sort of uninteresting. Then you have to go into your Bookmarks toolbar and find the bookmark you added to get to keywords so you can add a shortcut (my Wikipedia shortcut is just `w`). Then of course switch your search term with %s if you have a search…

Post by rjmunro » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

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...

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #253

pb7 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mentioned because Bing isn’t very good so you shouldn’t expect any different with DDG. Also every time this comment is posted, someone tries to argue that it doesn’t come from Bing despite zero evidence so it’s a TIL for more than you think.

are people using DDG using it just because it's not Bing and/or G? I thought the whole premise of DDG was providing the ability to search anonymously by "proxying" your search to a different search engine altogther. I was aware of the switch away from G to Bing, and I was okay with that as now G no longer gets any search data from me even if it was made anon by DDG.