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Show HN: Imagine a search engine that removed top million sites from its index

millionshort.com

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Re: Show HN: Imagine a search engine that removed top million sites from its index

#111

Post by mmahemoff »

shazow wrote: post #53
bo1024 wrote: post #18

I'd really like to see randomization instead. Return results picked randomly from within the top 10 million or something.

I'm not sure this is a great idea. Predictability is a staple of a good user experience. Getting different results for the same query between users or sessions is bound to lead to broken expectations and frustration.

I like the idea of offering it after the first search. I see the value of this kind of search engine as introducing some novelty/entropy into the system. I could imagine using it as a backup to primary search engines, in which case I'd definitely want to get some randomness going.

I wouldn't just want the "million-and-eleventh" site (so to speak) when clicking next.

Re: Show HN: Imagine a search engine that removed top million sites from its index

#114

Post by hello_asdf »

noahc wrote: post #105
erichocean wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Since this is trivial for Google to copy, it's unlikely that it'll actually disrupt Google in any way, but still...very cool.

The technology is trivial, but the reasons behind it and philosophy that drives it aren't. Google isn't going to come along and say, "oh, guys, you're right...Wave, Buzz, Google+ all a mistake. Social Graph..Mistake!. We're sorry. We are rolling everything back to 2004" Google has been increasingly more frustrating for power users over the last couple of years. People are looking for alternatives. DDG is one, this is…

Ah, I was unaware of the !g bang syntax, that's a great one. I'm also fond of !archwiki, and all the language bangs. DuckDuckGo is the only search engine that I know of that could take over a significant portion of search traffic. By significant I don't mean tens of millions, but I mean a dedicated userbase who use it in leue of Google.

Re: Show HN: Imagine a search engine that removed top million sites from its index

#116

Post by bane »

It's a similar measure that's often used in NLP. Sentences, documents etc. are usually stripped of common or popular terms first and the remaining ones tend to have higher information value.

It's not entirely a surprise that it works for meta-language constructs like the web and site popularity.

Re: Show HN: Imagine a search engine that removed top million sites from its index

#117

Post by hoprocker »

pash wrote: post #51
RegEx wrote: post #10

I like this idea a lot. I came across a nice, concise explanation of a Buffer overflow http://www.apolis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=...

This is a copy of the Wikipedia article on buffer overflows.

Looks like this idea isn't totally in the free-and-clear from content farms.

Re: Show HN: Imagine a search engine that removed top million sites from its index

#118

Post by hoprocker »

Bud wrote: post #74
Cushman wrote: post #16

I'd be fascinated to see the kind of SEO that would go on if this took off. "Bad news-- we're a top 100 hit for several of our main keywords. We'll have to change our URL scheme again."

We can call it Search Engine Pessimization!

Bravo!
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