In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click • Hacker News Board

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#201

Post by numpad0 » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

diegocg wrote: post #164

gxx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me Google "verbatim" is the best way to get focussed results although it's too bad it doesn't allow date ranges. Bing search with appropriate use of guotes, + and - operators and date ranges usually beats non-verbatim Google search, and it can sometimes be better than Google verbatim.

The verbatim mode is exactly what most people here are missing. But, for some reason, it's something that can't be configured - you need to set it in every new search. Three freaking clicks. I don't understand what goes on corporations. I guess power users aren't a target demographic anymore.

I’m suspecting that they generate results from statistics ahead of time and just serve you the closest cached result, unless it is strictly necessary to do an actual search.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#202

Post by nwienert » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #63

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

There's a common thread in every one of the good sources of search information: user curated content.

Usually: voted on/curated by members who are specialized in some way (reddit, so, hn, wikipedia to a degree).

The fallbacks are editorial sites.

If you make a search engine that focused on indexing user-curated sites + results outside of that that are themselves curated/voted-on by your search engine users (ie, you and others could upvote axios and Amazon as a good source), I think you'd have an interesting model. Basically, take the HN/reddit model to search itself.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#203

Post by unionpivo » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #184

Spivak wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This in no way absolves their god awful mobile experience but if you're logged into Reddit with the new UI turned off or use the Old Reddit Redirect add-on it's basically as if nothing on Reddit changed since 2011.

The new UI is great! It keeps the programmers occupied so they stop messing with the old UI that I actually want to use.

:) The old wife and a mistress approach

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#204

Post by buzzerbetrayed » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

californical wrote: post #59

thomascgalvin wrote: post #25

If Google ever started including copy-pasteable code from Stack Overflow, I might never follow a link from Google again. Which I think says a lot about how Google is used now. I don't use Google to find web pages , I use it to find an answer to a pressing question. When I'm looking for something to read, I go to a content aggregator like HN or Reddit. Of course this isn't sustainable. If Google is just presenting oth…

I don’t know about Google, but I’ve gotten relevant Stack Overflow code snippets pretty regularly from DDG

But so few people use DDG. It probably isn’t much of an issue for stack overflow. If Google started doing that, my guess is that stack overflow would feel it.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#205

Post by _nalply » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #194

dundarious wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a cat that is always ravenous for anything edible, even if it's not exactly typical cat fare, e.g., my leftover salad, berries, etc. Trying to search for "can cats eat X" after he manages to get a few sneaky morsels is almost pointless. There are so many spammy sites for every value of X, and I have no idea if it's a sophisticated problem to systematically exclude this type of useless content, but Google's top…

For my cat, I'd probably just call the pet poison line in my state/country. Dogs are relatively better at eating human food (except very obvious well known examples like alcohol, grapes, cooked bones etc) but most plants can be poisonous to cats, so I wouldn't risk it.

Simple rule: Chocolate is poisonous to cats. And what's poisonous to humans is usually poisonous to cats as well.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#206

Post by Robotbeat » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

adav wrote: post #171

Robotbeat wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a Mac. Does Spotlight handle units as well as Google does? Also, doing the calculation in Google is handy because it’s easy to share in a modifiable way.

Spotlight handles the majority of unit conversions and quick calculations that Google can do. I think it is, or was, powered by Wolfram Alpha.

Wolfram Alpha is pretty good and is more powerful than Google Calculator, but I’ve found Google Calculator to be more responsive and consistent and thus a bit easier for regular usage.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#207

Post by CiceroCiceronis » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

queuebert wrote: post #113

gonehome wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

You can search Reddit from DuckDuckGo by adding '!r' to your search terms. This is how I search most of the time these days for the exact reasons you mention above. DuckDuckGo has many other bang shortcuts like that too, like '!w' for Wikipedia. Actual search engine results are too manipulated, but they make great link aggregators.

Also, you can set up custom search prefixes for more obscure sites you visit regularly using Firefox (potentially Chrome too).

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#208

Post by Beached » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

looking over the comments here, people seem to be assuming this is because of googles scraping and presenting of data on the search results page. but knowing my experiences with google search over the past few years, I immediately assumed this was because google search is getting worse and worse every day.

after reading the article, the author doesn't correlate the findings with a cause, so who knows what the real reason for this is. but I know for me at least, it now takes me 3, 4 or 5 searches to find an abstract with something that looks even close. maybe I such at google searches, but after doing hundreds a day for over 12 years, I feel google search just got reaaaal shitty some time in the past few years.

ddg use to not even be close to google in result quality, now, imo, they are on par with each other. and that is largely due to googles decline, ddg only got slightly better.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#209

Post by georgiecasey » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #40

allochthon wrote: post #9

Often I'm looking for a Wikipedia page, and it seems that in the past year or so Wikipedia pages have been moved way down on the first page of search results, especially if the topic is a medical one.

I noticed this too and now suffix any query that I think Wikipedia is best at with “wiki.” This is faster for me that opening Wikipedia and searching.

so do i, and you look at related searches and adding wiki is the top one. surely this is a signal to Google?

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#210

Post by xnx » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

This seems like very good progress. I'm continually impressed by how fast I can find the answers I'm looking for from Google. Google is working hard from being somewhere to get pointers to places that might contain the information you want to giving you the answers directly. Truly amazing.