The Age of PageRank Is Over • Hacker News Board

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#11

Post by matai_kolila » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

What a completely disconnected-from-reality article.

There are so many ways to use Google to obtain the information you're looking for, and so many people do it literally on a minute-to-minute basis that it's flat absurd to call that ineffective.

It's trivially easy to learn something by typing a question into Google; maybe when writing an article try gut checking it against obvious observed reality first.

I simply cannot fathom a noble reason why the author would decide to publish this.

Edit: Oh wait I found it; the author is Vladimir Prelovac, CEO, Kagi Inc. What does Kagi Inc. do? I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader, but I bet you guess it in one try...

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#12

Post by ballenf » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

Is there a search engine that just omits pages with surveillance tracking scripts? Could it be done?

Then you can check google or a mainstream engine when needed.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#13

Post by andirk » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

beckingz wrote: post #2

Reject modernity, embrace tradition: we're going back to user curated indexes like it's the 90s! Time to join a web ring.

My favorite was LinkExchange. An interesting little success story too [0]. We should also bring back the term "webmaster" so when people ask what you do, respond, "I'm a webmaster".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkExchange

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#14

Post by drstewart » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #7

Honestly not sure if search engines are the future at all, at least for commercialisable content. More and more I find myself searching through moderated social media like Reddit or Facebook Groups/Marketplace for product recommendations or local services. Gave Kagi a go, but it seemed to be even worse than Google for what I tried.

This feels like a consequence of a centralized, gardened web, not because Reddit / FB are inherently superior experiences.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#15

Post by boringg » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

candyman wrote: post #4

It’s about time. Google results are so full of promoted and sponsored content that you must use tricks to get past it. Even so most of the best things are no longer findable via Google even if you know what you are searching for!. I’ve been using Kagi for a few weeks now and really like the results. I signed up for a paid account to support their progress.

Cool but why do I need to do a login to even give it a test drive? Immediate turn off.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#16

Post by irsagent » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

I started using Kagi and Orion a while back and it has changed how I used the web. Both the products Kagi offers has only increased my productivity and removed the internet junk that I am used to seeing on the web. A note on Orion, the ability to use extensions from both Firefox and Chrome store is why it is admirable, the cherry is Mac integration and its similarity to safari with the tree-view tabs.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#17

Post by andirk » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

andromeduck wrote: post #10

I've always wondered why Google doesn't have some way to provide an explicit signal from the users like favorite/bookmark or explicitly like/dislike a search result. It's often pretty fustrating to try and find something you know you've seen before but don't remember quite the name of or exact keywords.

Google added some "plus" button when Google+ was pretending to be a thing. It made no sense though as how would someone know it's a good result before they visit it?

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#18

Post by widdershins » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

I've been using Kagi the last few months. I've never had a reason to complain about its search results - they seem to work plenty well enough day to day that I don't really 'notice' them. Like most, I now search reflexively, as an extension of the mind, so I only 'notice' search when it's bad.

What really excites me is that is that I'm paying them. That sounds odd, but seriously. It's incredibly refreshing to know that the company providing my search results has an incentive to make things better for _me_ and not a legion of advertisers. With Google I can't help thinking about every keypress being logged to optimize sales pitches at me. I just don't feel that with Kagi, because I'm paying them.

Sure, they might be logging every keypress (I don't actually think they are, but you never can tell) but even if they were, I could be reasonably certain they were doing it to retain my subscription, which probably means making my search better, not selling me other stuff.

It's a priveleged position to be in, and the economic argument isn't watertight, but in the "search as a brain extension" space it still _feels_ premium, because it creates trust. And that frees up brain space for other things - like where the hell was that article I was looking for?

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#19

Post by dr-detroit » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

matai_kolila wrote: post #11

What a completely disconnected-from-reality article. There are so many ways to use Google to obtain the information you're looking for, and so many people do it literally on a minute-to-minute basis that it's flat absurd to call that ineffective. It's trivially easy to learn something by typing a question into Google; maybe when writing an article try gut checking it against obvious observed reality first. I simply c…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#20

Post by amelius » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

Can the technology behind GPT-3 be used to find relevant articles given a query?

E.g. instead of training it to generate sentences given a prompt, train it to generate URLs given a query (?)