This is Google being dumbed down for the average user.
Hey Google, I want my cache links back
131–140 of 177 posts
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#132That's a minor annoyance compared to the changes they made to the search logic. I noticed lately that way too frequently now the first result page contains irrelevant junk unless I resort to using quotes. And even then quoted words appear to be mangled and ignored at will.
Complained about it too here, about a month ago, which is when it appears to have started - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2935261
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#133If it makes people feel better, I just spent around an hour debating the points from this discussion in my office with other people who work on Google's search UI and search quality. P.S. If people want to leave examples, for example "If I do the search ["society of spectacles"] I get a result which doesn't have that phrase," I'm happy to pass that to people here to debug.
> If it makes people feel better...
It depends entirely on the outcome of the debate.
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is absurd. It's like worrying about charging your laptop in Google's offices because it increases their electricity bill.
I wouldn't charge my laptop in anyone's office (or home) without asking them and receiving permission. I don't see what's absurd about this.
If you were sitting in Google's lobby (with permission) you would feel the need to ask permission before plugging in your laptop's power adapter?
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can add a "+" before a quoted phrase to enforce a strict search, but share some of these same frustrations.
You can, but it doesn't always do what you expect: try +"society of spectacles"
True, and it is an annoying extra step.
Note to self: read article and comments thoroughly before commenting to avoid being redundant.
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#136i also dislike the previews :'(
and the cached link was nice and easy, now an annoying extra click, etc. Why oh why?
Aaaargh!
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#137If it makes people feel better, I just spent around an hour debating the points from this discussion in my office with other people who work on Google's search UI and search quality. P.S. If people want to leave examples, for example "If I do the search ["society of spectacles"] I get a result which doesn't have that phrase," I'm happy to pass that to people here to debug.
> If it makes people feel better ... It depends entirely on the outcome of the debate.
I'm just speaking personally, but I'm on the side of most of the folks here. A senior engineer is looking into the ["society of spectacles"] search now, for example.
What would be most helpful would be constructive examples of bad queries, bad experiences, or concrete proposals for how to improve Google's results page or results UI.
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I'm missing relevant and useful results a thousand times a day. More and more, DDG is just a !gateway to google.
That's concerning! I'd really appreciate if you could collect a set of specific examples and report at http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html That's how we improve fastest. But generally, the way we get results shouldn't result in a lot of stuff actually missing, which may speak to some bugs in there.
I've been noticing the same pattern -- the results from DDG aren't quite complete enough. Sometimes, it's just missing a few minor things, other times, I'll run a search query and there will be a major search result that I know is missing, that I can get in one of the top 5 results from Google.
Which sucks, because I hands-down full-on no-buts prefer DDG's interface to Google.
I hope I'm not being uncool here, but a while back I privately suggested mining the data from "!g" queries as a way to see where DDG wasn't returning the results that people expected. Is there a reason you can't do that? In my case at least, I usually start with DDG, and if I don't get what I'm expecting, then I use a "!g" -- so you'd have a nice little database of results to perform comparisons from.
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#139I was bored so wrote some JS to put the links back. Only works in chrome.
As a userscript: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/114144
Or as a bookmarklet: javascript:(function(){var c=document.querySelectorAll('a[href*="webcache.googleusercontent.com"]');for(var a=0,b;b=c[a];a++){b.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.querySelector("h3.r").parentElement.insertBefore(b)}})()
Re: Hey Google, I want my cache links back
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If it makes people feel better ... It depends entirely on the outcome of the debate.
I'm just speaking personally, but I'm on the side of most of the folks here. A senior engineer is looking into the ["society of spectacles"] search now, for example. What would be most helpful would be constructive examples of bad queries, bad experiences, or concrete proposals for how to improve Google's results page or results UI.
Is it concrete enough that getting to the cache is now a series of 3 actions:
1) Hover over result
2) Move mouse to hover over double-arrow (careful don't miss it or you go back to step 1)
3) Click on Cache link
Whereas before it was just: 1) Click on cache link.
Not to mention the accessibility issues, which I'm asking an expert in the field about now to see how it affects screen readers.