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Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

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Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#291

Post by Kiro »

BbzzbB wrote: post #150
Kiro wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG doesn't have their own index (they're getting their results from Bing) so not really relevant to this question.

I.. didn't know that. However, trying it just now in incognito I don't get the same results[0] (some different links, and most re-ordered). Is Duck repurposing Bing's results? I've tested with "how to get rich", a great bait for bad content (try it on Google without an adblocker, if you dare). [0]: https://pastebin.com/xC45hL1i

I don't know what DDG is doing but I'm imagining that they send in the raw queries while you can't get around Bing's personalisation even in incognito. I get very similar results for "how to get rich", but only after setting "All regions" on DDG.

Bing:

1. How to Get Rich: 10 Things Wise and Rich People Do

2. 5 Ways to Get Rich - wikiHow

3. 16 Proven Ways On How To Get Rich Quick (2021 Edition) - TPS

4. How to Get Rich - NerdWallet

5. How to Get Rich: Follow our Step by Step Plan to Build ...

DDG:

1. How to Get Rich: 10 Things Wise and Rich People Do

2. 5 Ways to Get Rich - wikiHow

3. How to Get Rich - NerdWallet

4. 16 Proven Ways On How To Get Rich Quick (2021 Edition) - TPS

5. How to Get Rich: 8 Steps to Make Your First Million ...

It's no secret that DDG is using Bing so they're not trying to hide it. An easy way to verify it is to search for "what is my ip" on DDG and look for results where the IP number has been cached in the snippet, e.g.:

www.myipnumber.com What is my IP number - my IP address - MyIpNumber.com What is my IP Number? The IP Number of this machine is: 157.55.39.192. This number can also be represented as a 32-bit decimal number 2637637568, or as a 32-bit hexadecimal number 0x9D3727C0 . (Note that if you are part of an internal network then this is the IP number of your local server, the machine which is connected to the external ...

If you do an IP lookup on 157.55.39.192 you will see that it's in fact "Microsoft bingbot".

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#292

Post by not2b »

I think you're being nostalgic for something you don't remember very well.

In that era, Google would return a match based on words that appear in the links to a URL but not in the article itself, meaning that it was easy to produce "Googlebombs". For example, from 2005-2007 the top hit for "miserable failure" was the Wikipedia article for George W. Bush.

See https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/google-bombs/ for some of the "better" ones.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#293

Post by duckmysick »

1_player wrote: post #285
jermaustin1 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are going to pay for a generalized web search when DDG/Google/Bing/etc are free?

Yes. I use Brave Search and I hope they add a paid tier, which I think they have confirmed they'll add at a later date. If you don't pay, you are the product. Simple as that.

> If you don't pay, you are the product.

If not enough people pay, there's no product.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#295

Post by skyde »

lolinder wrote: post #290

The consistent theme every time this comes up is that dealing with the sheer weight of the internet is almost impossible today. SEO spam is hard to fight and the index gets too heavy. However, I wonder if this is a sign that we're looking at the problem wrong. What if instead of even trying to index the entire web, we moved one step back towards the curated directories of the early web? Give users a search engine and…

what you are suggesting would make the problem of echo chamber (bubble) worse than it is today!

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#296

Post by ab_testing »

I think a lot of people are ignoring the issue that the web has changed considerably since 2005. It is approximately 10 times larger in terms of number of websites and web pages. And a lot of it is SEO junk that is just designed for search engines to be easier to parse and show ads in your face.

Also user preferences have changed in the last decade or so. I know millenaials and users in their late 30's or early 40's still yearn for the old web where they would type a search term and correct results would astonish them. However, younger users tend to gravitate to videos and that is why a large portion of the google results are now video results.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#297

Post by lessname »

lolinder wrote: post #290

The consistent theme every time this comes up is that dealing with the sheer weight of the internet is almost impossible today. SEO spam is hard to fight and the index gets too heavy. However, I wonder if this is a sign that we're looking at the problem wrong. What if instead of even trying to index the entire web, we moved one step back towards the curated directories of the early web? Give users a search engine and…

This might work well in some situations (e.g. research, development), however it would also increase the effect of echo chambers I think.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#298

Post by DarkmSparks »

yellowstuff wrote: post #271
kilburn wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about others, but when I think of the "good old google days" I'm _not_ expecting the results for your example queries to be any good. In those days querying took some effort but the effort paid off. The results for "history" just couldn't matter less in this mindset. You search for "USA history" or "house commons history" or "lake whatever history" instead. If the results come up with unexpected things m…

I get what you mean, but part of the whole initial appeal of Google was that it gave much more relevant results initially than Altavista or the other options. That was why Google put in the audacious "I'm feeling lucky" button.

This was the result of two things. mapreduce. using links rank the pages.

Using links to rank the pages is not really possible any longer because of seo spam links.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#299

Post by lawwantsin17 »

lolinder wrote: post #290

The consistent theme every time this comes up is that dealing with the sheer weight of the internet is almost impossible today. SEO spam is hard to fight and the index gets too heavy. However, I wonder if this is a sign that we're looking at the problem wrong. What if instead of even trying to index the entire web, we moved one step back towards the curated directories of the early web? Give users a search engine and…

I'm sure the algorithms are making echo chambers worse. Curating news opinion sites based on a prediction score of how often Chicken Little was right about the sky falling after the fact would surface reliable journalists and actual psychics!

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#300

Post by monkeybutton »

pkamb wrote: post #185

I would use a search engine that only indexed Reddit, Stack Exchange, Wikipedia, and a small number of other sites. And that specifically blocked Pinterest, Quora, most non-personal “blogs”, etc. People suggest DDG ! operators, but I don’t want to use a site’s (bad, single-site) search box. I want a multi-site SERP that only displays results from known good sites, which are customizable.

Too bad they whitelist which bots can access their sitemaps!
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