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The Age of PageRank Is Over

blog.kagi.com

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Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#251

Post by smt88 »

kbyatnal wrote: post #173
smt88 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time, I've been considering a different solution to the problem, which is to create a human-curated whitelist-only search engine. I do think your idea is great and something with a lot of value for many use cases. The only issue is that it won't surface certain things like restaurant contact info and Wikipedia that people often need to be a top result.

yup totally agree, but I think it's nearly impossible to compete with Google and make something much better for certain types of queries (e.g. factual info, location queries, etc). They have too much data and too much of a head start. The best way to compete with them IMO is to choose a slice of queries that they perform very poorly at (like non-SEO spam results) and build something 10x better. But that brings up the…

> it's nearly impossible to compete with Google and make something much better for certain types of queries (e.g. factual info, location queries, etc)

Some of these things can be outsourced to other services. An easy Google fallback is also a common solution for new search engines.

> But that brings up the challenge of getting users to remember to come back to your search engine.

This wouldn't really be something I'd build as a business. I'd create a nonprofit, fund it with subscriptions or donations, and cover the losses myself. I really just want it to exist for myself, and if other people used it, that would be icing on the cake.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#252

Post by falsenapkin »

andyfleming wrote: post #239
fardo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Cable television and netflix have made it quite clear that payment does not mean “no ads”, it just means “no ads, yet”. It still might be a better alternative in the short term, but the moment growth starts to peak, companies follow where the incentives lead…

I'm a little tired of the rhetoric about Netflix adding ads. It's only on an entry-level account that is subsidized from the normal pricing (IIUC, correct me if I'm wrong). You could argue that they've artificially inflated the price of the normal plan or that it's a slippery slope, but it's not like they've forced ads on the existing plans. I think what's more interesting/concerning/insidious is hidden ad content li…

I would consider the Netflix UI to be ad laden for some years now with hundreds of originals shoved in your face in a non-customizable fashion and autoplaying etc. Also personalized thumbnails based on past watching behavior. You could argue that it's a good UX for most people, but for me it's always felt a bit more like user hostile marketing.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#254

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

Arnavion wrote: post #167
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought: couldn't the details about the user live on the client? And the user could delete, modify, decide not to use them. This way you get anonimity and custom results

That doesn't work unless the server sends all 1 million results (say) to the client up-front. Otherwise, if you prefer results from example.com but the server only sends example.com results on page 3, your client has no way of showing you those results on page 1.

I think I've been misunderstood, in my mind the client sends all the details about themselves to the server, the server builds up the search results and send them back.

Yes, the server has access to the information the client has, but it doesn't have any way to confirm that's true. It also could avoid storing that information all together if the client sends it again every time

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#255

Post by UberFly »

andyfleming wrote: post #239
fardo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Cable television and netflix have made it quite clear that payment does not mean “no ads”, it just means “no ads, yet”. It still might be a better alternative in the short term, but the moment growth starts to peak, companies follow where the incentives lead…

I'm a little tired of the rhetoric about Netflix adding ads. It's only on an entry-level account that is subsidized from the normal pricing (IIUC, correct me if I'm wrong). You could argue that they've artificially inflated the price of the normal plan or that it's a slippery slope, but it's not like they've forced ads on the existing plans. I think what's more interesting/concerning/insidious is hidden ad content li…

I agree with your product placement comment. I feel gross when I notice it. I also wonder what happens when Netflix decides it makes way more money on people watching the ads - ie. Google initially calling ads a detriment to search quality but not being able to resist the $. I could see a day when they remove the no-ads plan.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#256

Post by naasking »

akrymski wrote: post #37

> The more you tell your assistant, the better it can help you, so when you ask it to recommend a good restaurant nearby, it’ll provide options based on what you like to eat and how far you want to drive. Ask it for a good coffee maker, and it’ll recommend choices within your budget from your favorite brands with only your best interests in mind. The search will be personal and contextual and excitingly so! Actually…

> Google is far more than PageRank. Its an AI ranking model that has the largest training dataset (queries and clicks).

That doesn't necessarily make it better for HN users. A more selective dataset could make it more useful to specific niches, like say, HN users?

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#257

Post by philwelch »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #135
Invictus0 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's revenue is over 280B annualized from last quarter's numbers. Let's just assume that every person on earth is using Google at an equal rate. That's $35 worth of revenue per user per year. There is no way that you can come close to that without doing ads; the median global income is less than 4000 international dollars per year. So naturally, there is a strong pressure for companies to pivot to ads once they r…

what I find strange is that selling ads makes more money than selling service. Because at the end the people watching the ads are buying the stuff advertised so those who adverstise have more money for advertising…. So for it to be rentable people have to buy way more than the ad revenue google makes. If spending for google ads is 1% of bussines budget and budget has to be at least Revenue……..with 280 billion revenue…

Advertising is kind of a backdoor price discrimination in that way. If you can afford to spend $10,000,000, people will advertise wealth management services to you. If you can afford to spend $1, McDonalds will advertise their dollar menu to you.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#258

Post by akhilpotla »

mikepurvis wrote: post #212
lesuorac wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic argument not being watertight is the problem. This is why tech companies keep pivoting to ads, they just didn't make enough money otherwise. Afaik [1], there's about 5 employees and the revenue only covers server expenses while they're still trying to get more headcount. Not an expert on bootstrapping but I'm pretty sure you don't want to expand faster than your revenue does otherwise you stop being able…

"This is why tech companies keep pivoting to ads" I think another factor is the paradox that the user who has enough money to be willing to pay to not see another ad is exactly the most valuable user to advertisers— they've pre-qualified themselves on multiple axes. So there is always going to be an enormous moral hazard here with the ad-driven-freemium model— always a temptation to run an occasional high-value ad to…

One of the problems is price point. They are charging $10/month. While increasing the price will certainly decrease the number of users, a much higher price point could select for "power users" that will churn less and pay substantially more. In the long run that could lead to greater revenue.

Of course this depends on how the supply demand curve looks like for their specific business.

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#259

Post by fnordpiglet »

The way iOS search is done by Kagi is a little creepy. You have to load an extension and allow it the ability to inspect everything. It then intercepts searches and redirects the browser to Kagi. I’m sure it’s what’s necessary to add a search in iOS, but still a sad compromise. Regardless the search results from Kagi seem much less SEO spammy which is nice!

Re: The Age of PageRank Is Over

#260

Post by freediver »

dylan604 wrote: post #232
smt88 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time, I've been considering a different solution to the problem, which is to create a human-curated whitelist-only search engine. I do think your idea is great and something with a lot of value for many use cases. The only issue is that it won't surface certain things like restaurant contact info and Wikipedia that people often need to be a top result.

>which is to create a human-curated whitelist-only search engine. You might be interested in watching the series "Halt and Catch Fire".

> "Halt and Catch Fire"

Another fan!

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