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Ask HN: What is the hardest part about finding high quality content online?

6 points by jnussbaum 6y ago

Hello all, Whether it be sifting through SEO links or not trusting you are getting the best resource available, What is the hardest part about finding high-quality content online?

soulchild37 6y ago
Judging from your post history, it feels like you want to build a Google search engine alternative?
- jnussbaum 6y ago
  We are trying to research the problem of why it has become so hard to find valuable resources in an efficient manner
  - kleer001 6y ago
    What's your basis of comparison? Content curation is not trivial.
  - hackermailman 6y ago
    Because you can pay money to have spam content bury all the real content, and there's really only one major search engine, randomly ask everybody you see on the street for the next month if they've ever heard of bing or duckduckgo. They've probably heard of Yahoo but don't even know they have a search engine. A decentralized search engine is what we need but this is no easy problem to solve, a thousand people have tried. Good luck
statquontrarian 6y ago
Trust: Hard to gain, easy to lose
ian0 6y ago
- Any relatively high traffic keyword has such spammy front pages that you have to append things like "reddit" or "hacker news" to your query to try and find something useful - Anything that hints at the fact your looking for a product is dominated by the products themselves whereas a lot of the times you want unbiased advice, eg which category of product should I buy. Comparison sites themselves are very untrustworthy (for the most part) - If your "learning" something (eg guitar, weight lifting, random hobby, programming) its usually a year or so in before you know the best resources to learn with. However insights like this aren't easy to find so everyone goes through the motions - Again if your learning something the material is not split between "depth" levels. Eg the resources needed for learning about "black holes" for a layperson VS someone with a strong interest in space VS a physicist are different. As are news etc. PS An improvement in search is badly needed, good luck with your project.

6 points by jnussbaum 6y ago

Hello all, Whether it be sifting through SEO links or not trusting you are getting the best resource available, What is the hardest part about finding high-quality content online?

soulchild37 6y ago

Judging from your post history, it feels like you want to build a Google search engine alternative?

jnussbaum 6y ago
We are trying to research the problem of why it has become so hard to find valuable resources in an efficient manner
- kleer001 6y ago
  What's your basis of comparison? Content curation is not trivial.
- hackermailman 6y ago
  Because you can pay money to have spam content bury all the real content, and there's really only one major search engine, randomly ask everybody you see on the street for the next month if they've ever heard of bing or duckduckgo. They've probably heard of Yahoo but don't even know they have a search engine. A decentralized search engine is what we need but this is no easy problem to solve, a thousand people have tried. Good luck

statquontrarian 6y ago

Trust: Hard to gain, easy to lose

ian0 6y ago

- Any relatively high traffic keyword has such spammy front pages that you have to append things like "reddit" or "hacker news" to your query to try and find something useful - Anything that hints at the fact your looking for a product is dominated by the products themselves whereas a lot of the times you want unbiased advice, eg which category of product should I buy. Comparison sites themselves are very untrustworthy (for the most part) - If your "learning" something (eg guitar, weight lifting, random hobby, programming) its usually a year or so in before you know the best resources to learn with. However insights like this aren't easy to find so everyone goes through the motions - Again if your learning something the material is not split between "depth" levels. Eg the resources needed for learning about "black holes" for a layperson VS someone with a strong interest in space VS a physicist are different. As are news etc. PS An improvement in search is badly needed, good luck with your project.