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Why I hate search

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Re: Why I hate search

#21

Post by benjash »

Seems a bit idealistic to me.

There have been a few ex-googlers who are upset about Google being an advertising company. Maybe they where sold into a dream that never materilised.

Lets say you own a company employing thousands and you discover the perfect way to improve your clients user experiance, the only problem is it disrupts the market so much your company is no longer profitable, so all your share holder and employees go without ? would you still do it?

Siri is a value add to a company that makes money out of its products. You have to own a 600$ piece of metal to have the privelege of using it.

And i much prefer googling - "Pet shop in dubai" for free. Weirdly - companies that do avertise have it much more together. If there paying for a dollar for my click, there definitly going to be open and have the products i want.

Re: Why I hate search

#23

Post by mistermann »

I don't agree entirely with OP, but there is truth in what he says.

> The more ugly blue links you serve up, the more time users have to click on ads. Serve up bad results and the user must search again and this doubles the number of sponsored links you get paid for. Why be part of the solution when being part of the problem pays so damn well?

One thing that to me seems like a no brainer is for google to have user-configurable catalogs, or groups of websites. So, if I am logged in, I should be able to make a group called "Poker" and add the 10 websites that I know have good content to that group. So then when I am doing a search on that topic, I can choose my "Poker" catalog and results will only be returned from sites within that catalog.

This is just one extremely simple idea that would be immensely valuable and greatly improve search productivity, there are many others. That google hasn't thought of this idea, or has thought of it but decided it wouldn't be beneficial to users, seems very hard to believe. They have a vested interest in search being good (better than everyone else), but not great.

Re: Why I hate search

#24

Post by sreyaNotfilc »

mgkimsal wrote: post #9

He's not quite making the leap I thought he would, so I'll make it. Our browsers are dumb , and encourage 'search'. Google's made inroads by making a faster browser that makes it easier to 'search' (through them, of course), but keeping track of that information in the browser sucks. Browser bookmark tools are a joke, and web-based ones, while better, generally aren't much better. I envision a 'browser' that can trac…

I actually have an idea for an alternative that I'm building for my website (artjutsu.com). I've been using it for about 3 months now and I still have a ways to go to make it more useful. I believe it may be something that you're interested in.

I don't want to spill the beans though, so if you want to know more (or help me test/build it) please email me.

Yes, search is basically a grab bag, and browser history is decent but get's convoluted the more you use it. There are ways to make this easier, but why reinvent the wheel when you already own the wheel, right? Changing search will change major search engines business model, and share holders hate radical changes. Especially when you're raking in major dough.

Re: Why I hate search

#25

Post by [deleted] »

danso wrote: post #19

The problem with Internet search is that being stupid about it is profitable. The more ugly blue links you serve up, the more time users have to click on ads. Serve up bad results and the user must search again and this doubles the number of sponsored links you get paid for. Why be part of the solution when being part of the problem pays so damn well? Correct me if I'm wrong, but when google started out, wasn't one o…

[deleted]

Re: Why I hate search

#27

Post by AznHisoka »

Perhaps we'd be better off with different products for different types of searches. If I need a specific tool or utility, I search the App Store. If I need a review, Yelp. If I need to compare prices, ShopZilla. What I'd love to see if a search engine that only returns authority websites, sort of what Blekko was doing.

Re: Why I hate search

#28

Post by chrisveto »

I for one would vote for common sense, which would get rid of, say 1/3 of the entire planet's search queries. That amount of course is taken completely off the ceiling, but it get's my point across. That being said, if no one were searching, then no one would be finding. Searching is the thing that makes us learn, I mean, in a school library you also search for a book, right? No books are going to run into your lap by themselves. So, unless some of you geniuses have a way to fix that and make human race even more lazier, do let me know.

Re: Why I hate search

#29

Post by web_chops »

mgkimsal wrote: post #9

He's not quite making the leap I thought he would, so I'll make it. Our browsers are dumb , and encourage 'search'. Google's made inroads by making a faster browser that makes it easier to 'search' (through them, of course), but keeping track of that information in the browser sucks. Browser bookmark tools are a joke, and web-based ones, while better, generally aren't much better. I envision a 'browser' that can trac…

I found stumble-upon to be pretty good in this regard (mainly due to the user curated bookmarks) though the quality has gone down a bit recently (thanks to the spammers)

Re: Why I hate search

#30

Post by danso »

mistermann wrote: post #23

I don't agree entirely with OP, but there is truth in what he says. > The more ugly blue links you serve up, the more time users have to click on ads. Serve up bad results and the user must search again and this doubles the number of sponsored links you get paid for. Why be part of the solution when being part of the problem pays so damn well? One thing that to me seems like a no brainer is for google to have user-co…

Um...isn't this what Google+ is supposed to do, in effect? By registering your +1's for sites and users, Google gets a good fix of where you like your information from.

However, the solution you propose would fail if similar precedents are to be considered. Users do not like manually curating lists (remember Facebook friend lists?). On a philosophical point, your solution requires that users know what they don't know: that is, they don't know that the "poker" question at a given time might be better answered by a site outside their circle. If users were encouraged to curate their own sources to limit the search for knowledge from, then that encourages the echo chamber phenomenon which ends up hurting the "open" web.

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