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Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

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Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#121

Post by devmor »

jplona wrote: post #71
jamal-kumar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they make their very expected functionality something you have to dig around to find now? That just seems like really bad decision making that should have been spotted by someone on top and screams that the people on top are now disconnected from reality. I swear that it used to work for certain strings I'm trying to find now which I was able to find information on and now it isn't even returning, with "ver…

It's also possible they they're correct, and the average user of today has much less need for verbatim searches than the average user when the search engine was first designed.

This is almost certainly the case. Those of us who learned to use and mastered keyword-style search are the minority. Most people search whole phrases, expecting a contextual answer.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#122

Post by boredpudding »

netsroht wrote: post #107
TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

Being logged in while making search queries in search engines poses significant privacy risks. The searches can paint a comprehensive profile of the user, and these data often remain stored for extended periods. There's a chance this information might be shared with third parties. Coupled with other user data, these logged-in searches can pave the way for targeted advertising, sophisticated predictive analysis, and p…

Any system that can check balance, can link searches to a user. There's no way around it. In your case, Kagi would need to trust the client with the balance, which would be insecure.

There's only one solution, and that is that you need to put a bit of trust in Kagi. Compared to the major one, Google, you can chose between one that promises to not store data, and one that promises it does (and does a lot).

It's always a bit sad that here on HN, when companies try to do better than bigger players, there's always people who think it isn't enough. It has to be absolutely impossibly perfect.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#123

Post by jaktet »

delboni wrote: post #98
TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

Does anyone knows how Kagi performs on country specific search or even search in another languages?

One personal anecdote. It did not do that great for Norway/Norwegian, I ended up switching back to google when trying to find some stuff in stores.

For recipes and stuff it was fine.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#124

Post by metadaemon »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

Happy customer here! Been paying for a year with no complaints. Amazing search engine -- kind of like how Google used to be years ago before they started injecting more ads into search.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#125

Post by crazygringo »

marcosdumay wrote: post #117
crazygringo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, wow. It's there (under Tools, you don't even need to go to Advanced), it works, and yet I've never once seen anybody talk about that feature's existence on HN until now. And people have been complaining about not being able to do verbatim searches for years and years here on HN. Second, I just looked up when this feature was introduced (assuming it was fairly new), and it was in... November 2011 . It's…

> I've never once seen anybody talk about that feature's existence on HN until now Every time I tried it, it didn't work. It certainly changed a lot on those years, but the reason nobody acknowledges it is probably because it's a coin-toss if Google wants "verbatim" to mean verbatim today. Quotes actually stopped working (they became a hint, instead of filtering the results) a long time ago, and many people insisted…

Can you (or anyone) supply an example where it doesn't?

I just tried a whole bunch of queries on seemingly generic-sounding sentences from old pages on niche blogs and it found every single one.

So I'd love to understand when it doesn't work and if there's some pattern -- like if certain punctuation trips it up, or if it's simply pages not indexed in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#126

Post by kuchenbecker »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #65
sneak wrote: post #14

You have to use a special "verbatim" search product from Google, it isn't the main search box anymore. Look under Advanced or something.

Why would they make their very expected functionality something you have to dig around to find now? That just seems like really bad decision making that should have been spotted by someone on top and screams that the people on top are now disconnected from reality. I swear that it used to work for certain strings I'm trying to find now which I was able to find information on and now it isn't even returning, with "ver…

My guess (complete speculation, but I worked with the Search Quality folks about a decade ago):

1 - By interpreting your search, it leads to better "search quality" by having one model say "i think this is what they want" and another execute the search. P90 accuracy is increased at the cost of P99 accuracy.

2 - If you search for a literal string you know exists, you expect to find it. By interpreting, fewer search inputs with literal strings make it to the search function.

3 - Since Google is interpreting more searches, this gives ad-placement a route in to favorably interpret "they want to buy something" even when this isn't the case. This makes Google money.

4 - People that used to use literal searches either stop, learn how, or switch search engines.

5 - After a couple years, business metrics show that literal searches represent 0.1% of queries and make less money, is it really worth investing in? When it was a P99 issue it fell off the radar and now the P999 is lost.

So a series or rational decisions by rational actors leads to a decline of a used feature because of business incentives and chasing P90s at the cost of P99s.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#127

Post by boredpudding »

bloopernova wrote: post #120
TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

Do you ever go past the 1,000 search "limit"? I'm considering signing up; it would be one fewer service I'm relying on google for.

I was quite afraid of this, but apparently I'm around 700-800 searches a month and I search quite a lot during my work.

Kagi is also working on removing the 1000 limit on the 10$ subscription and offering unlimited searches.

Switching from the 5 $ plan to 10 $ was super smooth by the way, so if you want to try for less $, the 5 $ for a month is enough so you can get used to the product and know if you like it or not (and that's besides the 100 free you get while signing up for a trial).

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#128

Post by EA-3167 »

netsroht wrote: post #107
TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

Being logged in while making search queries in search engines poses significant privacy risks. The searches can paint a comprehensive profile of the user, and these data often remain stored for extended periods. There's a chance this information might be shared with third parties. Coupled with other user data, these logged-in searches can pave the way for targeted advertising, sophisticated predictive analysis, and p…

I'm not searching for anything terrifyingly illegal, and for the rest Google and MS already scrape and compile every byte of data I've ever generated. Why would it suddenly be a problem when a more reliable and less vicious company is doing a fraction of that?

You have to understand that most of us aren't fighting some battle for "perfect privacy," I just want a search engine that works for me, rather than advertisers, at the level of the search results themselves.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#129

Post by bloopernova »

boredpudding wrote: post #127
bloopernova wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever go past the 1,000 search "limit"? I'm considering signing up; it would be one fewer service I'm relying on google for.

I was quite afraid of this, but apparently I'm around 700-800 searches a month and I search quite a lot during my work. Kagi is also working on removing the 1000 limit on the 10$ subscription and offering unlimited searches. Switching from the 5 $ plan to 10 $ was super smooth by the way, so if you want to try for less $, the 5 $ for a month is enough so you can get used to the product and know if you like it or not…

excellent, thank you for the information :)

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#130

Post by jamal-kumar »

kuchenbecker wrote: post #126
jamal-kumar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they make their very expected functionality something you have to dig around to find now? That just seems like really bad decision making that should have been spotted by someone on top and screams that the people on top are now disconnected from reality. I swear that it used to work for certain strings I'm trying to find now which I was able to find information on and now it isn't even returning, with "ver…

My guess (complete speculation, but I worked with the Search Quality folks about a decade ago): 1 - By interpreting your search, it leads to better "search quality" by having one model say "i think this is what they want" and another execute the search. P90 accuracy is increased at the cost of P99 accuracy. 2 - If you search for a literal string you know exists, you expect to find it. By interpreting, fewer search in…

So they're basically just as good as some malware search engine that inserted itself into grandma's computer now

Fantastic

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