More content by people, for people in Search • Hacker News Board

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#301

Post by plonk » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #54

emptyparadise wrote: post #14

It got so bad that I'm actually taking my own notes on topics again and trying to build up a personal knowledge database. Maybe it's not such a bad thing...

I have to append site:reddit.com before most queries now. Health and medical queries are the worst. The top results literally have the same generic content.

You don't want medical advice from reddit though. At least the university websites are trustworthy enough to decide if you need to see a doctor.

Maybe a no-filler health info website could be viable if it spread by word of mouth and not via Google. After a while it should become well-ranked on Google anyway, like Wikipedia or StackOverflow. Getting it to that point is a chicken-and-egg problem though.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#302

Post by plonk » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

powerhour wrote: post #258

emptyparadise wrote: post #14

It got so bad that I'm actually taking my own notes on topics again and trying to build up a personal knowledge database. Maybe it's not such a bad thing...

A tool that records the sites you visit and makes their content searchable locally would be pretty nifty. It'd be a MITM, which isn't awesome, but if it's not a managed service that might not be so bad.

You'd need something like RSS to only download the useful contents. You could probably same a few forums' contents on a 500GB SSD if you stuck to text and used an efficient format.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#303

Post by feanaro » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #244

layer8 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s safe to assume that a social ranking system covering the whole web will be gamed.

There is an extent they can go to with account verification where gaming is not very feasible. Can you create a fake account with a verified credit card number, verified phone number, passport, drivers license, account history consistent with human usage, Google One subscription, etc.? You probably can, but doing it at-scale is going to be quite costly.

I don't think we need this that bad so as to jeopardize our privacy and freedom over it. So I'll pass on this idea.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#304

Post by layer8 » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 12:07 AM UTC

seanwilson wrote: post #281

layer8 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about letting users give a vote/rating or leaving a comment on if a page was helpful? Difficult for such a system not to be gamed, e.g. via botnets.

What stops Reddit from being gamed like this? How does the "reddit " trick on Google return good results in a way that isn't being gamed? I'm not saying it's as simple as adding an up/down vote widget next to each Google search result, but what can Google do to compete with social sites here where social sites have a lot of rich signals about what users prefer? There's no way to weigh or moderate each up/down vote ba…

Reddit isn’t a very attractive target, because there’s a continuous stream of new posts/threads, so much more ephemeral than the average web page, and because Reddit users are only a small minority compared to everyone who uses Google. Also, Reddit has moderators. It wouldn’t be practical for Google to moderate votes on search results, and the moderators would be much less motivated than for the subreddit they’re engaged with.

A better comparison is Amazon search results and reviews, which are known to suffer from being gamed.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#305

Post by mdmglr » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

throw10920 wrote: post #277

mdmglr wrote: post #35

> Last year, we kicked off a series of updates to show more helpful, in-depth reviews based on first-hand expertise in search results. I find myself searching + "review reddit" to find real honest reviews. My anecdotal experience is that everything else is written by content creators who are given the product for free to use for a few days/weeks/months w/o going in depth.

At this point, I'm not sure how many of the Reddit reviews are valid, either. Marketers may be dumb, but they're not stupid - all it takes is a few people to notice Google starting to add "reddit" to their autocomplete, start looking around, figure out what's going on, and then suddenly the whole "SEO"/marketing spam sphere is aware of it and will start making sockpuppet accounts.

I agree. It's a cat and mouse game. At some point Reddit reviews will no longer be trustworthy. I have some techniques to weed out some reviews. For example I was considering a Synology ds220j for home use so I looked for negative reviews on /r/nas /r/synology and /r/homelab.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#306

Post by marttt » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 3:44 AM UTC

I have started to consider Google's site: operator as the only tool that doesn't noticeably "game" the results. What's the reality, though? Have the results for site: searches actually also declined in quality during recent years, due to Google's general policy changes?

Maybe somebody with a more analytical eye could elaborate on this. Thanks.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#307

Post by monort » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 6:43 AM UTC

marttt wrote: post #106

mdmglr wrote: post #35

> Last year, we kicked off a series of updates to show more helpful, in-depth reviews based on first-hand expertise in search results. I find myself searching + "review reddit" to find real honest reviews. My anecdotal experience is that everything else is written by content creators who are given the product for free to use for a few days/weeks/months w/o going in depth.

Same here. For more niche stuff, + "site:news.ycombinator.com" is standard practice. Or Algolia's HN search. Another one is + "forum" or + . I train myself to use DDG, but, to my own dissapointment, I end up with "!g site:something-trustworthy.com" way too often. For regular Google searches, I've had the feeling of being "scammed" for years, though. The "fishing devil" on the no-results page also feels like buttering…

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#308

Post by _the_inflator » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 7:14 AM UTC

firasd wrote: post #32

I'm not sure this whole drive towards 'original content' makes sense. It encourages people to make long rambling pages that don't get to the point In fact it seems like Google worked better when wikipedia was almost always the first result on various topics What I mean by rambling is if you type something like "types of oranges" and suddenly land on a page where some dude is clearly just filling up paragraphs for goo…

I agree. That's why I habitually add "wiki" to most of my search phrases in the first place, in order to circumvent the whole SEO trash and get to the point.

Google prolly cannot earn money simply by featuring high quality stuff like Wikipedia or nerd websites. Usually SEO farms spend money on Google to earn money. So that's why search really cannot improve in my opinion due to this conflict of interest.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#309

Post by the_omegist » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 8:27 AM UTC

medion wrote: post #138

firasd wrote: post #32

I'm not sure this whole drive towards 'original content' makes sense. It encourages people to make long rambling pages that don't get to the point In fact it seems like Google worked better when wikipedia was almost always the first result on various topics What I mean by rambling is if you type something like "types of oranges" and suddenly land on a page where some dude is clearly just filling up paragraphs for goo…

Encourages people to make long rambling pages which don’t get to the point? Ever seen YouTube, it’s exactly the same. 10-11+ min videos saying almost nothing because it’s the most lucrative length. The internet of today is just everyone gaming everything for a dollar.

I sometimes search for specific keywords in the transcript of the video to directly jump to the point in very long videos. Otherwise i just click at the middle & judge.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#310

Post by the_omegist » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 8:36 AM UTC

emptyparadise wrote: post #152

dilap wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reminiscent of socialist realism -- with a modern, tech twist. The favored art-style of woke companies. It's their vision of utopia: a rainbow of skin tones, but everyone belonging to the same global monoculture.

I'd rather look at socialist realism. Soviet propaganda feels a lot more genuine than these weird corporate caricatures.

More genuine and with some positive archetypes of what was considered a "perfect" goal towards which society and the individual should aim for.