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Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

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Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#111

Post by paulcole »

colechristensen wrote: post #12
userbinator wrote: post #5

It really angers me that, despite the fact that it may be essentially perfectly what I'm looking for, if it was published long ago, Google may refuse to find it. Something like a news search engine would definitely be better off prioritising the new results, but for something more general-purpose, it's an absolutely horrible choice. I know this may be a bit of an edge-case, but I frequently search for service informa…

Google got where it was by being the best at finding what you wanted. I remember those days. Google has a hard time getting me what I want these days, and sites I do find do things to get found that make me like content a lot less (that's you, inane story on top of every recipe required to get ranked)

Who’s passed Google in your opinion? As far as my experience is concerned, Google is still the best at finding what I want. If they’re still #1 they’re still holding up their end of the bargain.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#112

Post by [deleted] »

berkes wrote: post #47
tannhaeuser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't do an admirable job if they send you to scraped rather than original content. They're ruining the web. While Google still has fantastic, one-of-a-kind services such as Translate, Search isn't one of them anymore, and we should stop cheering at it and relying on it.

I've switched to deepl.com recently for my translations. It has far fewer languages, but the translations of those it has, are far better in my opinion. Allthough I am also no linguist, just an average non-English speaker.

[deleted]

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#113

Post by wongarsu »

astura wrote: post #75
tholman wrote: post #23

Google will also happily surface a stackoverflow article from 2010 about how to solve a js problem... frustrating the top 3 answers will be with jquery, when its not the approach someone would take in the last 5 years. Definitely frustrating, but also showing some need to retire specific pieces of the past away from the top recommendations.

What's wrong with using jQuery in 2019?

When I want do do some small DOM manipulation I can now just use standard Javascript, jQuery went from providing an essential service smoothing over browser differences to just providing better syntax in that space. When I want to do more, often React or similar is a better fit. So I end up barely using jQuery anymore.

That said, I can imagine quite a few scenarios where it would still be the right tool for the job.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#114

Post by dingus »

alister wrote: post #13

Why does Google deeply index those useless telephone directory sites? Try searching for the impossible U.S. phone number "307-139-2345" and you'll see a bunch of "who called me?" or "reverse phone number lookup" sites. Virtually all of those sites are complete garbage. They make no attempt to collect numbers from telephone directories or from the web. They won't identify a number as being the main phone number for Di…

Also, those people finder sites that scrape public records.

When I search for a name, usually their blog is listed below 10 creepy lookup sites that list their name, physical address history, phone numbers, relatives, etc.

Google should push that garbage to the bottom of the stack.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#115

Post by ben_jones »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #109
alister wrote: post #13

Why does Google deeply index those useless telephone directory sites? Try searching for the impossible U.S. phone number "307-139-2345" and you'll see a bunch of "who called me?" or "reverse phone number lookup" sites. Virtually all of those sites are complete garbage. They make no attempt to collect numbers from telephone directories or from the web. They won't identify a number as being the main phone number for Di…

>for someone else to do better. It's upsetting to me that doing better than Google in search seems to be very close to an impossible feat of magic at this point. I know that will change some day, but I can't see how. Even if somebody gave you hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on infrastructure and employees, it would still be an insane risk. Writing that out, it almost sounds like internet search engines shoul…

Niche search verticals can still compete. Sourcegraph comes to mind, where you can tweak your search parameters to give superior results for more narrow use cases. I don't google for Recipes anymore because the blogspam is that bad, or for images because I don't want some pinterest or Reddit redirect carousal. I'm sure there are hundreds of example where Google "Lowest common denominator" search does not cut it.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#116

Post by wongarsu »

variable11 wrote: post #53

Arguably, search is such a vital function of modern society that it could be considered a public good and seized on the principal of eminent domain.

I don't think "vital function" should be the only test applied. For example power plants are extremely vital, but at least around here we have no problem having them privately owned.

A better test would be "vital function and strongly tends to a natural monopoly". That's what we experience with sewers, power lines, roads etc., which is why usually they are operated publicly.

With search that's not so obviously true: Google dominates because they got a big lead at the right time, and now nobody can match them in scale. But that can be solved, for example by giving grants to promising search engines to offset their costs, or by operating a crawler from public funds and giving everyone free access to the crawls (which would be kind of the digital equivalent of operating libraries).

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#118

Post by amelius »

fogetti wrote: post #80
rapht wrote: post #43

With all the talk about Google results not being satisfying anymore to a growing number of users, I'm surprised we haven't seen more sites pop up that would allow users to display the results of multiple search engines of their choosing either by mixing (eg all 1st results then all 2nd, etc) or by seeing them side by side... while stripping ads and cards and the like.

While I agree that it would be great to have such service it's just technically impossible. Google is very cautious to protect their service from automated requests (on behalf of humans or in batch or in any other form), and you will need quite some resources (a.k.a $$$) to scale at Google scale if your service would ever become popular.

> and you will need quite some resources (a.k.a $$$) to scale at Google scale if your service would ever become popular.

Except if you run it locally (on the user's computer).

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#119

Post by trickstra »

pixl97 wrote: post #78
SquareWheel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right. Really empty pages that serve a 200 are recognized as "soft 404s". The idea is to detect error pages that are erroneously serving 200 instead. It's usually pretty good about detecting actual errors, but I've seen a false positive here and there.

Welcome to the modern internet "Your page didn't contain 5Mb of Javascript, this must be an error as no one could possibly convey useful information to humans with less data" Anti-patterns, anti-patterns everywhere.

http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2019/04/19/its-better-with-jav...

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#120

Post by colechristensen »

paulcole wrote: post #111
colechristensen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google got where it was by being the best at finding what you wanted. I remember those days. Google has a hard time getting me what I want these days, and sites I do find do things to get found that make me like content a lot less (that's you, inane story on top of every recipe required to get ranked)

Who’s passed Google in your opinion? As far as my experience is concerned, Google is still the best at finding what I want. If they’re still #1 they’re still holding up their end of the bargain.

No one.

Nobody has gotten better than Google, but Google has gotten much worse (and shaped the Internet for the worse with it).

It is a de facto search monopoly and without competition it rots. (or degrades to a symbiotic money harvesting machine between searcher and searched)

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