Tell HN: Tweets no longer seem to be properly indexed by Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Tweets no longer seem to be properly indexed by Google

#61

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 4:30 AM UTC

LarryMullins wrote: post #31

bthrn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s heavily dependent on the quality of the search offered. For example — Reddit’s search functionality is terrible. I’ve found that Google is much better for searching Reddit.

Google's propensity to return reddit results is a negative to me. Reddit almost never has the information I'm looking for, particularly ever since their website redesign. Even if the search result takes me to a reddit comment section that might have the result, reddit will only show me the top N% of comments in that discussion and then when I scroll down, I see irrelevant top-level posts on reddit about people's cat…

If you log into your reddit account you don't need an extension you can opt out of the redesign and automatically and always see the old site design.

Re: Tell HN: Tweets no longer seem to be properly indexed by Google

#62

Post by gremlinsinc » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

hakanderyal wrote: post #38

LarryMullins wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's propensity to return reddit results is a negative to me. Reddit almost never has the information I'm looking for, particularly ever since their website redesign. Even if the search result takes me to a reddit comment section that might have the result, reddit will only show me the top N% of comments in that discussion and then when I scroll down, I see irrelevant top-level posts on reddit about people's cat…

Interesting. My experience is the exact opposite and I lot of my review searches are start by adding “Reddit” to the end. For opinions on non-tech topics and products Reddit is my #1 source, and I haven’t got burned even once. But I’ll admit it’s not my only source, and I always cross reference my findings.

I have setup a custom search under search engines in chrome/settings which basically maps !r to google+reddit e.g. : SE: GReddit Shortcut: !r https://google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+%s

I have a similar one for github too:

gh : order by last updated, with > 5 stars, and has been pushed to since 1/1/2022.

Re: Tell HN: Tweets no longer seem to be properly indexed by Google

#63

Post by gremlinsinc » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 12:43 PM UTC

voytec wrote: post #41

jahewson wrote: post #35

Next week, Twitter is starting to charge for their API https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/cash-strapped-tw... Could be related? Even if they’re just crawling the public pages I could certainly imagine Elon trying to extract money from Google for the privilege.

Just a few days ago I wrote a comment, that Elon's decisions are pushing Twitter towards becoming a ghost town. But I'm unsure whether he could be so irrational to cut the biggest search engine off. One thing I find important to remember, is that Jack Dorsey gave Elon Musk one bil for the Twitter purchase so maybe there's some kind of Grand Plan that I'm too stupid to see. But would it start with Twitter's bankruptcy…

I'm not really a conspiracy guy, but it could be a 4d chess move.

He can get publicity whenever he wants it, how he wants it. Twitter is the #1 platform for news, and political ideologies to express themselves. If he levels that, it throws a huge wrench since there's really no 'backup'.

Everyone has put so much into tweeting on twitter, now that it could go belly up, how does an entire network pick a good replacement? Doesn't even look like they can because of all the polarization.

If he had some evil designs, tanking Twitter could be worth losing 45 billion dollars if it gives him more power to do whatever he wants to do. Not saying he is, I'm not an Elon fan, but even I don't think he's this stupid (he's not donald trump) - but I guess he could be - if he isn't doing this on purpose he'd have to be.

Re: Tell HN: Tweets no longer seem to be properly indexed by Google

#64

Post by basch » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #42

klyrs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is indexed in effectively real time as well. I've googled several phrases I've read here, hoping to find more information, where the HN comment of interest is the sole result.

Googled "HN is indexed in effectively real time as well" and your comment is the top result

I just had the opposite happen, was looking for a post I know ive found through google before and had to go through bing and then yandex to find it. Google's historical archive of hn appears wonky, or at least did that day.

Re: Tell HN: Tweets no longer seem to be properly indexed by Google

#65

Post by imbiased » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

LarryMullins wrote: post #19

I never use general-purpose search engines if I already know which website the thing I'm looking for is on (assuming that website has it's own search functionality.) If I am looking for a wikipedia article, I go to wikipedia and search for it there. If I am looking for a tweet, I go to twitter and search for it there. If I'm searching for something on HN, then it's algolia. Search keywords in firefox make this easy.…

It's not what you're saying but it feels a bit unrelated in that it doesn't mean that it is not useful for Google to index tweets. More likely than one wanting to find a specific tweet, is one wanting an answer or pages related to a query where one does not care about where the result is hosted, and I would rather not search across several sites separately.