Tested with the first person to settle on Island: https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=Ingolf+Arnarson
and it worked surprisingly well.
Anyone else has good examples?
A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
91–100 of 735 posts
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#92Fascinating. I studied an "obscure" group of insects. My go-to search term to test an engine is their family name as it is a rarely used word and I know most (all?) of the major data sources that have accumulated data on it. When Wolfram Alpha added species names, I checked with the name, boring, Duck Duck, boring, Google (well we know Google isn't for search anymore, it's absolutely horrible) boring, Bing, boring...…
I'm intrigued by this experiment but I can't visualize it. What do you mean by boring results? Would combing through a library (the one with paper books) also produce boring results? What's your ideal results?
Perhaps a counter example, something that is interesting. Anecdotally. This, of all things, is the top result in my search: https://tft.brainiac.com/archive/0303/msg00037.html. Which is strange to me because I don't recognize tft.brainiac. I click, it's a list of biological relationships among Hymenoptera, including a reference to genus of the wasps I studied, presumably in a biological relationship (host/parasite) context. I cataloged every relationship known at one point, so my brain wants to know where this come from, is it something I caught. Then I go look for more context, and find it's part of a thread about D&D(?) and hymenoptera, and it's epic, and a chunk of my morning is lost figuring out why and how this came to be.
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#93This kicks ass!!
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#94> Don't be afraid to scroll down in the search results
I never knew it was fear that was preventing me from scrolling
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO, that is a trendy claim in HN with little evidence.
You're downvoted but in my experience I have never really been burned by this Google-decline
"I haven't seen a black swan, ergo it's not real."
I've been burned by this decline in the past.
From creepy results i.e. first suggestion before typing was something I spoke near the Android and I never searched for before; to not finding what I was searching for before successfully, Google has started declining.
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#96Very cool. A person can really appreciate simple web design looking at something like Luke Smith's recipe page.
So how on earth do you take an idea like this and scale it for both broad web coverage and high traffic? For that matter, just how much 'useful' text is there on the net?
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#97My pet peeve with search results is simply that there are ancient technical results that in many cases are irrelevant. If I am searching for a Window error message, I don't want some old forum post from 2001, especially if it didn't have any answers! What would be cool would be for people who host old stuff to "archive" it at some point so it doesn't appear in normal results, only if you tick "include archives".
As much as the release names for macOS over the years were marketing gimmicks, it does make it a lot easier to zero in on the correct version when doing these types of searches.
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#98Searched for my initials - got back a bunch of raw binary results (mp4, pdf, img, txz, etc.) which was disconcerting. Although it did find one reference to actual-me which is better than Google manages on the first 4 pages... https://imgur.com/a/n2xro2Y
Yeah there was unfortunately a problem with the content-type code recently, it unfortunately categorized some binary data as HTML and tried to process it best-effort. So there's some binary soup in the index.
The bug has since been fixed, but it won't come into effect in a few weeks.
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> well we know Google isn't for search anymore Do you suggest anything better? As far as I can tell, all the other search engines are either repackaged Bing (ie: DuckDuck), or are just as bad.
Not sure, but I remember when Google could find literally anything. Then they started adding a bunch of exceptions and crapped out their quality. I wonder how insanely different results would be to get the older Google Engine from the 2000s search result wise. I now have to play games with Google to find things. I feel like I do less than I used to for some reason.
The other day, I was searching for something, and google's suggested, on-site answers took up 1/2 the first page. All wrong.
The actual search results were another 1/4 page of completely identical results, followed by google ad placed search results.
I thought to myself, they've finally done it. Real responses are no longer first page.
A lot of the cause for google getting crappy, is "ok google", another "all platforms are the same" form of sickness.
No, a desktop is not a phone. No, voice searching is not the same as phone, or desktop.
Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> well we know Google isn't for search anymore Do you suggest anything better? As far as I can tell, all the other search engines are either repackaged Bing (ie: DuckDuck), or are just as bad.
IMHO, that is a trendy claim in HN with little evidence.
You want evidence? Search for a plumber/tradesperson in your area THEN try to find rational discourse about your options. There are literally 100s of results of websites remixing a small set of data, presenting it to you, and asking you to buy something to see more, when you know there is nothing behind the scenes.
This type of engine would punish these sites, in theory, and may turn up a discussion in some forum, newsgroup, etc. that is actually relevant, or insightful.