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A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

search.marginalia.nu

221–230 of 735 posts

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#221
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, when searching for "haskell type inference algorithm" I get completely useless results.

It would be nice if we could pipe search engines.

Definitely; We could create a meta search engine that queries them all, in desktop application format.

Let's name it after a famous old scientist, and maybe add the year to prove it's modern: Galileo 2021.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#223
All of my searches are turning up unrelated results ("college life after the pandemic", "post-pandemic teaching in higher education", "football news NFL" etc.)

NFL one had 'some' decently related results, but the websites were all strangely disreputable.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#224

Wow, that's awesome. Great work! For a simple test, I searched "fall of the roman empire". In your search engine, I got wikipedia, followed by academic talks, chapters of books, and long-form blogs. All extremely useful resources. When I search on google, I get wikipedia, followed by a listicle "8 Reasons Why Rome Fell", then the imdb page for a movie by the same name, and then two Amazon book links, which are totall…

As long as few people use it, it will be great. Rest assured that the moment it becomes popular, the people who want to game it will appear.

> the people who want to game it will appear.

So just add human review to the mix, if a site is obviously trying to game the system (listicles, seo spam etc) just drop and ban them from the search index.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#225

You should monetise this with amazon affiliate links that are relevant to each search. And then use that money to keep this project going. Google is fantastic, but it has become something different from what it was, the company and the product. It is so refreshing to see a modern tool that encourages exploration of the actual world wide web.

I might add a donate button or something if people want to help support the project, hardware isn't cheap and all. But I have a job and decent income. I think if this search engine became the way I earned money, it would influence the project in a bad way, and corrupt its purpose, which is to help people explore the less-commercial internet.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#227
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The project explicitly bills itself as a "search engine", not an "interesting and unexpected material surfacer". Moreover, projecting emotions like "angry" onto a comment in order to discredit the content of the comment (hey! is that an ad-hominem?) is just about exactly the opposite of the discussions that the HN mods are trying to curate, and the discussions that I like to see here.

In the early days of google, I found what I was looking for on page 5+. On the way, I’d discover many interesting things I didn’t even know I was looking for, often completely unrelated to what I was searching for.

I miss those old days of even being permitted to go many pages in.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#229
post #159
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Search for a plumber/tradesperson in your area THEN try to find rational discourse about your options. I searched "plumber Austin TX" in Google and got a map and list of company websites near me. There are a lot of "top x y in z" list sites, but the top results were still the most relevant. I don't know what "rational discourse" I'm expected to find, though, or why I should assume the discourse I would find through…

> I searched "plumber Austin TX" in Google and got a map and list of company websites near me. I think you could have done this historically in a Yellow Pages phone book. My OP used "boring". A list of plumbers is boring, been done on dead wood. I'm not saying boring != !useful. > There are a lot of "top x y in z" list sites This is an understatement. I actually want to know the top x in y, to do that I need "rationa…

>Rational discourse is recognizable as well written, insightful, humble, reflective, self-countering, anecdotal etc. By "search is terrible" I mean with respect to finding this.

I believe a search engine that ignores results based on superficial and aesthetic qualities like "modern web design" would be even worse in that regard, unless you're assuming no relevant discourse about any subject has taken place on the web since the early 2000's.

I admit, I have no idea what heuristic you would actually use to find "well written, insightful, humble, reflective, self-countering, anecdotal etc" content, but I've seen it on modern sites (even on Twitter,) and I've seen a lot of garbage on old sites, so a simple text search of only old websites doesn't seem like it.

It is fun, though.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#230

All of my searches are turning up unrelated results ("college life after the pandemic", "post-pandemic teaching in higher education", "football news NFL" etc.) NFL one had 'some' decently related results, but the websites were all strangely disreputable.

> the websites were all strangely disreputable

Interesting you'd feel that way when sites without "modern design" are encountered. Is this your own bias perhaps creating a judgment or are they sites that you already know have a bad reputation?

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