4 ms·

This is perhaps an unpopular opinion, but why do you think sites such as these deserve any sort of high place on a search engine? The goal of a search engine is

by quenix 6y ago

This is perhaps an unpopular opinion, but why do you think sites such as these deserve any sort of high place on a search engine? The goal of a search engine is to present results which are -useful- to a user. These "independent web" sites are a neat relic at best and completely useless to the everyday user at worst. Compared to the tens of millions of competing -useful- sites, they are markedly less deserving of a spot. In fact, it would be unfair to award one to them purely because they are "independent".

gonzo41 6y ago
If Google were a book shop. You'd only see 10 books and usually the same ones. I guess that drive for more unique content comes from an older view of the net that was more ecsentric. A bookstores a bad analogy. Maybe a fashion store. If you're a heavy consumer of the net you probably hit the edges of your algorithmic fish bowl pretty regularly. I know I do and it's work to get out. Actually, I'd so much like to see different things more often I'd consider turning ads back on if the service could be provided.
- creato 6y ago
  What search terms should a site like this show up for? I poked around and all I found was short generic bios and links to social media and photo sites. I don't understand what searches should return a site like this, other than the person's name and some other identifying info (to disambiguate from the other 10 million Pauls).
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  > If Google were a book shop.. On the Amazon-CEO news yesterday, someone posted an interview of JB from 1997 [0]. In the first 2-3 minutes he explained exactly that (but for books). There are X million titles on books, they keep a tiny fraction of that in stock for 'next day delivery'. Kinda what Google does (or many search engines). Usually you find the 'most popular' answers on the first page. But when I have a tech problem, I have usually tried the 'first 5 pages' of solutions before I even try to duck it (DDG) for a solution (dear wikihow, yes I did restart my PC!). I assume HN has the type of readers that already KNOW the first 10 pages of solutions, and thus need that tiny level of detail that one gets after digging deep (stackexchange, forums, etc.) Question if anyone who knows: does Google search engine give preference to websites that display Google ads, or it is agnostic? I assume Google's crawlers can 'read' if a website is using X, Y, or Z advertiser's ads. (I haven't used Google for many many years and I usually block any google search and ads related IPs and URLs)(and ads in general). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM I suggest you spend the 5mins to watch this video. He made it sound so easy..
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    > does Google search engine give preference to websites that display Google ads, or it is agnostic? Officially, Google claims it does not [https://ads.google.com/home/resources/seo-vs-ppc https://ads.google.com/home/resources/seo-vs-ppc]. The most accurate (sacrificing probability) answer is "Google's ranking algorithm is proprietary; nobody can independently verify whether they up-rank sites that display Google ads by looking at the source code." Attempts to figure that out from the outside via black-box testing are complicated by the simple ubiquity of Google ads; there's a lot of conflating signal that would have to be tuned out (even if one observes correlation between top search results and Google ads, one has to control for the probability that any random site has Google ads on it, or that ads pay for the SEO and information collection that tends to result in a site that ranks highly in Google results, or even the probability that a site without ads, having found itself high in the rankings because it's delivering data that Google concludes is valuable to users, wouldn't respond to that observation by putting Google ads on their site to capture money otherwise left on the table).
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  The Pareto principle suggests that the hypothetical Google bookstore, being maximally useful to the querying individual should be showing some ten books for any given query if those books successfully answer 80% of the questions. A randomizing carousel is a different tool, which Google is not. Nor, to my knowledge, is DDG or Bing... They show a different set of ten books, but the same optimizing goals apply for their use cases. Is anyone doing something like a search engine that intentionally surfaces rarer data (i.e. makes the tradeoff intentionally of "less likely to satisfy your query, but seen by fewer people")? I'm not aware of one.
type0 6y ago
One reason - because they are often genuine; not like most seo stuffed web with meaningless keywords trying to sell you something, show you a bunch of adds, get you subscribed and spam you etc etc

by quenix 6y ago

gonzo41 6y ago

If Google were a book shop. You'd only see 10 books and usually the same ones. I guess that drive for more unique content comes from an older view of the net that was more ecsentric. A bookstores a bad analogy. Maybe a fashion store. If you're a heavy consumer of the net you probably hit the edges of your algorithmic fish bowl pretty regularly. I know I do and it's work to get out. Actually, I'd so much like to see different things more often I'd consider turning ads back on if the service could be provided.

creato 6y ago
What search terms should a site like this show up for? I poked around and all I found was short generic bios and links to social media and photo sites. I don't understand what searches should return a site like this, other than the person's name and some other identifying info (to disambiguate from the other 10 million Pauls).
HenryBemis 6y ago
> If Google were a book shop.. On the Amazon-CEO news yesterday, someone posted an interview of JB from 1997 [0]. In the first 2-3 minutes he explained exactly that (but for books). There are X million titles on books, they keep a tiny fraction of that in stock for 'next day delivery'. Kinda what Google does (or many search engines). Usually you find the 'most popular' answers on the first page. But when I have a tech problem, I have usually tried the 'first 5 pages' of solutions before I even try to duck it (DDG) for a solution (dear wikihow, yes I did restart my PC!). I assume HN has the type of readers that already KNOW the first 10 pages of solutions, and thus need that tiny level of detail that one gets after digging deep (stackexchange, forums, etc.) Question if anyone who knows: does Google search engine give preference to websites that display Google ads, or it is agnostic? I assume Google's crawlers can 'read' if a website is using X, Y, or Z advertiser's ads. (I haven't used Google for many many years and I usually block any google search and ads related IPs and URLs)(and ads in general). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM I suggest you spend the 5mins to watch this video. He made it sound so easy..
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  > does Google search engine give preference to websites that display Google ads, or it is agnostic? Officially, Google claims it does not [https://ads.google.com/home/resources/seo-vs-ppc https://ads.google.com/home/resources/seo-vs-ppc]. The most accurate (sacrificing probability) answer is "Google's ranking algorithm is proprietary; nobody can independently verify whether they up-rank sites that display Google ads by looking at the source code." Attempts to figure that out from the outside via black-box testing are complicated by the simple ubiquity of Google ads; there's a lot of conflating signal that would have to be tuned out (even if one observes correlation between top search results and Google ads, one has to control for the probability that any random site has Google ads on it, or that ads pay for the SEO and information collection that tends to result in a site that ranks highly in Google results, or even the probability that a site without ads, having found itself high in the rankings because it's delivering data that Google concludes is valuable to users, wouldn't respond to that observation by putting Google ads on their site to capture money otherwise left on the table).
shadowgovt 6y ago
The Pareto principle suggests that the hypothetical Google bookstore, being maximally useful to the querying individual should be showing some ten books for any given query if those books successfully answer 80% of the questions. A randomizing carousel is a different tool, which Google is not. Nor, to my knowledge, is DDG or Bing... They show a different set of ten books, but the same optimizing goals apply for their use cases. Is anyone doing something like a search engine that intentionally surfaces rarer data (i.e. makes the tradeoff intentionally of "less likely to satisfy your query, but seen by fewer people")? I'm not aware of one.

type0 6y ago

One reason - because they are often genuine; not like most seo stuffed web with meaningless keywords trying to sell you something, show you a bunch of adds, get you subscribed and spam you etc etc