51–60 of 103 posts
Point one I can’t understand. Google is optimized for the common case. It’s not that often that I want to search for something not in Google’s (excellent) dictionary.
This is really an example of taking Google's strengths and making them out to be weaknesses. Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Does anyone search for Java and click on coffee links? Or links for Java the island in Indonesia? Based on these results I would bet not. The thousands if not millions of people that typed Java before you didn't want coffee or islands. They wanted the…
Likewise, it doesn't even make any sense to search for "college or college" without quotes. It makes even less sense when the internet includes an exact match on "college or uncollege". Oddly, a search for "college and uncollege" (without quotes) finds the article in the #1 position. Again, is it too much to ask that Google include a few exact match results even when it strongly suspects a miss-spelling?
re: "Google over does search" (and "autocorrects" your search). This "feature" has been getting steadily more annoying, particularly with more obscure words, or words where there is a similar word that's in more widespread use. Thinking about it now, I was wishing there was a way to turn off this feature; but alas, a dive into http://www.google.com/preferences doesn't seem to have "turn off that dang autocorrect" as…
Surround the uncommon term in quotes and it won't be autocorrected.
I switched and never looked back :) I did have to (re)map my search keyword 'g' to DDG in all my browsers though!
This is really an example of taking Google's strengths and making them out to be weaknesses. Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Does anyone search for Java and click on coffee links? Or links for Java the island in Indonesia? Based on these results I would bet not. The thousands if not millions of people that typed Java before you didn't want coffee or islands. They wanted the…
Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Yes. And that is where I think it goes wrong. The fact that a lot of people misspell should not be used to correct a person's right search to a wrong one. That's not the right thing to do. It should suggest a different search, but not change my search altogether. As an example, if I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Bur…
This is really an example of taking Google's strengths and making them out to be weaknesses. Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Does anyone search for Java and click on coffee links? Or links for Java the island in Indonesia? Based on these results I would bet not. The thousands if not millions of people that typed Java before you didn't want coffee or islands. They wanted the…
Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Yes. And that is where I think it goes wrong. The fact that a lot of people misspell should not be used to correct a person's right search to a wrong one. That's not the right thing to do. It should suggest a different search, but not change my search altogether. As an example, if I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Bur…
Obviously in that situation they would just ask you to clarify your order before making a burrito, but if they had the ability to serve burritos as fast as Google serves results, then for the majority of cases (assuming the beef burrito is most popular) the outcome is satisfactory and it isn't worth the time or effort to ask and wait for an answer.
I use DDG as my main search engine mostly because of the convenience of !bangs. Also, search results on other engines seem to be going down in quality lately. Too many spam sites are reaching the top of Google, and I'm finding real answers to questions I ask on page 2 or 3. The nice thing about DDG is that if you can't find what you're looking for you can just add !w, !so, etc. to try a more targeted search.
re: "Google over does search" (and "autocorrects" your search). This "feature" has been getting steadily more annoying, particularly with more obscure words, or words where there is a similar word that's in more widespread use. Thinking about it now, I was wishing there was a way to turn off this feature; but alas, a dive into http://www.google.com/preferences doesn't seem to have "turn off that dang autocorrect" as…
Append &nfpr=1 (short for "no full page replacement") to all your google queries: For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=college+or+uncollege&nfpr... I am sure it's not that hard to write a greasemonkey script to do that for you automatically, but I tend to like the feature, especially when I fat finger queries with my cell phone.
Two different ways to do it: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Yes. And that is where I think it goes wrong. The fact that a lot of people misspell should not be used to correct a person's right search to a wrong one. That's not the right thing to do. It should suggest a different search, but not change my search altogether. As an example, if I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Bur…
I think the burrito analogy is flawed... searching for a word Google doesn't know about is more akin to ordering something that wasn't on the burrito menu at all, or say... if the cashier misheard your order and thought it could have been either chicken or beef so they made an educated guess and served you a Beef Burrito at the same time asking if that was what you meant, giving you an option to receive your correct…
I've been using DDG almost exclusively for about a year now. Every once in a while I'll do a google search because I can't find what I'm looking for on DDG. This is usually when I'm looking for something local/in a non-english language, or when I'm doing a search for a long string (say a couple of lines from a song lyric). One of google's biggest advantages -- for me at least -- is its localized URLs. google.co.uk, g…
My solution for this is !g in duckduckgo: This brings me to the international Google.com, no matter what locales in the browser, what computer and what google-account is active. For local searches I just type in google.com and somehow 90% of the time end up with the .nl version. Works for me.