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Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

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Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#411

Post by alicesreflexion »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #205

I've given up on google for search and I'm not going back. I've been beta-testing kagi search [1] for the last couple of months and it does 95% of what I need - accurate and low-distraction and it doesn't try to sell me stuff or sell me to anyone. They're about to go into public beta and announce their pricing, and I'm pretty sure I'm in. [1] kagi.com

Kagi has been fantastic to me. The search results seem better. The option to search by EDU or discussion or by "literally anything that doesn't have 5000 trackers" with a single click is indispensable. Showing results from the internet archive and old blogs is a nice plus. Shoving all the listicles into their own compact section is great.

If this is the quality I can expect going forward, I have zero problem paying the $10/mo down the line

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#412

Post by Schroedingersat »

s__s wrote: post #402
kionce wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a hyper local online service, like services for someone you closely relate to geographically or socially? Could you give an example?

By hyper local I mean something relevant to a small geographic region like a city or state. To be clear, that aspect was mostly tangential to my point. I think the point is Google is really bad at understanding web apps, online services, or really any site that isn’t information rich. The majority of web apps for example only really need a landing page and a sign up form. But if that’s all you have Google’s algorithm…

> I think the point is Google is really bad at understanding web apps, online services, or really any site that isn’t information rich.

You keep using that phrase, but it doesn't select for information richness, it selects for verbiage. This is at best orthogonal and more usually opposed to information richness.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#413

Post by colordrops »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #409
thatguy0900 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if google could even return to its heyday if it wanted. Even if they stopped playing dumb games with search there a alot more malicious actors whose entire career is to fuck up search results now.

I feel like low-quality advertising results, low-quality-match results, and scammy results are at least 3 different bad search result types to get, and folks here are talking about the former of course, google gets paid to show them, and I don't think anyone here realistically expects google to voluntarily stop intentionally fucking up search results unless it somehow means a larger paycheck to them

Reducing yearly revenue from 250 billion to 200 billion seems like a reasonable tradeoff for not hobbling and annoying more than half the population of the earth and also maintaining brand longevity. Right now they are further and further ripening for disruption by an upstart.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#415

Post by nikanj »

colordrops wrote: post #261
baxuz wrote: post #77

It's not a Google problem, it's a web problem. Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website. This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content. These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewh…

I keep seeing this excuse but it doesn't explain why google doesn't downrank obvious bad actors that have been showing up at the top for years, or returning results that don't have the most important word in your search terms, or why they don't offer settings to permanently filter some sites. It's a problem with incentives, not SEO spam.

They don't curate the search index by hand, and "obvious bad actors" aren't really that obvious from a "well-definable heuristic" point of view. It's obvious to a human, but it seems hard to identify via an algorithm

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#416

Post by chicob »

hidden-spyder wrote: post #309
chicob wrote: post #86

I use smart bookmarks most of the time, if not Duckduckgo (which has !bangs). I almost always go to Wikipedia first. If I don't find what I want right away, I usually assume I am not trying hard enough.

What do you mean by smart bookmarks?

Address bar commands that substitute a given argument in a URL when a given search key is used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_bookmark

For searching in Hacker news, I saved the URL 'https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%s' with the search key 'hn'. So when I want to search something around here, I just type

    hn something
which then replaces the %s variable with 'something'

   https://hn.algolia.com/?query=something
There is Javascript code that allows for two or more arguments, but saving that as a bookmarklet isn't as neat.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#417

Post by tim333 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131
blitzar wrote: post #89

> If you simply google: how to fix a flat tire My first result ... How to fix a flat tyre - in simple steps with video - RAC https://www.rac.co.uk › drive › advice › repair-a-flat-tyre An excellent first result thank you google.

Mine goes to https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/cars-trucks/how-t... , with a summary on the Google search results itself. It's probably location dependent, but I wonder if there's a bit of randomness in there as well to give websites with equivalent information similar exposure.

Me too. I think often the complaints against Google expect a bit much from it. I mean use uBlock Origin to block some of the ad nonsense and if the first search term doesn't get it try something a bit different. Also set it to 30 results not 10 and scroll a bit.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#418

Post by account42 »

mojuba wrote: post #61
marvinblum wrote: post #51

I feel like Google could filter out a lot of SEO spam by simply ignoring or downranking heavy sites. Everything that loads more than "n MB" is probably bloated and made to trick you into buying something or generating traffic without providing value. Another method could be to analyze how many external requests a page makes and put that into the calculation. Of course, there are exceptions, but I think this might hel…

Thought the same, but it would be unfair to web sites that are actual web apps and are JS-heavy. Google is hopeless anyway, so here's something for the next search engine that wants to bring back the Web: downrank by the number of 3rd party domain requests, attempts of tracking, and possibly also popups.

How many web apps do you want to jump into right from google searches as opposed to the search leading to a landing page explaining WTF the app does.

Or do you mean sites like reddit, facebook, etc. by "apps"? In that case, downrank them seems fine - they can always provide lighter version.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#419

Post by account42 »

AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #71

`site:` is great. As an aside, anyone knows if you can still find "who links to?". I used to do this to hear how people feel about my site/app. I would do something like `link:foo.bar.com` I don't remember if it was link: or linkto: but it seems it no longer is supported? :(

If you want it for your own domain I think you can still get backlinks in the Google Search Console https://search.google.com/search-console/about

Unlike Analytics at that at least does not require you to give Google any more information about your users - just to verify that you control the domain.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#420

Post by EricE »

colordrops wrote: post #261
baxuz wrote: post #77

It's not a Google problem, it's a web problem. Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website. This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content. These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewh…

I keep seeing this excuse but it doesn't explain why google doesn't downrank obvious bad actors that have been showing up at the top for years, or returning results that don't have the most important word in your search terms, or why they don't offer settings to permanently filter some sites. It's a problem with incentives, not SEO spam.

Indeed. Google used to have a mechanism to report pages - was annoying when they removed that. Even if it was just the illusion of control, it was nice to think they at least pretended to care.
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