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Altavista. I miss it every single day. Searching for technical (unix, programming, etc.) content is so much easier when you can use nested parens and proper b

by rsync 8y ago

Altavista. I miss it every single day. Searching for technical (unix, programming, etc.) content is so much easier when you can use nested parens and proper boolean language. This is in contrast to google where searches return things that don't even contain your keywords. This is in contrast to google where the modifiers like allinsite: and '+' and "quotes" are not respected or change their behavior over time. Man I miss altavista...

hlieberman 8y ago
So true. So, so true.
sitkack 8y ago
My favorite feature was 'near' queries. One could project n-dimensional spaces to any arbitrary lower dimension with the right semantic and spatial distances. With Altavista, the limiting factor was the searcher. And my nostalgia that over-estimates the size of their search database.
- sooheon 8y ago
  > One could project n-dimensional spaces to any arbitrary lower dimension with the right semantic and spatial distances. I'm incredulous. Doing this well for unstructured text would be worth a lot in many industries today, let alone the entire web. If they did this well, they'd still be alive and well in another form.
  - dogecoinbase 8y ago
    Maybe a smaller search corpus made it feasible, but this is an accurate description of AV's functionality. From http://jkorpela.fi/altavista/ http://jkorpela.fi/altavista/ , which is worth reading in its entirety: The operator NEAR ensures that both are within ten words of each other in the resulting documents. The operator NEAR binds less tightly than the operator NOT and associates to the left.
  - nl 8y ago
    Near queries are easy on unstructured text. Here's the Elastic systax: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-span-near-query.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/curr...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 8y ago
I also do not recall Altavista ever banning me with a CAPTCHA for "searching too hard".
- ct520 8y ago
  Can probably blame dogpile for the evolution of that
  - olefoo 8y ago
    You just caused me to have a flashback. Waiting for dogpile results was such a pain.
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      Never heard of "dogpile" before. Are you referring to dogpile.com search engine? A week or so ago I was frantically searching for "hidden bird illusion", and could no longer find the animated gif on wikipedia, and also nothing related to it on DDG nor Google, until about an hour later... I just tried "hidden bird illusion" and it gave the michaelbach.de page within first page... Thanks for the recommendation if you guys were referring to dogpile.com it's always good to have a backup search engine...
      - ct520 8y ago
        yes was referring to dogpile.com dogpile was/is a metasearch engine. Back before google days there was so much unindexed stuff out there each search engine could bring back different results. Going to this one site and searching would bring back results from all the popular search engines at one time.. querying sites like (altavista, lycos etc.)
iseanstevens 8y ago
First decent index of the web and designed to let you find what you want to find instead of things paying to be found
Liru 8y ago
> This is in contrast to google where searches return things that don't even contain your keywords. This has become so frustrating as of late, especially when you search for something like "c++ map" and it decides to completely ignore the "c++" part of your search, leaving you with pages of actual maps. Slightly exaggerated example since I can't remember any concrete ones off the top of my head, but the actual situation happens way too often.
- ChristianGeek 8y ago
  I just did a Google search on “c++ map” and didn’t see the behavior you describe.
  - krono 8y ago
    What if I told you Google search results are partially based on behaviour data, meaning the results you get for a search potentially differ from mine It doesn't happen to me so it doesn't exist does not apply in this case
    - Zelmor 8y ago
      Use duck duck go, my lad.
      - dhimes 8y ago
        Indeed. Every single result in the first "page" was about c++ maps.
      - krono 8y ago
        Thanks for reminding me! Just set it up as the default search provider in my browser. Google search doesn't really work for power users anymore and I don't see that changing for the better anytime soon.
      - andrepd 8y ago
        Alternatively, if you can't do without the google search algorithm, use startpage. Doesn't track and bubble you, anonymises the queries.
AngryData 8y ago
Oh man I used the shit out of altavista! I swear I could find anything on there no matter how obscure, it seemed like magic at the time.
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  Yeah, Altavista was the shizzle back in the day. I miss it, too. IIRC, it didn't even have its own domain name for a long time, it was altavista.digital.com. There's another company I miss, having used Vaxen back in college.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ankit219 8y ago
I hope someone somewhere makes a new version of Altavista search, if only for the developers. Searching via google is easy for basic errors but is a huge pain if you are slightly advanced. With the capabilities being extended (and more and more people writing code everyday), having a separate search engine dedicated to the developers could cut short the search times tremendously.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  There is still http://symbolhound.com/ http://symbolhound.com/ for search that doesn't ignore special characters but the index is probably not that big.
oregondan 8y ago
I wasn't coding when Altavista was around, but I totally agree that Google is terrible for searching code snippets etc. Fortunately, there's SymbolHound [0], which is designed for just that! Check it out [0] http://symbolhound.com/ http://symbolhound.com/
albedoa 8y ago
I was just asking about this Google "feature" on Twitter [1]. I can't imagine why anyone would want "must include" to mean anything but, and if it doesn't mean exactly that to Google, then they shouldn't say it. > does anyone know why Google does this with search their results? what does the word “must” mean here, practically? 1. https://twitter.com/albedoa/status/1047502325005336576 https://twitter.com/albedoa/status/1047502325005336576
- fphhotchips 8y ago
  The "must include" bit is a link. If you click it, you're telling Google that results must include that term (rather than may include, which is the default).
sqrt17 8y ago
I remember distinctly when someone introduced Google (ca 1999) to me as an Altavista alternative where the good results were actually on the first page. As in, with Altavista you needed to rummage through the first couple pages (luckily back then you only had a couple pages' worth of results) to find what you were looking for. Maybe what we miss is not exactly Altavista but a mid-2000s Google, also with the low occurrence of spam and sponsored content that we had back then. How about duckduckgo, does it fit the bill?
calebsurfs 8y ago
Try selecting "Verbatim" in the tools menu - it can really improve your google search on technical topics.
- usermac 8y ago
  Learned something. Thank you.
- cerberusss 8y ago
  Can't believe I didn't know that. Thanks a bunch!
bsder 8y ago
I miss the graphical clustering representation. If you searched for something like "rust", you would clearly see multiple clusters which would include a big chunk of stuff around "ferrous oxide" and a smaller cluster around the "programming language". You could click on the specific cluster you wanted, and the results would rank/limit to just that. I would kill for that back ...

by rsync 8y ago

hlieberman 8y ago

So true. So, so true.

sitkack 8y ago

My favorite feature was 'near' queries. One could project n-dimensional spaces to any arbitrary lower dimension with the right semantic and spatial distances. With Altavista, the limiting factor was the searcher. And my nostalgia that over-estimates the size of their search database.

sooheon 8y ago
> One could project n-dimensional spaces to any arbitrary lower dimension with the right semantic and spatial distances. I'm incredulous. Doing this well for unstructured text would be worth a lot in many industries today, let alone the entire web. If they did this well, they'd still be alive and well in another form.
- dogecoinbase 8y ago
  Maybe a smaller search corpus made it feasible, but this is an accurate description of AV's functionality. From http://jkorpela.fi/altavista/ http://jkorpela.fi/altavista/ , which is worth reading in its entirety: The operator NEAR ensures that both are within ten words of each other in the resulting documents. The operator NEAR binds less tightly than the operator NOT and associates to the left.
- nl 8y ago
  Near queries are easy on unstructured text. Here's the Elastic systax: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-span-near-query.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/curr...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

userbinator 8y ago

I also do not recall Altavista ever banning me with a CAPTCHA for "searching too hard".

ct520 8y ago
Can probably blame dogpile for the evolution of that
- olefoo 8y ago
  You just caused me to have a flashback. Waiting for dogpile results was such a pain.
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    Never heard of "dogpile" before. Are you referring to dogpile.com search engine? A week or so ago I was frantically searching for "hidden bird illusion", and could no longer find the animated gif on wikipedia, and also nothing related to it on DDG nor Google, until about an hour later... I just tried "hidden bird illusion" and it gave the michaelbach.de page within first page... Thanks for the recommendation if you guys were referring to dogpile.com it's always good to have a backup search engine...
    - ct520 8y ago
      yes was referring to dogpile.com dogpile was/is a metasearch engine. Back before google days there was so much unindexed stuff out there each search engine could bring back different results. Going to this one site and searching would bring back results from all the popular search engines at one time.. querying sites like (altavista, lycos etc.)

iseanstevens 8y ago

First decent index of the web and designed to let you find what you want to find instead of things paying to be found

Liru 8y ago

> This is in contrast to google where searches return things that don't even contain your keywords. This has become so frustrating as of late, especially when you search for something like "c++ map" and it decides to completely ignore the "c++" part of your search, leaving you with pages of actual maps. Slightly exaggerated example since I can't remember any concrete ones off the top of my head, but the actual situation happens way too often.

ChristianGeek 8y ago
I just did a Google search on “c++ map” and didn’t see the behavior you describe.
- krono 8y ago
  What if I told you Google search results are partially based on behaviour data, meaning the results you get for a search potentially differ from mine It doesn't happen to me so it doesn't exist does not apply in this case
  - Zelmor 8y ago
    Use duck duck go, my lad.
    - dhimes 8y ago
      Indeed. Every single result in the first "page" was about c++ maps.
    - krono 8y ago
      Thanks for reminding me! Just set it up as the default search provider in my browser. Google search doesn't really work for power users anymore and I don't see that changing for the better anytime soon.
    - andrepd 8y ago
      Alternatively, if you can't do without the google search algorithm, use startpage. Doesn't track and bubble you, anonymises the queries.

AngryData 8y ago

Oh man I used the shit out of altavista! I swear I could find anything on there no matter how obscure, it seemed like magic at the time.

ConceptJunkie 8y ago
Yeah, Altavista was the shizzle back in the day. I miss it, too. IIRC, it didn't even have its own domain name for a long time, it was altavista.digital.com. There's another company I miss, having used Vaxen back in college.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ankit219 8y ago

I hope someone somewhere makes a new version of Altavista search, if only for the developers. Searching via google is easy for basic errors but is a huge pain if you are slightly advanced. With the capabilities being extended (and more and more people writing code everyday), having a separate search engine dedicated to the developers could cut short the search times tremendously.

jobigoud 8y ago
There is still http://symbolhound.com/ http://symbolhound.com/ for search that doesn't ignore special characters but the index is probably not that big.

oregondan 8y ago

I wasn't coding when Altavista was around, but I totally agree that Google is terrible for searching code snippets etc. Fortunately, there's SymbolHound [0], which is designed for just that! Check it out [0] http://symbolhound.com/ http://symbolhound.com/

albedoa 8y ago

I was just asking about this Google "feature" on Twitter [1]. I can't imagine why anyone would want "must include" to mean anything but, and if it doesn't mean exactly that to Google, then they shouldn't say it. > does anyone know why Google does this with search their results? what does the word “must” mean here, practically? 1. https://twitter.com/albedoa/status/1047502325005336576 https://twitter.com/albedoa/status/1047502325005336576

fphhotchips 8y ago
The "must include" bit is a link. If you click it, you're telling Google that results must include that term (rather than may include, which is the default).

sqrt17 8y ago

I remember distinctly when someone introduced Google (ca 1999) to me as an Altavista alternative where the good results were actually on the first page. As in, with Altavista you needed to rummage through the first couple pages (luckily back then you only had a couple pages' worth of results) to find what you were looking for. Maybe what we miss is not exactly Altavista but a mid-2000s Google, also with the low occurrence of spam and sponsored content that we had back then. How about duckduckgo, does it fit the bill?

calebsurfs 8y ago

Try selecting "Verbatim" in the tools menu - it can really improve your google search on technical topics.

usermac 8y ago
Learned something. Thank you.
cerberusss 8y ago
Can't believe I didn't know that. Thanks a bunch!

bsder 8y ago

I miss the graphical clustering representation. If you searched for something like "rust", you would clearly see multiple clusters which would include a big chunk of stuff around "ferrous oxide" and a smaller cluster around the "programming language". You could click on the specific cluster you wanted, and the results would rank/limit to just that. I would kill for that back ...