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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

#91

Post by [deleted] »

mulmen wrote: post #84
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 used to be a feature of Google Search. It then moved from the Google Account to Chrome. I'm not sure if it still exists in the Chrome browser. It can be done with addons but of course that doesn't feed back to Google. It does surprise me that Google wouldn't want to capture this signal. Maybe it is too susceptible to abuse?

[deleted]

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

#92

Post by mostdataisnice »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #11

An interesting observation is that over the years, I've sort of found that if there are not many good results, maybe I'm not asking the right questions, or I'm not thinking about the problem the right way. For example, you come up with some weird programming idea to solve a problem and no results are found -- I'm almost always headed down the wrong path. This has been proved to me over and over again as sort of a can…

This resonated a lot with me. Often if I'm learning a language and I see no one is doing what I'm querying for, I take a step back and try to ask a more basic question

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

#93

Post by chaxor »

mort96 wrote: post #38
KMag wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful. Maybe it's a useful rule of thumb, but be careful of the "searching for your keys under the light pole" problem. I worked at Google on rich content indexing for 4 years, more than a decade ago now. Google is pretty good. It used to really cater to "long tail" searches, but a combination of SEOs getting better (and specifically targeting Google) and "learn to rank" over-optimizing for the median query, mea…

This is a great way to describe it. Google still gives me good results for the common stuff, but really fails me when I'm looking for something in the "long tail". I just wish I could find obscure things again.

What is a common query? facebook.com? Some very impressive search capabilities needed for that query there.

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

#94

Post by neoromantique »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #76
vasco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays you should google using what in 2005 would be considered "the wrong way to search". Back then it was all about keywords, quotes and so on. For example if you wanted to know if dogs could eat apples you'd search: > dog apple dangerous Today you should search: > can dogs eat apples And you get way better results with the second form. I've noticed that people who are stuck thinking that the right way to google…

If “you’re doing it wrong” didn’t fly with Apple. It doesn’t fly with Google.

I hate it as much as any other geek, but it did pretty much fly with apple. Even when it was as bad as "You're holding your phone wrong" bad.

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

#96

Post by mattwad »

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…

ublacklist is a browser extension that does what you want. it works well and i don't find myself having to blacklist new sites very often

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

#97

Post by chaxor »

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #40
mywittyname wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that recipes on on this list suggests this is the case. Recipe sites are notorious for SEO tactics. They all follow the same highly optimized format with the stupid story about the author's grandma and how they just couldn't get enough of these cookies, and how the recipe was lost for 90 years until recently their great great uncle Lou found a copy of the recipe in an old donut. Google has all of the tools t…

The stories also serve the purpose of providing copyright. A recipe alone doesn't have copyright, but the story mixed throughout the recipe does have copyright.

I thought it was so the site has longer to mine monero using your CPU while you scroll? Ever notice how incredibly slow any device gets when looking at recipes?

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

#98

Post by WestCoastJustin »

simsla wrote: post #80

One Google feature that I miss terribly is hard filtering. Used to be if you included "term" or -"term" you'd only get results that did/n't include those terms. But it seems Google has gone all in on the "I don't think you really meant that" approach [ ], and the hard filters have become suggestions at best. -- [ ] Ok, I know it's probably because they're switching more and more to semantic search and ML, but they co…

100% agree. This used to be my secret weapon for finding things. -"term" along with "other terms you were looking for".

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

#99

Post by ByteJockey »

chaxor wrote: post #93
mort96 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great way to describe it. Google still gives me good results for the common stuff, but really fails me when I'm looking for something in the "long tail". I just wish I could find obscure things again.

What is a common query? facebook.com? Some very impressive search capabilities needed for that query there.

Probably something like: "food delivery near me"

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

#100

Post by gwbas1c »

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…

> The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months).

I wish I could do that at Hacker News too.

I really just don't want anything from medium.com.

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