5 ms·

I often search for articles/books about X, or reviews about Y. The top results for those things is a mix of SEO spam, Amazon links etc. which I all try to avoid

by dgb23 5y ago

I often search for articles/books about X, or reviews about Y. The top results for those things is a mix of SEO spam, Amazon links etc. which I all try to avoid. I use search for information, but I often have to dig quite deep to find something worth clicking on or reading. And that's true for Google and DDG (which I mostly use). When it's raw, basic knowledge, then I'm using !wiki or !mdn etc. in DDG to search those sites directly. Note: Wikipedia and Mozilla Developer Network are two of my favorite sites. But when it's something more subtle and specialized that I'm not very familiar with then often my only hope of finding something useful is to search via aggregators and forums like HN, Reddit etc. because then I can gauge the quality of the links via the discussion around it and the people who post them. Or in some cases I know about a specialist or journalist and can use their name to filter out spam. Discovering these kind of things via search is really hard, especially if their authors are not known. It's the spammers and low effort creators that get rewarded the most, partly because of search engines, partly because of visitors who are content with that kind of quality.

godshatter 5y ago
Whenever I'm searching for something (using DDG, too) I usually scroll down the results page until I see a website that I don't recognize or one I remember as being small and targeted. The big company websites usually have shortest blurbs on the topic and the worst "NoScript minigames". Smaller websites usually have more information and less reliance on massive ad networks. This is especially true if you are looking for reviews on games.
- dgb23 5y ago
  I don’t get to play video games anymore as often as a couple of years ago. Then I was naturally informed about interesting titles (typically indie). Now when I have a couple of hours to kill and would like to play something new/original I usually give up after 20min of searching and grab a book. I wish I knew some decent curators or magazines, but most of the stuff I come across is just too far from what I‘m looking for. Search engines don’t help much here either.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    If you find yourself looking for a game in the future, just get "Vampire Survivors". Trust me. It's the pinnacle of casual gaming. $3 and as simple as it is plain fun. Can easily spend 10 hours on it if you want to, or 10 minutes if you don't have any more time.
    - dgb23 5y ago
      Thank you, will check it out! Some of these raw looking indie games have turned out to be gems. Thinking of Faster than Light, Loop Hero etc. It's hard to gauge the game-play from a quick look. Not even "similar to" searches help too much. It's not really about the money spent, but rather about the time both finding and then playing. I wish I had a list of curators that I really dig. So far, hit and miss.
  - godshatter 5y ago
    I keep an eye on r/gamingsuggestions on reddit for game discovery. Follow that for long enough and you'll hear some more interesting games talked about upon occasion enough times that you'll seek them out. If you can stand reddit, that is.
    - dgb23 5y ago
      Thank you for helping me to waste my time :)

by dgb23 5y ago

godshatter 5y ago

Whenever I'm searching for something (using DDG, too) I usually scroll down the results page until I see a website that I don't recognize or one I remember as being small and targeted. The big company websites usually have shortest blurbs on the topic and the worst "NoScript minigames". Smaller websites usually have more information and less reliance on massive ad networks. This is especially true if you are looking for reviews on games.

dgb23 5y ago
I don’t get to play video games anymore as often as a couple of years ago. Then I was naturally informed about interesting titles (typically indie). Now when I have a couple of hours to kill and would like to play something new/original I usually give up after 20min of searching and grab a book. I wish I knew some decent curators or magazines, but most of the stuff I come across is just too far from what I‘m looking for. Search engines don’t help much here either.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  If you find yourself looking for a game in the future, just get "Vampire Survivors". Trust me. It's the pinnacle of casual gaming. $3 and as simple as it is plain fun. Can easily spend 10 hours on it if you want to, or 10 minutes if you don't have any more time.
  - dgb23 5y ago
    Thank you, will check it out! Some of these raw looking indie games have turned out to be gems. Thinking of Faster than Light, Loop Hero etc. It's hard to gauge the game-play from a quick look. Not even "similar to" searches help too much. It's not really about the money spent, but rather about the time both finding and then playing. I wish I had a list of curators that I really dig. So far, hit and miss.
- godshatter 5y ago
  I keep an eye on r/gamingsuggestions on reddit for game discovery. Follow that for long enough and you'll hear some more interesting games talked about upon occasion enough times that you'll seek them out. If you can stand reddit, that is.
  - dgb23 5y ago
    Thank you for helping me to waste my time :)