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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?

#361

Post by Terretta »

Archelaos wrote: post #353
dgivney wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have some great feedback here but for me it also highlights how subjective search results can be for individuals - for example, these false positives that you mention (b2, b3) appear as the top result on Google for me for that query. It makes me think there must be some fairly large segment of the population that want that domain returned as a result for their query, no?

I would not deny that a large part of subjectivity is involved. This is why I used several markers of subjectivity in my evaluation ("what I can see", "that leaves me", "they seem to me", "I would say", etc.). And related to that: I also agree with other responses that a search often needs to be refined. So my four examples where in no way an exhaustive evaluation, but an explorative experiment, where I just used two…

You inspired me to try an even less specific search: thing

Subjectively felt the gigablast results were a relative delight.

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

#362

Post by Archelaos »

kilburn wrote: post #249
Archelaos wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried out four search words with your search engine, and I am not convinced that it is mainly the index size and not the algorithm that is to blame for bad search results. There are way too much high ranking false positives. Here is what I tried: a) "Berlin": 1. The movie festival "Berlinale" 2. The Wikipedia entry about Berlin 3. Something about a venue "Little Berlin", but the link resolves to an online gaming si…

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…

This is why, in the good old days, my favourite search engine was Alta Vista. In its left margin it had arranged key words like a directory tree that could be used to further refine the search. So my ideal search should do something like this if I type in a generic term: provide me with relevant information about the general topic and than help me to refine my search. The way of Wikipedia to provide a principal article and a structured disambiguation page is the way I would prefer.

I admit, my evaluation of the search engine was just a simple test how much I can get out of the results for some generic key words in the first place. A more detailed evaluation should, of course, look deeper. It was more of a test balloon to see if this search engine raises any hope that it could be better than Google with regard to my own (subjective) expectations of a decent result set.

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

#363

Post by KarlKemp »

RhysU wrote: post #231
sockaddr wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice. I'd pay 5-10$/mo for a search engine that didn't just funnel me into the revenue-extracting regions of the web like Google does.

A subscriber-supported search engine sounds cool to me. Any precedent?

As a general rule, nobody is willing to pay what they are worth to advertisers. Facebook makes 70$ / y / user in the US. You would pay $70 for an ad-free Facebook? Congratulation, you must be an above-average earner. Also: your value to advertisers just tripled. If you are willing to pay $210, it will immediately triple again.

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

#364

Post by betwixthewires »

all2 wrote: post #202
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.

If I could add sites I liked to the index that'd be great. Find a blogger/hacker I like? Add to the index. Can I share my index with others? Can I include their indices in my searches? Search engine as a social media platform? If I follow you, now I can search in your indices?

Yacy might serve your needs well. It is a sort of distributed engine where users run their own index and "neighbors" share their indices with one another.

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

#365

Post by boyter »

I had a brief stab at this with https://bonzamate.com.au although its Australia specific to reduce the crawling and indexing requirements. It's main twist is that it runs entirely in AWS Lambda's meaning it costs nothing when it's not being used.

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

#366

Post by eevilspock »

jay3ss wrote: post #264
eevilspock wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only bang I use is !gvb since DDG doesn't support verbatim searches.

Is this the same as enclosing the terms in quotes and using the !g bang?

it's a google "verbatim" search. I don't know if enclosing each term separately in quotes does the same thing, but this is easier anyway.

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

#367

Post by betwixthewires »

marksbrown wrote: post #329

I'd like a way of automatically filtering for websites that : * Don't use JS * Don't use Google analytics * Don't weigh more than a few kB per page * Don't show any sites with ads That would be a place to begin.

Wiby.me might work for you.

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

#368

Post by Archelaos »

Terretta wrote: post #361
Archelaos wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not deny that a large part of subjectivity is involved. This is why I used several markers of subjectivity in my evaluation ("what I can see", "that leaves me", "they seem to me", "I would say", etc.). And related to that: I also agree with other responses that a search often needs to be refined. So my four examples where in no way an exhaustive evaluation, but an explorative experiment, where I just used two…

You inspired me to try an even less specific search: thing Subjectively felt the gigablast results were a relative delight.

No bad idea. At the risk of being sidelined: "philosophy" was not so a bad term either. Start with an arbitrary Wikipedia link and click on the first keyword of the summary after the linguistic annotations (or other annotations in brackets) and repeat the process until you reach a loop. You will almost always end with "philosophy" -> "metaphysics" -> "philosophy" -> ... This works for "Berlin", "history" and "Caesar" as well as for "thing". For the latter very fast: "thing" -> "object" -> "philosophy".

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

#369

Post by dougSF70 »

theduder99 wrote: post #315
lessname wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

echo chambers are what most people want :)

echo chambers are what most people want :)

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

#370

Post by karmasimida »

Google does its job.

I heard HN constantly crying over its deteriorating quality, but I am not noticing it that much, not better not worse, it just does its job.

To create 05 Google, it is easily billions of dollars and years of investment, before people will treat you seriously.

The reason we didn't get 05 Google could only because it is not profitable. Some nation state attempt to demonopolize the search engine business might work, but I didn't expect any for profit organization to easily attempt doing this, let alone individual hobbyists

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