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Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

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Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#31

Post by Jaruzel »

My personal view is that there should be dedicated search providers for specific areas, such as academic, or technical, or news.

That way each provider can focus on building a good platform with clever machine learning tailored to that dataset.

We also need the return of proper Boolean operators and complex nested queries. Yes, Joe Public will never use them, but a lot of people who search the internet as part of their jobs, or just have deep interests and would love to have all those advanced search features back, and be able over to override the 'fuzzy logic' that generic Search engines such as Google enforce on us.

I also disagree that all sites need to be mobile first. If I have a site that provides software for the Enterprise Sector, Google will still penalise me if my site isn't responsive, even though my target market is IT professional sitting in front of powerful laptops/desktops.

As many would agree, Google have too much power in the Search space, and they have basically dictated to the world how Search should be done, whether they are actually right or not.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#33

Post by Jedi72 »

nikanj wrote: post #29

If anything, it's an abandoned problem. A lot of companies bought really expensive enterprise search systems, which are sitting dormant because the results are so bad. With advances in spamming, internet/email search is getting to be a harder problem every year. I remember when Google was quite effective in finding what I need, but nowadays it's dismal. As an example, I googled for "storename return policy", and got…

Google used to be a tool, now its a product.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#34

Post by _trampeltier »

bo1024 wrote: post #22

Great topic. Part of the issue is probably a transition from algorithmic approaches to data-driven approaches. What did previous users search for and click on? Existing companies have a huge advantage from years of data, and not the kind of advantage that others can learn from (compare to publishing a better algorithm). Another factor may be that parts of the problem can separated out and are studied on their own, su…

>What did previous users search for and click on?

This is why google often is bad for searching tech things. You get often very old useless links for a topic

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#35

Post by _trampeltier »

shpx wrote: post #20

I'd like a search for things that I've read or seen in the last few days. Or years. https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/953011978217205760

https://yacy.net/en/

Yacy can do it. You can use it as a proxy and it does index all visited pages. (I tryed Yacy, but never this feature).

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#36

Post by slyfocks »

nikanj wrote: post #29

If anything, it's an abandoned problem. A lot of companies bought really expensive enterprise search systems, which are sitting dormant because the results are so bad. With advances in spamming, internet/email search is getting to be a harder problem every year. I remember when Google was quite effective in finding what I need, but nowadays it's dismal. As an example, I googled for "storename return policy", and got…

Lately, it has felt like Google has become more optimized for less intelligent/tech-savvy users (i.e. people who search using natural language e.g. “tell me the store policy for target please”). In these cases many of the words used are either irrelevant or counterproductive.

I’ve noticed Facebook’s search has started catering to the lowest common denominator as well. Searching for (made-up example) “Louis Potter” used to give all exact matches priority. Current results look something like 1) Louis Potter 2) Luis Porter 3) Louis Potters 4) Louis Potter (#2). I don’t like when search engines assume that I’m misspelling words/names, and it would be nice if they adapted for individual behavior in this regard.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#38

Post by majewsky »

nikanj wrote: post #29

If anything, it's an abandoned problem. A lot of companies bought really expensive enterprise search systems, which are sitting dormant because the results are so bad. With advances in spamming, internet/email search is getting to be a harder problem every year. I remember when Google was quite effective in finding what I need, but nowadays it's dismal. As an example, I googled for "storename return policy", and got…

> As an example, I googled for "storename return policy", and got page after page of results. All of them were tagged "missing storename", so just randomly picked return policies from other stores.

I think it helps to put the critical search term in quotes. At least in DuckDuckGo, `"storename" return policy` would exclude results that are missing "storename".

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#39

Post by slyfocks »

Jedi72 wrote: post #33
nikanj wrote: post #29

If anything, it's an abandoned problem. A lot of companies bought really expensive enterprise search systems, which are sitting dormant because the results are so bad. With advances in spamming, internet/email search is getting to be a harder problem every year. I remember when Google was quite effective in finding what I need, but nowadays it's dismal. As an example, I googled for "storename return policy", and got…

Google used to be a tool, now its a product.

Not sure why this is getting downvotes, it carries a lot of truth. Internet-based tech companies like Google have matured to the point where many innovators have left and MBAs have invaded, favoring short-term profit over user experience.

Re: Ask HN: Is 'search' a solved problem?

#40

Post by sh4z »

nikanj wrote: post #29

If anything, it's an abandoned problem. A lot of companies bought really expensive enterprise search systems, which are sitting dormant because the results are so bad. With advances in spamming, internet/email search is getting to be a harder problem every year. I remember when Google was quite effective in finding what I need, but nowadays it's dismal. As an example, I googled for "storename return policy", and got…

So would you have rather got results with only 'storename' and not 'return policy', or no results at all, or what's the problem here?

If there was a result containing the whole search string it would (I believe) have been the first one.

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