7 ms·

At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gott

At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft to power users.

dexwiz 10y ago
Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.
- louthy 10y ago
  Try searching for 'hoogle'. What I want is this: https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/ https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/ - not the website I am already on typing a search query in to! tbf, I don't feel the same way as the GP. But this search always struck me as crazy in the past.
  - azdle 10y ago
    Odd, works for me: http://i.imgbox.com/gEw5Rutx.png http://i.imgbox.com/gEw5Rutx.png What do you get?
  - dexwiz 10y ago
    Not going to lie, I have seen people put Google into the Chrome omnibar, to then search something on Google. When I point the redundancy out to them, I am usually met with, 'Well that's just how I do it.' I bet there are more people doing that, and mistyping, than searching for a Haskell package.
    - c22 10y ago
      I use a lot of devices, on some of them when I type my search into the address bar I get directed to something stupid like Yahoo. So now I've trained myself to always navigate to my desired search engine (usually Google) before performing my search. If it makes you feel better though, I do type out the "http://" http://".
    - kasparsklavins 10y ago
      I'm one of those people that types "youtube" into the omnibar and then click the first result. Typing the extra .com at the end is too much of a hassle when auto complete fails me.
  - fpgeek 10y ago
    I just tried this in a private window. Yes, "google" is a suggested search when you type "hoogle", but that seems only fair. After all, G and H are next to each other on a QWERTY keyboard. I'm sure a typo for google swamps deliberate searches for hoogle (maybe even for me, but then I have a custom search keyword). They're also suggesting other Google services you might want (Translate, Maps and Drive, when I tried), not just the one you're already using. More generally, I don't see how overly generic suggestions amount to dumbing-down Google Search. If I actually persist and search for "hoogle" (which I had to do anyway in the days before search suggestions) I get the Haskell results I want, even without any connection to my Google account.
  - nl 10y ago
    It's the first result for me. It does have a "did you mean 'google'". I wonder if the increased search volume over the past hour since you posted this updated the probability that it was a mistyping? It wouldn't surprise me - unique vocabulary (think hashtags) created all the time, and Google is pretty good at responding to that.
    - Nullabillity 10y ago
      Yup. Doesn't even suggest Google anymore for me, and all the results seem to be Haskell related, save for some unfortunately named altcoin.
- crystalmeph 10y ago
  PhantomGremlin may be referring to Google's personalized search results[0]. This can be turned off though, either through account settings or opening a private window, I think. However, it seems you can't shut off location-based personalization, at least while logged out. For example, search "pizza" without quotes in a private window. In addition to showing you a map with nearby locations based on geolocation, the actual results will also include pizza places near your geolocation. I can imagine that there are probably scenarios where that kind of personalization might negatively affect someone searching for general information, although I can't think of any particular use cases off the top of my head. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search
  - dexwiz 10y ago
    I have noticed the geolocation search, ironically because it brings up the wrong results when I am on a vpn. If a search `weather`, I except local weather. But if I am on my work VPN, I get the weather for a few states away.
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  Can you give an example? I've posted about this before, here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11386924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11386924 Here's a snippet from that post: Nowadays, when I search for something like this: "search phrase one" "search phrase two" I will get a plethora of hits that omit one or the other of those words or phrases, starting with the very first page of results.
  - Veedrac 10y ago
    Search tools → All results → Verbatim This prevents basically all of Google's word heuristics, like searching for related words or dropping parts of the search.
    - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
      I didn't know that one, since I use Google search without JavaScript enabled. Show me how to do that search qualification ahead of time, e.g. from the Firefox search box, and not as a post processing step after a search is completed. Or how to do that without JavaScript enabled. That kind of thing was easily possible before. A long time ago I bought a book called Google Hacks[1]. It had all sorts of good tips on how to search better. E.g there were Perl and Python scripts to interface with Google. Now, running scripts like that will probably get your IP address banned (I don't know for sure, I haven't tried lately). My point remains, Google used to be easy to use for advanced searches, without JavaScript. Not any more. There's a lot missing now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hacks
      - dingaling 10y ago
        > Show me how to do that search qualification ahead of time, e.g. from the Firefox search box Add this as a search provider: http://mycroftproject.com/search-engines.html?name=google+verbatim http://mycroftproject.com/search-engines.html?name=google+ve... The '&tbs=li' paramater is the magic flag, for 'literal'
      - Veedrac 10y ago
- flukus 10y ago
  One frequent one I ran across is that I'm searching for "one two three", where "three" is the highly specific term I'm after. Google will return the more frequently searched "one two" results. Another is the date control, google thinks older is better but it very often isn't. The date options suck too. Last week is usually zero hits, last month maybe one unrelated one, but then last year returns far too many. What I really want is to add a weighting so that newer stuff has higher priority.
sixothree 10y ago
I don't use it because I am turned off by the name, strange I know. It's a hard word to speak and it is a meaningless word.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Which? Google or Bing?
  - dewiz 10y ago
    I'm curious too. Google is perhaps the oddest of the 2 words, but the article is about Bing, which is hardly a difficult word...
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      It's an uncapitalized recursive acronym ("Bing Is Not Google.")
dewiz 10y ago
my 2 cents, #1 doesn't make any sense these days. You can find something bad in all the major players.
- gottam 10y ago
  its better to have two major players then just one even bigger player.
- nazgob 10y ago
  Yes but they have a great history and experience in that matter ;)
umanwizard 10y ago
So make your own search engine. Google is a business, not your personal valet. Of course it is going to do what makes sense to the 99% of people.
hugodahl 10y ago
For #2,you can try them out head-to-head via BingItOn [0]. For a clean and fair benchmark, try it in a private/anonymous mode. [0]: http://www.bingiton.com http://www.bingiton.com
KirinDave 10y ago
When we did user studies at Powerset, we did experiments where we put the Google name above search results from other engines and the Google was the strongest predictor. One test actually used a randomized ranking function on wikipedia search (so the algorithm recalled as well as google, but randomly ranked the results without any thought to relevance) vs Google, and we labeled the random data as Google and the Google result as Yahoo!. Testing told us the garbage data with the G over it was better. I dunno what you wanna do with that data. Maybe some soul searching? Funny story, though.
- frik 10y ago
  Is the Powerset technology still used somewhere for Bing? Bing used to be more intelligent right after the acquisition than today. Somehow it looks like they dropped the Powerset features after a few years. Also non EN-US Bing still looks and works like the old MSN search with a lot worse search results than Bing.com set to EN-US (Bing theme but old UX from MSN era and features frozen since MSN days).
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    Without disclosing things I shouldn't disclose (professionally if not legally), a lot of the acqusition was acquihire and then went on to cognitive services. A lot of what the powersetters did was bring their expertise in indexing in. The Powerset indexing requirements were fairly intense, so bing getting those was a big leg up over the previous (good, but somewhat less informed) work. A lot of the stuff we had at Powerset as custom services is now in Google and MS cognitive services. It's so cool to have access to those tools again. Luis.ai is really really fun to use lately.
eyelidlessness 10y ago
In my experience, Bing is substantially better than Google for certain use cases. Google tends to be better for things I'm looking for very specifically, unless those things are likely to match DMCA takedown search terms (where there are DMCA notices at the bottom of results pages). Bing tends to be better for things that are vaguely like what I'm searching for, and for specifics if they're likely to match DMCA takedown search terms.

dexwiz 10y ago

Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.

louthy 10y ago
Try searching for 'hoogle'. What I want is this: https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/ https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/ - not the website I am already on typing a search query in to! tbf, I don't feel the same way as the GP. But this search always struck me as crazy in the past.
- azdle 10y ago
  Odd, works for me: http://i.imgbox.com/gEw5Rutx.png http://i.imgbox.com/gEw5Rutx.png What do you get?
- dexwiz 10y ago
  Not going to lie, I have seen people put Google into the Chrome omnibar, to then search something on Google. When I point the redundancy out to them, I am usually met with, 'Well that's just how I do it.' I bet there are more people doing that, and mistyping, than searching for a Haskell package.
  - c22 10y ago
    I use a lot of devices, on some of them when I type my search into the address bar I get directed to something stupid like Yahoo. So now I've trained myself to always navigate to my desired search engine (usually Google) before performing my search. If it makes you feel better though, I do type out the "http://" http://".
  - kasparsklavins 10y ago
    I'm one of those people that types "youtube" into the omnibar and then click the first result. Typing the extra .com at the end is too much of a hassle when auto complete fails me.
- fpgeek 10y ago
  I just tried this in a private window. Yes, "google" is a suggested search when you type "hoogle", but that seems only fair. After all, G and H are next to each other on a QWERTY keyboard. I'm sure a typo for google swamps deliberate searches for hoogle (maybe even for me, but then I have a custom search keyword). They're also suggesting other Google services you might want (Translate, Maps and Drive, when I tried), not just the one you're already using. More generally, I don't see how overly generic suggestions amount to dumbing-down Google Search. If I actually persist and search for "hoogle" (which I had to do anyway in the days before search suggestions) I get the Haskell results I want, even without any connection to my Google account.
- nl 10y ago
  It's the first result for me. It does have a "did you mean 'google'". I wonder if the increased search volume over the past hour since you posted this updated the probability that it was a mistyping? It wouldn't surprise me - unique vocabulary (think hashtags) created all the time, and Google is pretty good at responding to that.
  - Nullabillity 10y ago
    Yup. Doesn't even suggest Google anymore for me, and all the results seem to be Haskell related, save for some unfortunately named altcoin.
crystalmeph 10y ago
PhantomGremlin may be referring to Google's personalized search results[0]. This can be turned off though, either through account settings or opening a private window, I think. However, it seems you can't shut off location-based personalization, at least while logged out. For example, search "pizza" without quotes in a private window. In addition to showing you a map with nearby locations based on geolocation, the actual results will also include pizza places near your geolocation. I can imagine that there are probably scenarios where that kind of personalization might negatively affect someone searching for general information, although I can't think of any particular use cases off the top of my head. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search
- dexwiz 10y ago
  I have noticed the geolocation search, ironically because it brings up the wrong results when I am on a vpn. If a search `weather`, I except local weather. But if I am on my work VPN, I get the weather for a few states away.
PhantomGremlin 10y ago
Can you give an example? I've posted about this before, here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11386924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11386924 Here's a snippet from that post: Nowadays, when I search for something like this: "search phrase one" "search phrase two" I will get a plethora of hits that omit one or the other of those words or phrases, starting with the very first page of results.
- Veedrac 10y ago
  Search tools → All results → Verbatim This prevents basically all of Google's word heuristics, like searching for related words or dropping parts of the search.
  - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
    I didn't know that one, since I use Google search without JavaScript enabled. Show me how to do that search qualification ahead of time, e.g. from the Firefox search box, and not as a post processing step after a search is completed. Or how to do that without JavaScript enabled. That kind of thing was easily possible before. A long time ago I bought a book called Google Hacks[1]. It had all sorts of good tips on how to search better. E.g there were Perl and Python scripts to interface with Google. Now, running scripts like that will probably get your IP address banned (I don't know for sure, I haven't tried lately). My point remains, Google used to be easy to use for advanced searches, without JavaScript. Not any more. There's a lot missing now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hacks
    - dingaling 10y ago
      > Show me how to do that search qualification ahead of time, e.g. from the Firefox search box Add this as a search provider: http://mycroftproject.com/search-engines.html?name=google+verbatim http://mycroftproject.com/search-engines.html?name=google+ve... The '&tbs=li' paramater is the magic flag, for 'literal'
    - Veedrac 10y ago
flukus 10y ago
One frequent one I ran across is that I'm searching for "one two three", where "three" is the highly specific term I'm after. Google will return the more frequently searched "one two" results. Another is the date control, google thinks older is better but it very often isn't. The date options suck too. Last week is usually zero hits, last month maybe one unrelated one, but then last year returns far too many. What I really want is to add a weighting so that newer stuff has higher priority.

sixothree 10y ago

I don't use it because I am turned off by the name, strange I know. It's a hard word to speak and it is a meaningless word.

paulddraper 10y ago
Which? Google or Bing?
- dewiz 10y ago
  I'm curious too. Google is perhaps the oddest of the 2 words, but the article is about Bing, which is hardly a difficult word...
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    It's an uncapitalized recursive acronym ("Bing Is Not Google.")

dewiz 10y ago

my 2 cents, #1 doesn't make any sense these days. You can find something bad in all the major players.

gottam 10y ago
its better to have two major players then just one even bigger player.
nazgob 10y ago
Yes but they have a great history and experience in that matter ;)

umanwizard 10y ago

So make your own search engine. Google is a business, not your personal valet. Of course it is going to do what makes sense to the 99% of people.

hugodahl 10y ago

For #2,you can try them out head-to-head via BingItOn [0]. For a clean and fair benchmark, try it in a private/anonymous mode. [0]: http://www.bingiton.com http://www.bingiton.com

KirinDave 10y ago

When we did user studies at Powerset, we did experiments where we put the Google name above search results from other engines and the Google was the strongest predictor. One test actually used a randomized ranking function on wikipedia search (so the algorithm recalled as well as google, but randomly ranked the results without any thought to relevance) vs Google, and we labeled the random data as Google and the Google result as Yahoo!. Testing told us the garbage data with the G over it was better. I dunno what you wanna do with that data. Maybe some soul searching? Funny story, though.

frik 10y ago
Is the Powerset technology still used somewhere for Bing? Bing used to be more intelligent right after the acquisition than today. Somehow it looks like they dropped the Powerset features after a few years. Also non EN-US Bing still looks and works like the old MSN search with a lot worse search results than Bing.com set to EN-US (Bing theme but old UX from MSN era and features frozen since MSN days).
- KirinDave 10y ago
  Without disclosing things I shouldn't disclose (professionally if not legally), a lot of the acqusition was acquihire and then went on to cognitive services. A lot of what the powersetters did was bring their expertise in indexing in. The Powerset indexing requirements were fairly intense, so bing getting those was a big leg up over the previous (good, but somewhat less informed) work. A lot of the stuff we had at Powerset as custom services is now in Google and MS cognitive services. It's so cool to have access to those tools again. Luis.ai is really really fun to use lately.

eyelidlessness 10y ago

In my experience, Bing is substantially better than Google for certain use cases. Google tends to be better for things I'm looking for very specifically, unless those things are likely to match DMCA takedown search terms (where there are DMCA notices at the bottom of results pages). Bing tends to be better for things that are vaguely like what I'm searching for, and for specifics if they're likely to match DMCA takedown search terms.