The problem as I see it is that popularity ranking worked fine in the pre Eternal September era for the web (~10 years ago?). I think it is safe to say that mos

The problem as I see it is that popularity ranking worked fine in the pre Eternal September era for the web (~10 years ago?). I think it is safe to say that most HN users skew toward searching for more technical, intellectual or scientific topics and get frustrated by their searches getting swamped by popular topics. What I'd like to see is a check box or slider bar to exclude or adjust the weighting for popularity in a search. I don't need to see links for the latest Taylor Swift breakup or what the Kardashians are up to that appear in a technical search due to a randomly shared keyword. Often, the topics I am searching for will never be popular and current search operates on the assumption that it will. A second problem is that now that Google likes to rudely assume to know what you want, i.e. ignoring quotes and negation in search or even modifying keywords, its even harder to find what you want especially if its not on the first page or two of results. Because of this interference even changing your search parameters doesn't change the results much and you see the essentially the same links. What I'd like to see is a search engine that will do a delta between say Google and Bing and drop the links common to the two services. This might lead to uncovering the more esoteric or hidden links buried by the assumptions of the algorithm. Finally, a last problem that I see right now is the filter bubble effect. I had to search for how to spell "kardashians" in the above paragraph. Now my searches and ads for the next 2-3 weeks will be poisoned by articles or ads about the Kardashians. Taking one for team to make my point, I suppose.