Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 493 posts

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#461

Post by Springtime »

haizhung wrote: post #256

What always confuses me about the „search has gotten so bad“ mentality is that it is often based on anecdotal evidence at best, and anecdotal recollection at worst. Like, sure, I have the impression that search got worse over the last years, but .. has it really? How could you tell? And, honestly, this should be a verifiable claim; you can just try the top N search terms from Google trends or whatever and see how the…

Every time I encounter an egregious poor result in DDG I document it with images. I have a directory of them over the last few years. However I encounter so many now, while when I first began using DDG just a couple years prior to that it was less of an issue (and I fully switched at the time). So yeah, I don't have before/after comparisons but it's a little more solid than just 'I feel the results are worse' being characterized here.

There are particular search parameters that DDG changed the behavior of, including exclusion and double quoting, which are now, according to even their own docs, more a hint of the direction results should go rather than any explicit/literal command (ime these virtually never work, which was a motivation for documenting failures, and they actually removed them from their docs temporarily at one point earlier this year).

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#462

Post by kristopolous »

ec109685 wrote: post #124
Nextgrid wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works not because they're somehow smarter or have more resources than Google at detecting spam/SEO, it's because unlike Google (and other ad-supported search engines), they make money from result quality and have an interest in blocking spam. Google on the other hand makes money off ads (whether on the search results page itself or on the spam sites), so spam sites are at best considered neutral and at worst consi…

Kagi works because there is no incentive for SEO manipulators to target it since their market share is so small. Super tinfoil hat to believe Google wants to send users to blog spam websites (e.g. beneficial to Google). Anytime there is money to be made, there is an effectively infinite amount of people trying to game the system.

That's why taking the money out of the click is effective.

There can be other models for making money, but methods that really on casting a wide net and driving low quality traffic is the thing that shouldn't be indexed or at least labeled as such

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#463

Post by kzrdude »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #402
ta988 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my feedback after trying to finally get to what it is exactly. I tried to find marginalia on DDG, not on the first page. Google has it after some garbage. If I go to marginalia.nu I get a SSL error. search.marginalia.nu works If i search on marginalia for duckduckgo there first link is somewhat relevant but is about the app, all the other links are related to DDG but of curious relevance. If I search for ublackl…

Hmm, what's your browser? I renewed the cert today... Only thing I can think of is that it might not like a wildcard cert for the bare marginalia.nu domain.

Hi, your encyclopedia experiment(?) is also very inspiring. I really think it works, it makes it much easier to read the articles.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#464

Post by marginalia_nu »

someguy5281 wrote: post #450
marginalia_nu wrote: post #11

While I've made huge improvements to the algo recently, I do think Marginalia Search got a bit lucky with the sample queries, as it is still IMO far more hit and miss than many alternatives, but that also speaks for how hard evaluating search quality is. Its efficacy is also strongly dependent on understanding that it's a keyword search engine with no semantic understanding.

> Its efficacy is also strongly dependent on understanding that it's a keyword search engine with no semantic understanding. Good. I love keyword search. "Semantic understanding" can be so biased and ... just shady sometimes.

It's tricky though. I think a lot of people think they want raw keyword search, but what they really want is a search experience that makes intuitive sense.

If you lean too much into embeddings and so on, it's easy to get errors that don't make sense to a human being. It's extremely frustrating when you experience "I typed X, why am I getting results about Y?!"

That said, I think there's a sweet spot with some magic, where it genuinely just makes search better. But it's like perfume, if it's immediately obvious that it's there, it's probably a fair bit too much.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#465

Post by marginalia_nu »

kzrdude wrote: post #463
marginalia_nu wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, what's your browser? I renewed the cert today... Only thing I can think of is that it might not like a wildcard cert for the bare marginalia.nu domain.

Hi, your encyclopedia experiment(?) is also very inspiring. I really think it works, it makes it much easier to read the articles.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I wish I had more time to polish it up a bit. A least make the mobile experience work a bit better.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#466

Post by jmye »

Nextgrid wrote: post #208
w-ll wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dont think they public disclose that fact

It doesn't need to be public to become an antitrust liability. Internal written material can still come up during discovery, potentially even in unrelated cases. Therefore the safest option is to never openly discuss it or intentionally do it and instead use other means to achieve the objective (don't intentionally rank spam higher, just defund/cancel any projects that would make it rank lower).

> Internal written material can still come up during discovery, potentially even in unrelated cases.

Yup, and I think we've seen how careless and thoughtless Google is, as an organization, with internal comms in the Epic case. It would be shocking if it hadn't been discovered in that, or a prior, lawsuit.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#467

Post by williamcotton »

necovek wrote: post #458
williamcotton wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you’re looking for. A blog post about how to play Search and Destroy by The Stooges is not as useful as a video of James Williamson himself showing you the riffs!

Well, I don't think I'd be able to learn much just from watching the concert: teaching is fundamentally different from doing. So I think even that example does not universally hold. I'd still appreciate a write up with tips on what's important and if there are any transitions to focus on with only the bits on video where some of that is demonstrated. Now, I can barely contort my fingers into one riff, so I lack the k…

I’m not talking about concert footage, I’m talking about James breaking the song down and showing you the riffs at quarter speed.

Until a recent YouTube video I was playing the song incorrectly. It’s blazing fast and the mix is sort of insane so it’s very hard to hear exactly what is going on. And the tablature isn’t going to let you see how his body fits into the groove.

This is tacit knowledge we’re talking about, not book learning. Guitar instruction is always hands on.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#468

Post by carlosjobim »

anonymoushn wrote: post #434
carlosjobim wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first result on Kagi is exactly this, just tried it a moment ago. It processed and downloaded the video extremely fast. Why would any reasonable person prefer youtube-dl?

Over here the first result on Kagi is savefrom.net which variously tries to install malware or sell a paid subscription and does not download videos.

It was the same domain for me, but maybe I should have tried it without adblockers? The page downloaded the YT video completely fine for me.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#470

Post by dang »

ametrau wrote: post #372
Nextgrid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this should be table stakes for a classifier - a company with the resource of Google can definitely solve that problem if they weren't themselves in the business of spam (advertising) and benefited from spam sites (as they often include Google ads/analytics).

> table stakes Always “table stakes”. Do you think in buzzwords also? I’ve always wondered this. Or do you think normal words and then translate it into this bandwagoning / membership proving garbage ?

Hey, please don't cross into personal attack on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: unfortunately your account has been breaking the site guidelines in a lot of other places too—here are some recent examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38825624

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38825543

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783196

We eventually have to ban accounts that post like this, so if you'd please stop doing that, we'd appreciate it. On HN the idea is: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.

Post reply on HN