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Almost everything I've ever learned started with a Google search. I'm 30 now - I started using it when I was 15 - and since I didn't have a lot of friends or st

by cko 10y ago

Almost everything I've ever learned started with a Google search. I'm 30 now - I started using it when I was 15 - and since I didn't have a lot of friends or stuff happening growing up, I spent hours browsing. A lot of porn, but also a lot of random stuff I was curious about. I kind of stopped believing the words of people around me and chose to believe everything I read instead. Over time I did develop a better sense of what's credible and what's not. By the way I've always had the idea of a credibility plugin to a browser that rates the credibility level of everything you visit. Sometimes I judge someone based on how they search. If they're typing out a whole question, perfect punctuation: not a good sign.

edem 10y ago
You meant to say "whole" question, right?
saiya-jin 10y ago
> Sometimes I judge someone based on how they search. If they're typing out a whole question, perfect punctuation: not a good sign. I am sure you can do better than that
DanBC 10y ago
> Sometimes I judge someone based on how they search. If they're typing out a whole question, perfect punctuation: not a good sign. You read the Google instructions "How to use Google" about 15 years ago, and you started using Google when they had a 10 word limit, with no substitutions and no stemming. Nowadays Google is mostly used by people who ask whole questions, complete with punctuation, and websites and Google optimise for those people. Sometimes it's the best way to get to a good website.
- cko 10y ago
  I never knew that. I always just thought those words were parsed out as noise. You're saying that whole questions help? Also sometimes when I search I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, so it takes a few queries to learn the basic vocabulary of the area I want to learn about. So putting a few keyword guesses into the box seems to work. In other words I never expect to land on a good website on my first try because I don't even know the right vocabulary. Is there a better way to do it?
  - Tyr42 10y ago
    There is some parsing. Try "How far away is the Moon?". Then try "How big is it?". Google even knows how to handle the pronoun "it". But I think this mostly works for facts, as opposed to finding websites.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > Is there a better way to do it? Who knows? Google used to tell people how to search. SEO arseholes ruined it for everyone, and now Google has an opaque mechanism. If I don't kno much abotu something asking a full question seems to get useful introductory pages. If I know a bit about something keywords seems to work. I'm I know a lot about something I have to include "exact" words, and use the - to remove some not relevant terms. Google went from being a precision tool to good enough most of the time.
orly_bookz 10y ago
1) "How do I use microsoft sql to do a regex on a table?" 2) "ms sql regex" I'm sure google is moving towards the first working just fine but for a very long time only the second didn't give you a bunch of garbage.

by cko 10y ago

edem 10y ago

You meant to say "whole" question, right?

saiya-jin 10y ago

> Sometimes I judge someone based on how they search. If they're typing out a whole question, perfect punctuation: not a good sign. I am sure you can do better than that

DanBC 10y ago

> Sometimes I judge someone based on how they search. If they're typing out a whole question, perfect punctuation: not a good sign. You read the Google instructions "How to use Google" about 15 years ago, and you started using Google when they had a 10 word limit, with no substitutions and no stemming. Nowadays Google is mostly used by people who ask whole questions, complete with punctuation, and websites and Google optimise for those people. Sometimes it's the best way to get to a good website.

cko 10y ago
I never knew that. I always just thought those words were parsed out as noise. You're saying that whole questions help? Also sometimes when I search I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, so it takes a few queries to learn the basic vocabulary of the area I want to learn about. So putting a few keyword guesses into the box seems to work. In other words I never expect to land on a good website on my first try because I don't even know the right vocabulary. Is there a better way to do it?
- Tyr42 10y ago
  There is some parsing. Try "How far away is the Moon?". Then try "How big is it?". Google even knows how to handle the pronoun "it". But I think this mostly works for facts, as opposed to finding websites.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > Is there a better way to do it? Who knows? Google used to tell people how to search. SEO arseholes ruined it for everyone, and now Google has an opaque mechanism. If I don't kno much abotu something asking a full question seems to get useful introductory pages. If I know a bit about something keywords seems to work. I'm I know a lot about something I have to include "exact" words, and use the - to remove some not relevant terms. Google went from being a precision tool to good enough most of the time.

orly_bookz 10y ago

1) "How do I use microsoft sql to do a regex on a table?" 2) "ms sql regex" I'm sure google is moving towards the first working just fine but for a very long time only the second didn't give you a bunch of garbage.