5 ms·

I'd really like to see them work on improving relevancy instead of swinging their corporate weight around at whatever "benevolent" end they decide is important

I'd really like to see them work on improving relevancy instead of swinging their corporate weight around at whatever "benevolent" end they decide is important this week. Considering how much time I have to spend nowadays tweaking queries and futzing with the search tool options to get relevant results, I'm starting to look at all of these moves much more cynically. Taking on anti-patterns is great, but not when your search experience is rapidly becoming one.

dsjoerg 10y ago
I don't find myself having to tweak queries to get what I want. Can you give an example or two of what you're talking about?
- swang 10y ago
  i think what your parent post refers to is, sometimes searching for <term1> <term2> <term3> <term4> google will instead just try <term1> <something that may be a synonym for term 2> and no <term3> or <term4>. then you have to go back and put <term3> <term4> in quotes to make sure they're actually searched on.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago
    Yes, ignoring parts of the query has just absurdly diluted result quality. And if you want something like the term or the term in a phrase, you have to put it twice and quote both.
    - tragic 10y ago
      It has diluted the quality of some results. I find it particularly irksome when googling for error messages, or other precise technical matters. For more open ended queries, of course, the fuzziness can be helpful. And I would assume that the typical Google search is going to benefit more from the latter approach.
      - alphonsegaston 10y ago
        I can only speak to my own experience, no idea where I lay on the spectrum of users. But I'm an artist who writes code as a hobby, so I'm not constantly searching for esoteric tech stuff or anything.
      - nine_k 10y ago
        Search in verbatim mode. It probably can be made into a search shortcut.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  The biggest problem I've had recently is that verbatim results can't be combined with a date range. Quoted text seems to be real hit or miss now, so if I'm looking for something narrowly defined and date limited, well...good luck!
  - _delirium 10y ago
    Unless I'm missing it, there's no date range option at all on the mobile search page, which is even worse. I find the mobile search hard to use as a result, especially for tech-related subjects. I'll search for how to do something on Android, and the results will be a bunch of blog posts that give me information about how to find the option I want in the Android settings... of Android circa 2011.
    - magicalist 10y ago
      The UI affordance is terrible, but it's there if you scroll over the search categories, under "Search Tools" at the end (also, not sure if the GP is in some test or something, but date range and verbatim are still there for me on desktop and mobile)
      - alphonsegaston 10y ago
        If you try switching the results to verbatim and then change the date range, you'll see that the one setting overrides the other. You can only return date limited results OR verbatim results, not a set with both.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - _delirium 10y ago
        Oh, weird. I had no idea what you were talking about, but just tried in mobile Chrome on the off chance it rendered differently, and I do see it there. In mobile Firefox the toolbar has many fewer options, and Search Tools isn't one of them. Looking around a bit, it seems that's been the case for years now: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/22/google-search-results-on-firefox-mobile-limited-in-comparison-to-chrome/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/22/google-search-results-on-fi...
- xigency 10y ago
  I find that the search giant goes through cycles where I can find results that I'm looking for and not being able to find anything at all. For example, let's say I've seen a page on the Internet one year ago, and I remember the title and some text. Sometimes, it isn't possible for Google to return that site with any search. There is also the perpetual search problem for computer science related material, where a major set of the search term is single letters, unsearchable symbols, or very common words. But supposedly, Google is always getting better, even if this is not a problem I've seen before. I guess the Internet is just degrading then?
ajmurmann 10y ago
I think there is a real market for a software developer focused search engine. None of the issues we have matter for a search a normal person does which is what Google of course optimizes for. A search like "what are the best food carts in Portland" is fundamentally different from looking for the text of an exception that was thrown by a particular library version. Our needs are to small for giant Google to care about. But it might be a big enough market to build a nice little company.
- allemagne 10y ago
  I would love it if DDG could make that their niche. Unfortunately, as it stands having no option to filter results by time makes it hard to meet all my needs as a developer.
- nine_k 10y ago
  Would you be willing to pay for it? If so, how much monthly? I'm afraid a search engine so much specialized won't be able to live off ads.
  - eof 10y ago
    I wouldn't pay a lot, but I would definitely pay. like a buck or two a month billed anually I would buy without hesitation if I believed it had real value. I usually search github directly now for these things, and it works decently well; either finding the code in the repo to which it belongs or better yet, an issue addressed by the developer.
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    As the sibling said I would probably also pay a small amount. However, I could also see that corporate customers might by this.
jsz0 10y ago
I keep seeing a bunch of the same search spam sites show up in the first page of results. Seems like something they should be able to fix. I actually started blocking a bunch of these search spam sites on my firewall so I don't accidentally waste my time looking at them.
quickben 10y ago
It's not benevolent. They are herding webmasters to use google's ad platform.

dsjoerg 10y ago

I don't find myself having to tweak queries to get what I want. Can you give an example or two of what you're talking about?

swang 10y ago
i think what your parent post refers to is, sometimes searching for <term1> <term2> <term3> <term4> google will instead just try <term1> <something that may be a synonym for term 2> and no <term3> or <term4>. then you have to go back and put <term3> <term4> in quotes to make sure they're actually searched on.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  Yes, ignoring parts of the query has just absurdly diluted result quality. And if you want something like the term or the term in a phrase, you have to put it twice and quote both.
  - tragic 10y ago
    It has diluted the quality of some results. I find it particularly irksome when googling for error messages, or other precise technical matters. For more open ended queries, of course, the fuzziness can be helpful. And I would assume that the typical Google search is going to benefit more from the latter approach.
    - alphonsegaston 10y ago
      I can only speak to my own experience, no idea where I lay on the spectrum of users. But I'm an artist who writes code as a hobby, so I'm not constantly searching for esoteric tech stuff or anything.
    - nine_k 10y ago
      Search in verbatim mode. It probably can be made into a search shortcut.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
The biggest problem I've had recently is that verbatim results can't be combined with a date range. Quoted text seems to be real hit or miss now, so if I'm looking for something narrowly defined and date limited, well...good luck!
- _delirium 10y ago
  Unless I'm missing it, there's no date range option at all on the mobile search page, which is even worse. I find the mobile search hard to use as a result, especially for tech-related subjects. I'll search for how to do something on Android, and the results will be a bunch of blog posts that give me information about how to find the option I want in the Android settings... of Android circa 2011.
  - magicalist 10y ago
    The UI affordance is terrible, but it's there if you scroll over the search categories, under "Search Tools" at the end (also, not sure if the GP is in some test or something, but date range and verbatim are still there for me on desktop and mobile)
    - alphonsegaston 10y ago
      If you try switching the results to verbatim and then change the date range, you'll see that the one setting overrides the other. You can only return date limited results OR verbatim results, not a set with both.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - _delirium 10y ago
      Oh, weird. I had no idea what you were talking about, but just tried in mobile Chrome on the off chance it rendered differently, and I do see it there. In mobile Firefox the toolbar has many fewer options, and Search Tools isn't one of them. Looking around a bit, it seems that's been the case for years now: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/22/google-search-results-on-firefox-mobile-limited-in-comparison-to-chrome/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/22/google-search-results-on-fi...
xigency 10y ago
I find that the search giant goes through cycles where I can find results that I'm looking for and not being able to find anything at all. For example, let's say I've seen a page on the Internet one year ago, and I remember the title and some text. Sometimes, it isn't possible for Google to return that site with any search. There is also the perpetual search problem for computer science related material, where a major set of the search term is single letters, unsearchable symbols, or very common words. But supposedly, Google is always getting better, even if this is not a problem I've seen before. I guess the Internet is just degrading then?

ajmurmann 10y ago

I think there is a real market for a software developer focused search engine. None of the issues we have matter for a search a normal person does which is what Google of course optimizes for. A search like "what are the best food carts in Portland" is fundamentally different from looking for the text of an exception that was thrown by a particular library version. Our needs are to small for giant Google to care about. But it might be a big enough market to build a nice little company.

allemagne 10y ago
I would love it if DDG could make that their niche. Unfortunately, as it stands having no option to filter results by time makes it hard to meet all my needs as a developer.
nine_k 10y ago
Would you be willing to pay for it? If so, how much monthly? I'm afraid a search engine so much specialized won't be able to live off ads.
- eof 10y ago
  I wouldn't pay a lot, but I would definitely pay. like a buck or two a month billed anually I would buy without hesitation if I believed it had real value. I usually search github directly now for these things, and it works decently well; either finding the code in the repo to which it belongs or better yet, an issue addressed by the developer.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  As the sibling said I would probably also pay a small amount. However, I could also see that corporate customers might by this.

jsz0 10y ago

I keep seeing a bunch of the same search spam sites show up in the first page of results. Seems like something they should be able to fix. I actually started blocking a bunch of these search spam sites on my firewall so I don't accidentally waste my time looking at them.

quickben 10y ago

It's not benevolent. They are herding webmasters to use google's ad platform.