How can we help improve the project? Usage, feedback?
Alexandria Search
31–40 of 181 posts
Re: Alexandria Search
#32I think the fact that after a long while there are new search engines (Kagi was introduced very recently on HN, now this) should be a wake up call for Google - their search has lost some shine for quite a while. Hopefully something will come out of this - competition is good.
At some point, AI and NLP and raw processing power will have progressed so much that "search" is not a problem anymore, and I think we're getting there. Google can up their game but it won't matter much. The only thing they have left is brand recognition.
Google has necessarily arbitrary criteria by which pages are ranked. Because Google is the game in town, anyone with a primary goal of driving traffic will pursue those metrics (i.e. SEO). To the extent that those criteria deviate even slightly from actual good results, large parts of the internet will dilute their content to pursue them, which both lowers their quality and further drives down the gems of the internet.
The ranking would have to vary over an infinite spread of purposes for webpages, and it would have to converge almost perfectly to what is actually most helpful. Among all the technical problems, Google will not optimize correctly against ads for the same reason that websites trying to drum up affiliate purchases and ad revenue won't put content quality above SEO.
When recipes return to having the recipe and ingredients first, followed by an optional life story,I'll revisit my assessment.
Re: Alexandria Search
#33There have been a few search engines out recently. I'm curious how people evaluate them quickly. I've realized my searching is basically optimized for google and the web that has grown up around it. Also, in 1998 I wasn't as aware of what was out there as I am now. It's pretty rare (even if its possible) that I do a search and come across a completely new site that I haven't heard of before, for anything nontrivial.…
> because they are optimizing for the current state of the web.
I believe people will at least start looking for alternatives. For example, I have been collecting search engines, and whenever I encounter a page with too many commercial-laden SEO-porked results, I use a different search engine in Firefox.
I have enabled the Search Bar, I can do Alt+D, Tab, Tab, enter my query, then click a different search engine, which searches instantly, unlike the main bar, where you have to press Enter once more after clicking.
I just added this one also. See my collection: https://0bin.net/paste/ZSCRYVx1#sxD+jBIpScJismXBYwaoJPh75TH9...
Re: Alexandria Search
#34The privacy settings are defaulting to unchecked, but the description above them suggests that they default to checked. This makes me wonder how the settings are actually being interpreted (i.e., what the actual initial state is).
Re: Alexandria Search
#35ive found several search engines/services besides G and ddg and the only thing that i cant figure out is do these search services have seo technique or its just random list of all resources? i mean how does it order search results
Re: Alexandria Search
#36Tried a few searches.
https://www.alexandria.org/?c=&r=&q=real+estates+puerto+esco... - 3 results only :( If you correct it to "real estate puerto Escondido" - that works better https://www.alexandria.org/?c=&r=&q=real+estate+puerto+escon...
A lot to improve. But a good start
Re: Alexandria Search
#37I think the fact that after a long while there are new search engines (Kagi was introduced very recently on HN, now this) should be a wake up call for Google - their search has lost some shine for quite a while. Hopefully something will come out of this - competition is good.
My first search on Alexandria was "UTC time". Google gives me the current time in UTC, which is all I needed. Alexandria gave me...a lot of links to click to find what I'm looking for. Google search is a lot better than people give it credit for.
we're exploring adding instant answers in clean way at Breeze; leaning towards using open-source library &/or external API to compute vs. building in-house
also adding premium tier that's alerts + ad free + feeling lucky that would take user to top result, which is a UTC page, re: https://breezethat.com/?q=UTC+time
Re: Alexandria Search
#38There have been a few search engines out recently. I'm curious how people evaluate them quickly. I've realized my searching is basically optimized for google and the web that has grown up around it. Also, in 1998 I wasn't as aware of what was out there as I am now. It's pretty rare (even if its possible) that I do a search and come across a completely new site that I haven't heard of before, for anything nontrivial.…
> I've realized my searching is basically optimized for google
Is it just me, or I feel like Google does not provide anymore good results for me.
Like every time I search something completely out of my knowledge, like "How to purchase a property in Mexico", it will give me 100+ results of some results with autogenerated content like "10 best places to buy property in Mexico". And the only way to fix that would be to add something like `site:reddit.com`
Re: Alexandria Search
#39I think the fact that after a long while there are new search engines (Kagi was introduced very recently on HN, now this) should be a wake up call for Google - their search has lost some shine for quite a while. Hopefully something will come out of this - competition is good.
My first search on Alexandria was "UTC time". Google gives me the current time in UTC, which is all I needed. Alexandria gave me...a lot of links to click to find what I'm looking for. Google search is a lot better than people give it credit for.
I agree, Google's instant answers are quite good and have improved but actually searching to find a site seems to be getting worse and is riddled with paid sites on the top.
Re: Alexandria Search
#40There have been a few search engines out recently. I'm curious how people evaluate them quickly. I've realized my searching is basically optimized for google and the web that has grown up around it. Also, in 1998 I wasn't as aware of what was out there as I am now. It's pretty rare (even if its possible) that I do a search and come across a completely new site that I haven't heard of before, for anything nontrivial.…
> I'm curious how people evaluate them quickly.
Speaking about myself; I cold turkey migrated to DDG ~2 months ago. So far I've had to resort to Google search 10 times or so.
One thing I miss though is Google's nice visualisation of fast changing results e.g., match scores. For example: https://imgur.com/a/Q5nZkjo