5 ms·

I just searched the exact title of an article... and the result wasn't on the first page. So... I tried it a few more times and I didn't get a single hit for a

by casion 7y ago

I just searched the exact title of an article... and the result wasn't on the first page. So... I tried it a few more times and I didn't get a single hit for any thing I tried. Google picked up each one with "I'm feeling lucky". DDG got them all too. I wouldn't describe this as "pretty good", or even "good" or even "worth the time I spent this last 90 seconds".

anoncake 7y ago
Did you put the title in quotes?
- casion 7y ago
  I didn't do that on any of the services.
  - zepto 7y ago
    Then you didn’t use lycos correctly.
    - unnouinceput 7y ago
      The Apple mentality...I love it </sarcasm>
      - anoncake 7y ago
        Requiring the user to know how to use a tool in exchange for making it more useful is decidedly not the Apple mentality.
smt88 7y ago
> I just searched the exact title of an article... and the result wasn't on the first page. This happens to me on Google a lot. I guess mileage varies.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
Just for grins, try the same search on Bing and on Yandex. Look at the first 20 'organic' results (not always easy I know but its worth trying to figure out). Search indexes have a reasonably unique fingerprint in the rank order of organic results for a given query. The ads and sponsored content are all over the map and perturbed by a/b tests and other things but the organic results typically come straight from the ranking algorithm. Most "Search portals" (which is the web page that you type at to get your search engine result page from (SERP)) are either using one of the two English language indexes (Bing and Google) with their own ad network, or "blended" index where the search portal might index somethings like Wikipedia and Stack Overflow and then use Bing or Google for the long tail stuff. The reason for this is economics, you can stand up a search portal on an AWS instance, feed all the queries to Bing out the back and sell ads on it and make a few bucks. In contrast building your own index requires many more servers, crawling over the content you want to index (if you want to keep it fresh) and generally much larger network and storage costs. So its harder to pay for that with third party ad networks (not impossible, just harder). Pretty much everyone skips this approach for that reason.
- 80386 7y ago
  Looks like it's mostly Bing. First five results for 'big chungus': Google: - dictionary.com - knowyourmeme - artsatmichigan.umich.edu - urbandictionary - thetab Bing: - knowyourmeme - silvergames - wikipedia - urbandictionary - joke battles wikia Lycos: - knowyourmeme - urbandictionary - silvergames - youtube (BIG CHUNGUS | Official Main Theme | Song by Endigo) [this is the sixth result on Bing] - joke battles wikia Yandex: - big chungus wiki - youtube: big chungus (song) - knowyourmeme - memepedia.ru - urbandictionary
- growt 7y ago
  Does anyone know how ddg and co. pay for that? Do they get special rates? Because the normal price for using the Search API of Google or bing seems too expensive to be viable.
  - stereolambda 7y ago
    > Do they get special rates? I'd suspect so, the sticker price is for the little guy who cannot guarantee them a large volume of organic search queries. With a large volume of course you negotiate. The most interesting thing here is Startpage. Apparently Google doesn't give access to general Search API (as opposed to custom search limited to some sites) for over a decade now. I idly wonder if folks at Startpage have to maintain an extremely plain and not terribly well marketed site lest they be evicted from their deal, presumably a very very old one. According to Wikipedia they probably use Google since the early 2000s at least.
riku_iki 7y ago
They probably didn't crawl it yet, likely having much less resources than google.

by casion 7y ago

anoncake 7y ago

Did you put the title in quotes?

casion 7y ago
I didn't do that on any of the services.
- zepto 7y ago
  Then you didn’t use lycos correctly.
  - unnouinceput 7y ago
    The Apple mentality...I love it </sarcasm>
    - anoncake 7y ago
      Requiring the user to know how to use a tool in exchange for making it more useful is decidedly not the Apple mentality.

smt88 7y ago

> I just searched the exact title of an article... and the result wasn't on the first page. This happens to me on Google a lot. I guess mileage varies.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

Just for grins, try the same search on Bing and on Yandex. Look at the first 20 'organic' results (not always easy I know but its worth trying to figure out). Search indexes have a reasonably unique fingerprint in the rank order of organic results for a given query. The ads and sponsored content are all over the map and perturbed by a/b tests and other things but the organic results typically come straight from the ranking algorithm. Most "Search portals" (which is the web page that you type at to get your search engine result page from (SERP)) are either using one of the two English language indexes (Bing and Google) with their own ad network, or "blended" index where the search portal might index somethings like Wikipedia and Stack Overflow and then use Bing or Google for the long tail stuff. The reason for this is economics, you can stand up a search portal on an AWS instance, feed all the queries to Bing out the back and sell ads on it and make a few bucks. In contrast building your own index requires many more servers, crawling over the content you want to index (if you want to keep it fresh) and generally much larger network and storage costs. So its harder to pay for that with third party ad networks (not impossible, just harder). Pretty much everyone skips this approach for that reason.

80386 7y ago
Looks like it's mostly Bing. First five results for 'big chungus': Google: - dictionary.com - knowyourmeme - artsatmichigan.umich.edu - urbandictionary - thetab Bing: - knowyourmeme - silvergames - wikipedia - urbandictionary - joke battles wikia Lycos: - knowyourmeme - urbandictionary - silvergames - youtube (BIG CHUNGUS | Official Main Theme | Song by Endigo) [this is the sixth result on Bing] - joke battles wikia Yandex: - big chungus wiki - youtube: big chungus (song) - knowyourmeme - memepedia.ru - urbandictionary
growt 7y ago
Does anyone know how ddg and co. pay for that? Do they get special rates? Because the normal price for using the Search API of Google or bing seems too expensive to be viable.
- stereolambda 7y ago
  > Do they get special rates? I'd suspect so, the sticker price is for the little guy who cannot guarantee them a large volume of organic search queries. With a large volume of course you negotiate. The most interesting thing here is Startpage. Apparently Google doesn't give access to general Search API (as opposed to custom search limited to some sites) for over a decade now. I idly wonder if folks at Startpage have to maintain an extremely plain and not terribly well marketed site lest they be evicted from their deal, presumably a very very old one. According to Wikipedia they probably use Google since the early 2000s at least.

riku_iki 7y ago

They probably didn't crawl it yet, likely having much less resources than google.