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Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

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Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#241

Post by wodenokoto »

PaulHoule wrote: post #87

For Python programming I would say 100% of the time you should look the answer up in the official manual for a well-defined problem (delete a file) because the manual is correct, well-written, etc. It's astonishing how often Google and Bing snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on queries like this. If you go looking in splogs, spam overflow and other spam sites at best you are going to get wrong answers, at worse y…

Searching for "Delete a file" in the python manual, will take you to a page about the configuration parser.

https://docs.python.org/3/search.html?q=delete+a+file&check_...

Top result: https://docs.python.org/3/library/configparser.html?highligh...

Top 4 result is "Miscellaneous operating system interfaces", which does hold the answer, but it is not obvious, and browsing through that page is quite a chore before you finally get to `os.remove`, which says that it deletes "a path", which even I, a seasoned developer need to look twice to make sure that path removing a path and a file is the same thing. https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html?highlight=delete%2...

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#242

Post by azangru »

> Is this page any better than what you’d have gotten in 2010? What if it looked like this instead?

I can't take seriously an example that still puts w3schools as the first search result. If I were searching for a simple answer about a language feature, I would want the search engine to give me a page from the definitive authoritative source on that language. w3schools isn't that.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#243

Post by Cthulhu_ »

From the article:

> What happened to page quality factors in ranking?

I've been wondering this myself. Whatever happened to penalizing webpages with intrusive popups? Or those that show different content to users than to search engines (paywalls)? (I'm sure the latter is because of lawsuits). And many years ago, there was SEO advice about not duplicating content from other sites, but these days, half the search results for e.g. Go related questions are blogspam copy/pastes from Stack Overflow.

Google Search used to be stricter.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#244

Post by woudsma »

nomilk wrote: post #160
beachy wrote: post #54

The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites that use a whole page to blather on and on, leading to a tiny information nugget at the end. No value, just excellent SEO scamming. As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less…

This is a great idea. On YouTube I use the 'Don't recommend channel' button a lot and consequently the algorithm has learned to filter out a lot of the nonsense.

This button doesn’t really work for me. Often I need to click it multiple times before a video dissapears from my recommendations. Same with the ‘Not interested’ button.

I’m guessing YT works with a system that is ‘eventually consistent’, but having to click the button 2-3 times before a video disappears doesn’t seem particularly consistent to me.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#245

Post by aembleton »

atourgates wrote: post #208
kshacker wrote: post #49

I know google search is probably not the same as google flights, but I spent a few hours recently (over a few days) using google flights and it was a delight to use compared to the Expedia children. We had a bereavement in the family and had to book multiple independent tickets because we could not travel together. This was just after the Ukraine war started so prices had gone through the roof. Exact number of days w…

Google flight's true genius is being able to search multiple city-pairs. Let's say you want to get from the West Coast to Europe on a business class flight, but want to save some money. Realistically, it's cheap and easy to get from West Coast airport to another, and similarly cheap and easy to get form one European airport to another. Google flights will let you search for the best combination of flights that depart…

I find https://www.kiwi.com/en/ works well for doing all of this too.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#246

Post by secretsatan »

I absolutely detest the google optimised recipes, they're mostly just filler and you have to scroll all the way to the end to find the recipe. I just go to bbc food which has an excellent db of recipes, and they use correct temperatures for the oven too.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#247

Post by kubami »

atourgates wrote: post #208
kshacker wrote: post #49

I know google search is probably not the same as google flights, but I spent a few hours recently (over a few days) using google flights and it was a delight to use compared to the Expedia children. We had a bereavement in the family and had to book multiple independent tickets because we could not travel together. This was just after the Ukraine war started so prices had gone through the roof. Exact number of days w…

Google flight's true genius is being able to search multiple city-pairs. Let's say you want to get from the West Coast to Europe on a business class flight, but want to save some money. Realistically, it's cheap and easy to get from West Coast airport to another, and similarly cheap and easy to get form one European airport to another. Google flights will let you search for the best combination of flights that depart…

You can do the same thing in momondo. Being in Europe, what I like about momondo is that they include the cheap carriers - like ryanair

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#248

Post by mola »

What annoys me most about google search is that they show at most ~500 results for any search. No way to get to results that are not surfaced . If you're searching for something which contains terms related to heavily SEOd verticals, there's absolutely no way to find "real" results. Just let me decide if the long tail is interesting, please.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#249

Post by superasn »

There are some sites that are so useless and they have never ever helped me once, yet somehow they are always in the top 10 results

1. w3schools

2. pinterest

3. microsoft answers and all microsoft websites actually (it always looks like the person asking the question is asking exactly what i want, but unlike stackexchange, there are seldom any useful answers)

4. all the code clones for SO

5. all alternative to / review sites like capterra, g2, alternativeto, etc. They might have some good suggestions but they always hide the link to the software/site and instead link it to their spammy page. So you have to select part of the link and then re-search it on Google. Doing this for OSS projects can sometimes lead to a whole new rabbit hole.

6. The best of lists. Google for the love of god, please ban them.. they are always always SEO spam and product placements. Often the blog post itself says "to put your product on this list pay us a $1000 and we will include them in our list."

7. Quora and similar answer sites.. okay it's a mixed bag but you have to be very careful on these sites as most often the answers are just spam. I never read any answer with a link in it. But I think it's more Quora's problem than google. But if google is strict with them they may do a better job at moderating I guess. Also now quora hides answers and asks for a payment. Did they learn nothing from experts-exchange!

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#250

Post by arbirk »

chewz wrote: post #182
beachy wrote: post #54

The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites that use a whole page to blather on and on, leading to a tiny information nugget at the end. No value, just excellent SEO scamming. As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less…

> Blocks sites you specify from appearing in Google search results This extension prevents the sites you specify from appearing in Google search results. https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...

I use uBlacklist in Safari - highly recommended. In Chrome I have a custom search string that adds "-pinterest -quora" because result on those spammy sites are behind a login wall
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