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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

#281

Post by raxxorraxor »

superasn wrote: post #249

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 / revi…

MSDN was really helpful once. I don't even know how they could destroy it relatively quickly. The current forums are indeed useless for the most part. I don't even know where to get deep technical information about MS tech stacks anymore.

> "please mark this issue as resolved so I can please my incompetent overlords with a point in a metric they are interested in because of the mentioned incompetence".

I agree that users tend to ask the right questions, but the lack of any coherent answer seems to be systematic.

Pinterest is spam if you don't have an account, which I would recommend to nobody because of such policies in the first place. Twitter did the same recently but at least it isn't as prominently featured in search results.

I don't know about w3schools. It did help me a few times. I guess because the content might be out of date? I am no web developer so I sometimes use it as a reference.

I think the worst aspect is that Google seems to favor news sites. Perhaps it is their SEO, but if a term you are looking up accidentally is part of a news article that was copied by tens of news outlets, you have to visit the dark net, page 2+ of Google results.

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

#282

Post by yywwbbn »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #271
superasn wrote: post #249

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 / revi…

w3schools is a pretty good resource for very basic stuff. If you're a professional developer you're probably not going to find it useful but if you're recommending a website for an absolute beginner there are worse sites.

Why no just MDN then? From my experience it’s much better in 95%+ of cases.

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

#283

Post by szundi »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #271
superasn wrote: post #249

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 / revi…

w3schools is a pretty good resource for very basic stuff. If you're a professional developer you're probably not going to find it useful but if you're recommending a website for an absolute beginner there are worse sites.

Until you realize as a beginner that for some reason that is not enough and you are even more stuck

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

#284

Post by bilkow »

superasn wrote: post #249

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 / revi…

> alternativeto

I actually find alternativeto so useful that I usually just go directly to it instead of my search engine when looking for FOSS alternatives. Having to go to the alternative page before clicking the official site link is a small hassle compared to finding what's the official from name search, but it used to be better when the description page and the alternative page were the same. If I were to guesa, they probably changed because it would be confusing for people searching for alternatives and finding the software description.

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

#285

Post by rg111 »

donbrae wrote: post #229
rg111 wrote: post #214

I am sure it’s plenty more than these three. Yesterday, I searched "best after-sale service of AC". What I was shown was SEO'd pure junk. Absolute junk as the first result. Next few were the same, but more focused on affiliate programs rather than providing genuine info. Down the line was Quora, where _sales rep of AC companies_ wrote answers that _theirs_ had the best service. I wad very disappointed. You.com showed…

I much prefer Kagi to Google (and DuckDuckGo et al). Often the first page of Google consists solely of SEO rubbish. Being able to block and rank domains is also useful.

For straightforward answers and navigating to websites, I often use what is the default in browser that I happen to use at that time.

I use DDG, FF, and Bromite on my smartphone. Sometimes Brave, too. I have Brave as my secondary browser (FF as the main, LibreWolf for personal stuff) on my daily driver as well.

I used Brave Search and DDG a lot. Nothing can go wrong with them if all I am asking is the capital of Belgium or trying to navigate to a subreddit.

With special, not so straightforward searches, I rely on You and Kagi.

I really appreciate You's different kinds of search results and grouping them. They are clear that they use some kind of AI model to tailor search results, and I have an account there.

I really like Kagi for showing me sites that I wasn’t even aware of. I can boost or shove down sites. I turned off Quora and Pinterest right away. No extensions, no scripts. Love that.

As I said, Google’s adbiz is in direct conflict with its Search division. Search should show the best result for the Searcher. Ad div would want the pages to be shown that are crawling, infesting with Google Adsense ad. When more of these pages are visited, they have better metrics to lure more people to Adsense thus making $$$.

This is clear conflict of interest.

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

#286

Post by brynjolf »

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...

Ironically I tried to find a blacklist extension or similar through Google search past week, and couldn't find it due to blogspam talking about how it used to be. So added reddit and clicked in past year, but reddit now doesn't show accurate dates on posts so that didn't work.

Thanks, will add this!

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

#287

Post by rkangel »

endisneigh wrote: post #16

it's not really that Google lags, but rather SEOers have optimized for Google. The problem is intractable. When people talk about the 'good ol days' or times when Google was better, it was simply because there was less SEO, less spam and generally fewer pages on the internet. Google could be better than it is now, but there's no incentive to do so, unfortunately. Say Google allowed you to blacklist entire sites from…

It has been a constant battle of SEO improving and Google improving the page ranking algorithm. For a long time Google was winning that battle, but more recently they haven't seen as interested. The economic argument you're making may be the reason, but it's short termist if people slowly get driven away from Google by poor quality search results.

Five to ten years ago no other engine was close - the fact that duckduckgo was even try was comical. Google had an effectively monopoly. That might not be true at all five to ten years from now if the trend continues.

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

#288

Post by samhw »

Markoff wrote: post #278
kchoudhu wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's on the LCC, not the aggregator. They don't want to pay commission, and that's fine. If you want to fly on them you have to actually go on their website.

I don't really care who pays who, but search engine which can't find me cheapest flights it's useless

Well, you're getting it free: if you don't get any use from it, don't use it. Try doing an iterated search of every possible route on every possible airline website and let us know how you get on!

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

#289

Post by Rilfeu »

naoqj wrote: post #258
throwawayffffas wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MDN is usually a much better resource.

MDN is generally too technical.

As it should be. It's a resource for professional developers, not people who are learning how to code for the first time.

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

#290

Post by polote »

superasn wrote: post #249

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 / revi…

Maybe they have never been helpful to you, but w3schools, Microsoft answers, alternative websites, best of lists and Quora have all been helpful to me at some time.
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