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Reddit can't build a better search engine

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Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#131

Post by rawoke083600 »

voldacar wrote: post #116

>So how can we fix the system? The best way to fix the system is to prioritize websites that are there to share knowledge, not websites with their primary priority to make ad revenue. Different solution: - Make a search engine that is actually good. Blacklist all SEO spam such as pinterest, allow complex queries, restrict by date, site, regex, etc - Charge 1 cent per search, or as much as is necessary Why has nobody…

>Blacklist all SEO spam

That is like saying:

"Electricity problems ? just build a fusion reactor..."

Sure it's the answer but the devil is in the details !

The "easy ones" like pinterest are "easy" but I can guarantee you that finding all the other ones and new ones will be much much harder, especially once you have false positives.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#132

Post by rawoke083600 »

cowl wrote: post #124
voldacar wrote: post #116

>So how can we fix the system? The best way to fix the system is to prioritize websites that are there to share knowledge, not websites with their primary priority to make ad revenue. Different solution: - Make a search engine that is actually good. Blacklist all SEO spam such as pinterest, allow complex queries, restrict by date, site, regex, etc - Charge 1 cent per search, or as much as is necessary Why has nobody…

>Why has nobody done this? What am I missing? The answer is in your proposal: >- Charge 1 cent per search, or as much as is necessary 90% of people do potentially hundreds of searches everyday. Especially non expert users that practically use the search engine to search for the domain of the sites they need to go too. The people ready to pay a fixed fee /per search wouldn't be able to cover even a fraction of the inf…

>Google's solution that "outside links" are considered as "votes" that this site is good is what made it good but also what made it vulnerable to SEO. Do you have any other idea on how do you decide if a result is good or not beyond the literal text search?

Exactly this ! I used to be head of search for a big eCommerce site, and even with this very "limited-scope-vertical". I was always amazed at the vast differences between people's opinion on "what are good results" it's so personal and ambiguous most of the time.

Even in our small'ish devteam (Doing this at Google scale I can only imagine is x1000 harder

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#133

Post by yakubin »

sasaf5 wrote: post #128

> I’d still prefer a targeted ad over a random ad that is unrelated to me. No, a million times no. A targeted ad requires my personal information being collected, and the resulting assumption of my needs may be offensive and even dangerous. I prefer a random ad. Or better, a place where I can just search the product I want in detail.

"Random ad vs targeted ad" is a false dichotomy. There are also contextual ads. For example, the audience of Linus Tech Tips regularly gets their fair share of contextual ads delivered by Linus in-band. You're not going to see an ad of a toilet paper on LTT. Instead you're going to see ads of hard drives, Squarespace, online shopping platforms, etc. The ads are the same for all viewers (i.e. definitely not targeted) and don't require any JS spyware. Moreover, LTT (and other creators) get more money from those ads than from YouTube ads. Everybody wins (except Google and Facebook).

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#134

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

pojzon wrote: post #92
conjecTech wrote: post #34

This thesis is off. It's not as if Reddit just appeared on the internet yesterday. It's been a place people look for this kind of info for a long time, and people have been trying to game it for just as long. And it already has a good search engine - that just happens to be Google. So it still leaves the question: why does Reddit still have such a high signal-to-noise ratio. A few things I've noticed: 1. A lot of con…

Recently have noticed a business creating fictional threads on reddit (multiple on different communities) working as an AD to sell something. Example: „What is the cheapest best cooling for cpu now?” All discussions point to product that more experienced users know its crap. But still the wrong product is at the top with most (botted) upvotes. Companies realized that ppl look for opinions on reddit -> that created de…

I still think if you are internet savvy you detect these things almost instantly. Uncanny valley works on text too and the revulsion is just as strong.

And all it takes to destroy your best cooling for cpu now bot setup is one user saying “No it is not and here is why…” right under the comment.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#135

Post by JSavageOne »

yakubin wrote: post #133
sasaf5 wrote: post #128

> I’d still prefer a targeted ad over a random ad that is unrelated to me. No, a million times no. A targeted ad requires my personal information being collected, and the resulting assumption of my needs may be offensive and even dangerous. I prefer a random ad. Or better, a place where I can just search the product I want in detail.

"Random ad vs targeted ad" is a false dichotomy. There are also contextual ads. For example, the audience of Linus Tech Tips regularly gets their fair share of contextual ads delivered by Linus in-band. You're not going to see an ad of a toilet paper on LTT. Instead you're going to see ads of hard drives, Squarespace, online shopping platforms, etc. The ads are the same for all viewers (i.e. definitely not targeted)…

Everyone wins except the viewer who now has to manually skip through ads because adblockers don't block those type of ads

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#136

Post by voldacar »

cowl wrote: post #124
voldacar wrote: post #116

>So how can we fix the system? The best way to fix the system is to prioritize websites that are there to share knowledge, not websites with their primary priority to make ad revenue. Different solution: - Make a search engine that is actually good. Blacklist all SEO spam such as pinterest, allow complex queries, restrict by date, site, regex, etc - Charge 1 cent per search, or as much as is necessary Why has nobody…

>Why has nobody done this? What am I missing? The answer is in your proposal: >- Charge 1 cent per search, or as much as is necessary 90% of people do potentially hundreds of searches everyday. Especially non expert users that practically use the search engine to search for the domain of the sites they need to go too. The people ready to pay a fixed fee /per search wouldn't be able to cover even a fraction of the inf…

>Google's solution that "outside links" are considered as "votes" that this site is good is what made it good but also what made it vulnerable to SEO. Do you have any other idea on how do you decide if a result is good or not beyond the literal text search?

Maybe you could have a "report spam" button next to every search result, and sites that got reported more often would get weighted way down in the results. But whatever google was doing around 2010-2012 is my benchmark for "actually good search engine". Maybe hire some people who worked at google back then and have them write something similar

>90% of people do potentially hundreds of searches everyday. Especially non expert users that practically use the search engine to search for the domain of the sites they need to go too. The people ready to pay a fixed fee /per search wouldn't be able to cover even a fraction of the infrastructure costs of : "search engine that is actually good"

I'm pretty skeptical of this. Ok, so you spend a few dollars per day on search. So what? People spend that much on coffee, and you get way more utility out of an actually good search engine. The market would definitely exist

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#137

Post by finger »

JSavageOne wrote: post #135
yakubin wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Random ad vs targeted ad" is a false dichotomy. There are also contextual ads. For example, the audience of Linus Tech Tips regularly gets their fair share of contextual ads delivered by Linus in-band. You're not going to see an ad of a toilet paper on LTT. Instead you're going to see ads of hard drives, Squarespace, online shopping platforms, etc. The ads are the same for all viewers (i.e. definitely not targeted)…

Everyone wins except the viewer who now has to manually skip through ads because adblockers don't block those type of ads

SponsorBlock might be of interest.

> Skip sponsorships, subscription begging and more on YouTube videos. Report sponsors on videos you watch to save others' time. [0]

[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#138

Post by yanmaani »

voldacar wrote: post #116

>So how can we fix the system? The best way to fix the system is to prioritize websites that are there to share knowledge, not websites with their primary priority to make ad revenue. Different solution: - Make a search engine that is actually good. Blacklist all SEO spam such as pinterest, allow complex queries, restrict by date, site, regex, etc - Charge 1 cent per search, or as much as is necessary Why has nobody…

Step 1 is quite difficult, and step 2 has the downside of disincentivizing people to use it. There are some attempts to make search engines where you pay per month.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#139

Post by yanmaani »

Nowado wrote: post #26

Marketer perspective: you can not build a communication tool you find useful that won't end up being used to make money. It will get figured out. I could go into a bit more philosophical angle with reterritorialization done by capital, but I think it's much simpler to consider the following: between politics (where once any division in population is found, it becomes valuable instantly), classical business marketing…

What if you explicitly target it with respect to the money?

Most of the crap on Google is going to be monetized sites. If you just block/downrank all the sites with e.g. ads, then the profit motive for spam goes down - the more value you extract, the less value you are able to extract.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#140

Post by s8s8discourse »

finger wrote: post #137
JSavageOne wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone wins except the viewer who now has to manually skip through ads because adblockers don't block those type of ads

SponsorBlock might be of interest. > Skip sponsorships, subscription begging and more on YouTube videos. Report sponsors on videos you watch to save others' time. [0] [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...

how do you expect the producers of the content you consume to continue putting out the content you want to consume if they're unable to monetise that content?
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