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I worked on a search engine at a startup that did exactly this, you could up and downvote each result. The main feature was that we essentially "sharded" the se

I worked on a search engine at a startup that did exactly this, you could up and downvote each result. The main feature was that we essentially "sharded" the search engine so it could be embedded on different sites and give different results based on each community. So a search for "casting" on a fishing website would give different results than the same search on a metallurgy site, as voted by each community. We could also learn passively by watching which links users clicked on and where they "disappeared" from the search engine - presumably the last clicked link was the result they were looking for. Google did copy the voting feature on their results page briefly but abandoned it. [0] This was back in 2006-7. We learned the hard way that it's pretty much impossible to compete with Google in search even when you're innovating. They either copy you, or can just blackhole you out of existence. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2007/11/28/straight-out-of-left-field-google-experimenting-with-digg-style-voting-on-search-results/ https://techcrunch.com/2007/11/28/straight-out-of-left-field...

mcv 5y ago
> presumably the last clicked link was the result they were looking for. This is a risky assumption. I tend to click all the links first, and only then check if they're the results I'm looking for.
- gruez 5y ago
  You can work around that by using javascript (checking for tab losing focus) and checking how quickly the links are being clicked. If you middle-click a bunch of links, then don't click any more links, then it can be inferred that one of the links that you clicked was "good".
  - mcv 5y ago
    How can that be inferred? Maybe the results were all bad and I'm refining my search query. Or trying a different search engine.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Maybe the results were all bad and I'm refining my search query that can be detected, by checking further searches are made using the same session. >Or trying a different search engine. Maybe if your audience is mainly HN users it might cause an issue, but I think most people don't bother with that so you can count it as noise.

mcv 5y ago

> presumably the last clicked link was the result they were looking for. This is a risky assumption. I tend to click all the links first, and only then check if they're the results I'm looking for.

gruez 5y ago
You can work around that by using javascript (checking for tab losing focus) and checking how quickly the links are being clicked. If you middle-click a bunch of links, then don't click any more links, then it can be inferred that one of the links that you clicked was "good".
- mcv 5y ago
  How can that be inferred? Maybe the results were all bad and I'm refining my search query. Or trying a different search engine.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Maybe the results were all bad and I'm refining my search query that can be detected, by checking further searches are made using the same session. >Or trying a different search engine. Maybe if your audience is mainly HN users it might cause an issue, but I think most people don't bother with that so you can count it as noise.