On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results • Hacker News Board

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#131

Post by solveforall » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 8:29 AM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #127

solveforall wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the image and what it's trying to show? That the number of text links should be more than the number of image links to well known sites? I'm asking because I do something similar on my site, solveforall.com, but to a much lesser degree of course.

I am going to hack on this and see how it works, but first glance looks cool. The image (really confusingly) illustrates the searchflow model: Broweser ==> Google Goolge ==> Results results ===> Hacker news or another aggregator aggregator ===> your fav. sub community (because gooigle discovery sucks) subreddit helps you find links you want in those links you find information ============================== that is wh…

Ah, I get it now. Thanks for the explanation. This is the problem with the "deep web" not being indexable by crawlers. I've started looking at how to make this easier for users. Basically I'm got some ways to detect which sites should be searched in response to your queries, based on the category of words in your query and the site. But then I need to do a real-time search of that site, that might require JS to run, extract the links, and present them back to the user. It might be slow, but it's easier for the user to wait for the cloud to do it than click the links on multiple sites himself.

Thanks for checking out my site. If you have any questions or have any trouble please let me know at help@solveforall.com. And maybe we can explore brainstorming/collaborating since you've clearly put a lot of thought into search.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#132

Post by vmp » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 9:34 AM UTC

nkurz wrote: post #106

vmp wrote: post #104

I find myself using the "verbatim" search option all the time, which is hidden one menu-layer deep in the "search tools" drop-down, behind the "All Results" button. It helps but I've noticed this trend of google search working against the user too.

Alternatively, in many browsers you can create a shortcut that you can use when entering a URL. I have: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&num=100&tbs=li:1&filter=0 aliased to "v" for "verbatim". Here's instructions for adding a custom search engine to Chrome: http://www.swestwood.com/blog/view/fast-searching-chrome

Awesome, thanks!

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#133

Post by kruczek » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 12:14 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #63

Yes, yes, yes. I have been meaning to write this very blog post for years with examples just like this. There is not a single day that goes by that I am not searching for something specific and particular in google and am treated to pages and pages of search results that are missing at least one of the terms, thus rendering the results useless. The worst part is, the strikethrough "missing: search term" identifier do…

> The worst part is, the strikethrough "missing: search term" identifier does not always appear, and you click through to a page that is useless without knowing it.

I always assumed that such cases mean that the webpage changed since Google crawler's last visit. Did you try ctrl-f'ing cached version of the webpage in such situations?

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#134

Post by fixermark » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #128

tamana wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, 5 exact matches and 5 related pages is considered poor result quality?

I have no idea why I would ever want "related pages". I am not waiting in line with my girlfriends and searching for Britney Spears Songs. Related pages do nothing for me. They are bad results.

Follow-up question: Are you logged in?

Google search will generally learn your preferences and get better at vending you the results you can actually use if you're logged in so it can build that search history for you.