Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit can't build a better search engine

ruky.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 289 posts

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#91

Post by randomsilence »

Actually they can and only they can.

As noticed, once Reddit builds a search engine, people will flood it with spam. But Reddit is in the unique position that they can figure out who is a genuine user. They have the ip addresses of all the submitters and they have the source redditor of each downvote.

They can still show the comments from VPNs and such. But for their search engine, they can exclusively rely on using the signals from verified IPs.

Instead of building it themselves, they could cooperate with Microsoft and Facebook for the search technology and to know each user even further. Those signals, combined with the downvotes to identify spammers, could create the foundation for Google's nightmares.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#92

Post by pojzon »

conjecTech wrote: post #34

This thesis is off. It's not as if Reddit just appeared on the internet yesterday. It's been a place people look for this kind of info for a long time, and people have been trying to game it for just as long. And it already has a good search engine - that just happens to be Google. So it still leaves the question: why does Reddit still have such a high signal-to-noise ratio. A few things I've noticed: 1. A lot of con…

Recently have noticed a business creating fictional threads on reddit (multiple on different communities) working as an AD to sell something.

Example:

„What is the cheapest best cooling for cpu now?”

All discussions point to product that more experienced users know its crap.

But still the wrong product is at the top with most (botted) upvotes.

Companies realized that ppl look for opinions on reddit -> that created demand for those services -> bots companies implemented new strategy.

Its getting very very hard to get honest expert opinion. Seems like the only way now is to belong to specific closed communities.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#93

Post by roomey »

> One reason for this was the fact that most of the sites back then were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information.

I was around when it started. Let me tell you there was a massive amount of SEO going on back then. The big driver to Google back then was that it was a crawler not directory, so you could get newer results. But most importantly the search was clean and the landing page was empty.

All the other search pages were so rammed with crap and asking to install ask Jeeves toolbars. Google was minimal.

Webrings were the main way to find indie sites for me anyway. Digg was always good too

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#94

Post by varsketiz »

I know of companies that employ hundreds of people to do "webutation" or "guerilla marketing". That involves creating a bunch of accounts on social networks (reddit as well) and posting positive info about their product in relevant places. I have zero confidence in any product review on the internet, if I don't know the poster personally.

When I was younger, I thought verifying identity to connect to the internet would be against my rights or something.

Now I think this would be great, though probably impossible to coordinate around the world.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#95

Post by powersnail »

themodelplumber wrote: post #58
powersnail wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would offer a bit of a different perspective here, I think maybe even most do it for what you could call self-soothing. > > For example, a lot of people share knowledge, but it's _their knowledge_, which can also be defined as _sharing their subjective past_ and that's known to be a very soothing thing for people who may even be troubled by the unknown in their personal lives. Hop online, boom, you're a domain ex…

You are illustrating my point for me, and for this I thank you for sharing your subje...err, past experiences.

Then, I'll admit that I don't understand your point. Your tone seems to suggest that there is a better alternative than putting someone's past experience as part of their argument. What might that be?

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#96

Post by adrianwaj »

zuminator wrote: post #55
rukshn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a post, which trended on HN yesterday (2000+ upvotes) that stated Reddit is sitting on a gold mine and they can build a better search engine because people are appending 'reddit' at the end of it. This is a response to the original post, explaining why the logic behind is it false.

Frankly I don't really see the logic. You're failing to disambiguate "generally better" with "better for Reddit inc" or "better for redditors," which are all separate things. That is, I'm not convinced that a Reddit search engine would necessarily be subject to the same level of gaming, for a variety of reasons: * Reddit groups are moderated in a way that "THE INTERNET" as a whole isn't. * Reddit is a destination in…

Perhaps Disqus is a destination site too and no one has realized it yet?

It's like a distributed reddit and individual site owners could agree to have their content pulled into a main site, eg via rss or meta tags.

Human moderation has value and there was a time when Google let users curate their results.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#97

Post by chrizel »

shpx wrote: post #90
chrizel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why you should use ‘site:reddit.com’ in your search query to only get results from this domain.

I make custom search engines for this. In Chrome, go to Settings -> Search engine -> Manage search engines -> Other search engines -> Add, then add this Search engine: Reddit through Google Keyword: r URL with %s in place of query: {google:baseURL}search?q=site%3Areddit.com+%s After that you just type "r best electric bicycle" in the top bar and it'll turn that into "site:reddit.com best electric bicycle". I also hav…

For Hacker News I always use https://hn.algolia.com - it has more specific sorting and filtering options. Besides HN itself it is one of my main bookmarks because I search for Hacker News discussions all the time when checking out new technology.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#98

Post by lrem »

pojzon wrote: post #92
conjecTech wrote: post #34

This thesis is off. It's not as if Reddit just appeared on the internet yesterday. It's been a place people look for this kind of info for a long time, and people have been trying to game it for just as long. And it already has a good search engine - that just happens to be Google. So it still leaves the question: why does Reddit still have such a high signal-to-noise ratio. A few things I've noticed: 1. A lot of con…

Recently have noticed a business creating fictional threads on reddit (multiple on different communities) working as an AD to sell something. Example: „What is the cheapest best cooling for cpu now?” All discussions point to product that more experienced users know its crap. But still the wrong product is at the top with most (botted) upvotes. Companies realized that ppl look for opinions on reddit -> that created de…

Closed communities is where it's at... But they have the obvious inherent problem: they don't scale. If a closed community lets in too many people, it becomes a somewhat obscured open community, with all the downsides. And if it doesn't, well, you are unlikely to get in on a topic you are interested in.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#99

Post by Semaphor »

pojzon wrote: post #92
conjecTech wrote: post #34

This thesis is off. It's not as if Reddit just appeared on the internet yesterday. It's been a place people look for this kind of info for a long time, and people have been trying to game it for just as long. And it already has a good search engine - that just happens to be Google. So it still leaves the question: why does Reddit still have such a high signal-to-noise ratio. A few things I've noticed: 1. A lot of con…

Recently have noticed a business creating fictional threads on reddit (multiple on different communities) working as an AD to sell something. Example: „What is the cheapest best cooling for cpu now?” All discussions point to product that more experienced users know its crap. But still the wrong product is at the top with most (botted) upvotes. Companies realized that ppl look for opinions on reddit -> that created de…

Seems like an easy thing to provide a link for?

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#100

Post by kumarvvr »

halotrope wrote: post #88

Despite all of its drawbacks like the obnoxious mobile app pushing and deterioration of communities after they pass a certain size it is still the closest equivalent I know of for the early 2000's forum culture. It is the only social network I know (apart from HN) that does not exclusively deals in bite-sized dopamine hits. Lets hope that the upcoming IPO does not compromise the incentives there.

Agreed, but it doesn't have to. It is addictive as hell.

I guess, if you own facebook, you track daily stats and percentages and convert them into insights like "how long are people on the site" or "how many ads to posts ratio do people experience" and FB optimizes for that.

I guess, Reddit is still growing enough that it does not have to do such analysis and take any action.

Also, the fundamental structure of reddit is different. People search out for sub-reddits and choose to be in them. The dynamic is different. Even in FB, those who spend time in groups, will feel different than browsing through profile posts.

While FB is a chore, reddit is an acquired taste.

Another important thing I have noticed is that, conversations in reddit, the majority of them, revolve around internet events (a blog post, a picture, an upload, a tweet, a news item, a real world event) and seldom are there any "friends and family" networking stuff happening. If I post a cute pic of my kid, I don't expect my brother to see it and say "my nephew is cute", I expect a honest or sarcastic or angry or jealous discussion, or no discussion at all.

The variety of experience reddit provides, is its USP. You can see glimpses of that in Twitter and Insta. A social network pivoted around interests and experiences, rather than friends and family.

Post reply on HN