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Google used to be really, really good at finding exactly what I told it to find. Nowadays, it's turned into the yellow pages; sponsored content from businesses

Google used to be really, really good at finding exactly what I told it to find. Nowadays, it's turned into the yellow pages; sponsored content from businesses trying to sell me goods and services. Can people suggest good alternatives or search patterns for certain categories of information or search types? Some of the search patterns I currently I use: * Youtube for product reviews and demos, entertainment, music and educational material. * Google with site:reddit.com at the start for questions best answered by other humans; crowd-sourced answers, authentic replies from mostly real people. * Google with site:news.ycombinator.com if I want to find "forum-like" discussion on topics I'm interested in. * Google Image search with site:amazon.co.uk when looking for niche products I need to buy, because Amazon's search is so incredibly broken and game-ified. What I'm having a heck of a time finding is technical content; long-form programming tutorials, deep dives into academic concepts (I do a lot of signal/audio processing and search for blog posts related to these topics), circuit schematics, electronic engineering content. These used to exist on enthusiast forums 10-15 years ago, but Google often no longer surfaces hits from these forums, both because the content is old and the forum model is dying. Reddit is the "replacement" but it plagued with low-effort "look at my thing" posts that help nobody.

coldpie 5y ago
I've had some luck inserting "forum" into search terms to find real human content. Mostly when trying to find technical info about cars, but may apply to other fields.
- ryeights 5y ago
  Yep. <search_term> site:reddit.com OR forum OR thread
andyjohnson0 5y ago
> Can people suggest good alternatives I've been on the Kagi beta test for a few weeks now and, for the kind of searches I mostly do, it seems to be a massive improvement on Google. Strongly recommended. https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
- FourthProtocol 5y ago
  Any reasonable justification for requiring sign-up/a user account?
  - andyjohnson0 5y ago
    Presumably because, as they move out of beta, they want people to start paying to use their search engine. Thats the only way they can afford to be ad-free.
    - innocentoldguy 5y ago
      I'm 100% happy to pay for an ad-free search engine that doesn't sell my data. I don't really like having all my search terms being linked to me via an account, but I suppose that's already happening anyway. I guess I picked the right day to stop looking at clown porn.
      - holbrad 5y ago
        I guess how would you implement monetization without an account in some form ? You could just allow a given IP address ? But that's just as trackable and has tons of downsides with using from other locations.
        jlund-molfese 5y ago
        They could do the SaaS model and give you an API key or unique URL allowing up to 10000 searches per month which you could share with friends/your company That's probably a worse business model, but it would be really interesting to hear what other monetization ideas Kagi considered or is considering.
        r00fus 5y ago
        Works at an enterprise level (e.g. exchange rate providers) but would be a bad fit for a B2C product. Managing customer expectations on api key usage (esp. if that key is publicly visible e.g. URL parameter vs. HTTP header) is not worth it unless you have higher-priced products. Also api keys would mean you might have to prevent re-selling, etc. Furthermore, they could still analyze api key usage to get the same historical data on you as if you logged in.
falcolas 5y ago
In my experience, the forum experience is far from dead, but it's effectively impossible to surface in a search engine - any search engine - unless you know the name of the forum. Oh, and the content must also be "fresh". If the content isn't "fresh" (which most of the best forum/blog posts are not), nobody shows it anymore. I can search for a specific blog post using a verbatim quote, but the result (if it exists) is buried under 10+ pages of "fresher" content, no matter how disconnected it may be from the search.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  This is depressing. Good information is useful for far longer than a carton of milk in your fridge! And a lot of that new "milk" is apparently made of chalk and bilge-water.
  - kashnote 5y ago
    Are people still drinking cow milk? Oat milk all the way.
    - brimble 5y ago
      Yes, of course they do, the alternative milk market is growing fast but most people still go for cow milk if they want milk. That's why grocery stores still devote a ton of space to cow milk.
      - robin_reala 5y ago
        I guess it depends on where you are. Here in Sweden it’s about 50/50 (if you take into account the non-refrigerated milks).
        brimble 5y ago
        Here (mid-tier city in the US) it's more like 80/20 or 90/10 at any normal grocery store, and I suspect there's higher product turn-over for dairy so the actual sales figures favors dairy more than that suggests.
Joeri 5y ago
For technical content I had great results from using safari books online in the past. Having most tech literature an easy web search away was super convenient, because typically the best treatment of any subject is in book form. The downside is that it is expensive, so when I switched employers I lost access and I wasn’t willing to pay for it myself.
bloaf 5y ago
As a bit of a weird hobby, I like to read up on right wing conspiracy theories. That means I do a fair number of searches for specific terms and people mentioned in fake-news facebook/forum posts. Google seems to slowly oscillate between thinking that I am a right wing loon, and thinking I am Joe Public who must not be shown misinformation. That is, sometimes google is perfectly willing to vomit forth results from the propaganda mills, even when I'm not specifically looking for it, and other times I can't get conspiratorial-minded results even when I am making an effort to find them. This most frequently manifests itself when I am looking for sources for claims that I know exist. Like if I remember reading an earlier conspiracy that has just been invalidated, or someone posts some a video of someone reading a blog post. If google has decided I am an innocent bystander not to be shown conspiracies it can be nearly impossible to track down the original blog or posts about the conspiracy. Recency bias is another huge problem with google results. Older content gets heavily de-prioritized, even when it is clearly what you want. Google is willing to give up on terms in your search before it is willing to show you old stuff. For example, if you tried to research early Ukrainian political corruption during Trump's impeachment, your results would be nearly entirely Trump-related content even if you tried to use google's date-filters and exclude terms like -Trump.
- Lascaille 5y ago
  This sounds like filter-bubbling. From what I can tell, Google doesn't have user specific filter bubble but user-category filter bubbles, and it's constantly updating the category of users it thinks you're in.
- writeslowly 5y ago
  I noticed this recently when trying to find primary sources for flat earth claims. They don’t exist on Google, for me at least. You can still find them on duck duck go if you search for something like “flat earth ice wall” but Google just returns generic debunk articles.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  Limiting search results by date is essential if you're trying to find something with a popular name of something else that just came out.
Buttons840 5y ago
Since there's only a handful of sites you target your searches at, it would be nice if you could just have your own search engine that focuses on those few sites, and perhaps crawls a little deeper. I've sometimes thought the death of Google will be the self hosted search engine.
- worldsayshi 5y ago
  Hard to find a business model for a self hosted search engine though.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  They already exist.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
itslennysfault 5y ago
imo, google is still king, but you have to be a bit of a power user. You're already using `site:` which is good if you know exactly where you're looking. If not you can use `related:` in the same way. I find using `-something` to remove terms the most useful. I'll search for something (usually an error message) then add `-react` (and mumble "ffs not everything is react"). Then if I still see things I DON'T want add more `-` to the string. It's not GREAT that you have to do that, but it's pretty functional and certainly better than going past page 1 of search results. Anyways, here are some other things you can do for reference: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433
- xerox13ster 5y ago
  The major problem with this that I've experienced is even if I use operands like + and - to specify or remove terms--more often remove--Google ends up using a synonym in place of that word that means the same thing. So if for instance I'm looking up info about ADHD meds as an adult, I might get tons of articles about childhood ADHD since that's where all the research is. I search Adult ADHD meds, I still get articles about childhood ADHD. So then I: -child -childhood -adolescent -teen -kid -momgroup -mother -parent -teenager -children -kids -school -offspring -smallhumans -minor -underage +adult +work -rehab -addiction and I still get crap blog spam that's probably related to teaching or raising children or some other bullshit like warning about the dangers of addiction or something, and never information about my ADHD or the meds for it. It's not GREAT is the understatement of the decade.
pwr-electronics 5y ago
Change your search strategy. Most forums require a membership to view them, and most long form posts are on personal websites. Google can't or won't serve those. You have to navigate like it's the old web. Find a good place to make landfall, read old posts, ask around, and follow all your leads.
jadence 5y ago
I've found my jobs' internal (social) message boards/mailing lists/Slack channels/etc to be great resources as the only contributors are those who work/worked at the company. Your (ex)coworkers presumably met/meet a certain competency bar and are less likely to spam. At larger companies there are message boards/mailing lists/Slack channels/etc for nearly every topic. For local information, I've found forums for local sport teams to be great resources during the off season. Posters are often happy to engage in any sort of chat during the off season. Even if you haven't gotten to know the frequent posters during the sport's season you can use the (usually highly visible w/o any additional clicks) account age/# of posts/"karma" as a proxy of posters' trustworthiness. note: If you don't normally contribute on-topic (i.e., about the team and sport) posts, I would only search the forums for your questions and not post off-topic questions as that'll get you quickly banned.
gitfan86 5y ago
youtube has some great technical content
AugurCognito 5y ago
> Google with site:news.ycombinator.com if I want to find "forum-like" discussion on topics I'm interested in. Use https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/ instead. You can see your results as you type your query and even sort it based on time.
CA0DA 5y ago
Kagi search (currently in beta) is actually pretty good.
wldcordeiro 5y ago
It's particularly awful on mobile where you get Google's "smart" cards which can be ads, followed by ads then the actual results which are mostly SEO trash. Trying to find support for Google Fiber routers was nearly impossible because Google just tried to interpret what I wanted as signing up for Google Fiber and just overwhelmingly suggests that. It gets even worse on Youtube where after like 10 results for what you typed in they just show you "things you might like".
beatsie_ 5y ago
I have noticed the low effort posting. This may extend beyond just Reddit though. Everyone wants the biggest reward for the least amount of effort.
toomanydoubts 5y ago
I've replaced "site:news.ycombinator.com" with hn.algolia.com and couldn't be happier.
- radicalriddler 5y ago
  If I'm interested in anything technical, I'll search hn.algolia, it's a brilliant tool.
8organicbits 5y ago
`site:reddit.com` has been worked poorly for me recently, although I've used it many times in the past. He's my most recent search (I was traveling and trying to watch Netflix, but geo-block was preventing some shows from appearing): https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Areddit.com%20netflix%20vpn https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Areddit.com%20ne... The entire first page is for NetflixViaVPN subreddit (not linking to avoid SEO). They have a stickied post that seems to shill two VPN providers I haven't heard of. This is plausible, as maybe Netflix hasn't either... The stickied post has comments disabled, so it's hard to tell. Then if you click other posts, a bot auto-links the stickied post, but everyone is making different suggestions that may imply the stickied post is wrong. Interestingly, the same search on DuckDuckGo only has three posts from that subreddit. This better matches what I wanted! The first one I'm seeing is: https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN_Guide/comments/rgh2xn/best_netflix_vpn_reddit_2022/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN_Guide/comments/rgh2xn/best_netf... This seems much more plausible. All those comments suggest a provider I've heard of and that I've heard other people mention IRL. Google seems to rely too much on the URL or the page header, so it's stuck in a single subreddit.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
>What I'm having a heck of a time finding is technical content; long-form programming tutorials, deep dives into academic concepts github search is good for that. search for 'list of awesome anytopic'/'curated list of anytopic'/'list of anytopic' and you might find a repository with a curated lists of links on anytopic. (search box on the main page of github) You even have the 'The definitive list of lists (of lists)' https://github.com/jnv/lists https://github.com/jnv/lists You might also want to check my side project: I have a search tool / catalog of duckduckgo !bang operators, i am hoping that it allows for better discoverability of specialized search engines. https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html - (best viewed on a PC) here is the project page on github: https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang

coldpie 5y ago

I've had some luck inserting "forum" into search terms to find real human content. Mostly when trying to find technical info about cars, but may apply to other fields.

ryeights 5y ago
Yep. <search_term> site:reddit.com OR forum OR thread

andyjohnson0 5y ago

> Can people suggest good alternatives I've been on the Kagi beta test for a few weeks now and, for the kind of searches I mostly do, it seems to be a massive improvement on Google. Strongly recommended. https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/

FourthProtocol 5y ago
Any reasonable justification for requiring sign-up/a user account?
- andyjohnson0 5y ago
  Presumably because, as they move out of beta, they want people to start paying to use their search engine. Thats the only way they can afford to be ad-free.
  - innocentoldguy 5y ago
    I'm 100% happy to pay for an ad-free search engine that doesn't sell my data. I don't really like having all my search terms being linked to me via an account, but I suppose that's already happening anyway. I guess I picked the right day to stop looking at clown porn.
    - holbrad 5y ago
      I guess how would you implement monetization without an account in some form ? You could just allow a given IP address ? But that's just as trackable and has tons of downsides with using from other locations.
      - jlund-molfese 5y ago
        They could do the SaaS model and give you an API key or unique URL allowing up to 10000 searches per month which you could share with friends/your company That's probably a worse business model, but it would be really interesting to hear what other monetization ideas Kagi considered or is considering.
        r00fus 5y ago
        Works at an enterprise level (e.g. exchange rate providers) but would be a bad fit for a B2C product. Managing customer expectations on api key usage (esp. if that key is publicly visible e.g. URL parameter vs. HTTP header) is not worth it unless you have higher-priced products. Also api keys would mean you might have to prevent re-selling, etc. Furthermore, they could still analyze api key usage to get the same historical data on you as if you logged in.

falcolas 5y ago

In my experience, the forum experience is far from dead, but it's effectively impossible to surface in a search engine - any search engine - unless you know the name of the forum. Oh, and the content must also be "fresh". If the content isn't "fresh" (which most of the best forum/blog posts are not), nobody shows it anymore. I can search for a specific blog post using a verbatim quote, but the result (if it exists) is buried under 10+ pages of "fresher" content, no matter how disconnected it may be from the search.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
This is depressing. Good information is useful for far longer than a carton of milk in your fridge! And a lot of that new "milk" is apparently made of chalk and bilge-water.
- kashnote 5y ago
  Are people still drinking cow milk? Oat milk all the way.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Yes, of course they do, the alternative milk market is growing fast but most people still go for cow milk if they want milk. That's why grocery stores still devote a ton of space to cow milk.
    - robin_reala 5y ago
      I guess it depends on where you are. Here in Sweden it’s about 50/50 (if you take into account the non-refrigerated milks).
      - brimble 5y ago
        Here (mid-tier city in the US) it's more like 80/20 or 90/10 at any normal grocery store, and I suspect there's higher product turn-over for dairy so the actual sales figures favors dairy more than that suggests.

Joeri 5y ago

For technical content I had great results from using safari books online in the past. Having most tech literature an easy web search away was super convenient, because typically the best treatment of any subject is in book form. The downside is that it is expensive, so when I switched employers I lost access and I wasn’t willing to pay for it myself.

bloaf 5y ago

As a bit of a weird hobby, I like to read up on right wing conspiracy theories. That means I do a fair number of searches for specific terms and people mentioned in fake-news facebook/forum posts. Google seems to slowly oscillate between thinking that I am a right wing loon, and thinking I am Joe Public who must not be shown misinformation. That is, sometimes google is perfectly willing to vomit forth results from the propaganda mills, even when I'm not specifically looking for it, and other times I can't get conspiratorial-minded results even when I am making an effort to find them. This most frequently manifests itself when I am looking for sources for claims that I know exist. Like if I remember reading an earlier conspiracy that has just been invalidated, or someone posts some a video of someone reading a blog post. If google has decided I am an innocent bystander not to be shown conspiracies it can be nearly impossible to track down the original blog or posts about the conspiracy. Recency bias is another huge problem with google results. Older content gets heavily de-prioritized, even when it is clearly what you want. Google is willing to give up on terms in your search before it is willing to show you old stuff. For example, if you tried to research early Ukrainian political corruption during Trump's impeachment, your results would be nearly entirely Trump-related content even if you tried to use google's date-filters and exclude terms like -Trump.

Lascaille 5y ago
This sounds like filter-bubbling. From what I can tell, Google doesn't have user specific filter bubble but user-category filter bubbles, and it's constantly updating the category of users it thinks you're in.
writeslowly 5y ago
I noticed this recently when trying to find primary sources for flat earth claims. They don’t exist on Google, for me at least. You can still find them on duck duck go if you search for something like “flat earth ice wall” but Google just returns generic debunk articles.
bobsmooth 5y ago
Limiting search results by date is essential if you're trying to find something with a popular name of something else that just came out.

Buttons840 5y ago

Since there's only a handful of sites you target your searches at, it would be nice if you could just have your own search engine that focuses on those few sites, and perhaps crawls a little deeper. I've sometimes thought the death of Google will be the self hosted search engine.

worldsayshi 5y ago
Hard to find a business model for a self hosted search engine though.
foxfluff 5y ago
They already exist.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

itslennysfault 5y ago

imo, google is still king, but you have to be a bit of a power user. You're already using `site:` which is good if you know exactly where you're looking. If not you can use `related:` in the same way. I find using `-something` to remove terms the most useful. I'll search for something (usually an error message) then add `-react` (and mumble "ffs not everything is react"). Then if I still see things I DON'T want add more `-` to the string. It's not GREAT that you have to do that, but it's pretty functional and certainly better than going past page 1 of search results. Anyways, here are some other things you can do for reference: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433

xerox13ster 5y ago
The major problem with this that I've experienced is even if I use operands like + and - to specify or remove terms--more often remove--Google ends up using a synonym in place of that word that means the same thing. So if for instance I'm looking up info about ADHD meds as an adult, I might get tons of articles about childhood ADHD since that's where all the research is. I search Adult ADHD meds, I still get articles about childhood ADHD. So then I: -child -childhood -adolescent -teen -kid -momgroup -mother -parent -teenager -children -kids -school -offspring -smallhumans -minor -underage +adult +work -rehab -addiction and I still get crap blog spam that's probably related to teaching or raising children or some other bullshit like warning about the dangers of addiction or something, and never information about my ADHD or the meds for it. It's not GREAT is the understatement of the decade.

pwr-electronics 5y ago

Change your search strategy. Most forums require a membership to view them, and most long form posts are on personal websites. Google can't or won't serve those. You have to navigate like it's the old web. Find a good place to make landfall, read old posts, ask around, and follow all your leads.

jadence 5y ago

I've found my jobs' internal (social) message boards/mailing lists/Slack channels/etc to be great resources as the only contributors are those who work/worked at the company. Your (ex)coworkers presumably met/meet a certain competency bar and are less likely to spam. At larger companies there are message boards/mailing lists/Slack channels/etc for nearly every topic. For local information, I've found forums for local sport teams to be great resources during the off season. Posters are often happy to engage in any sort of chat during the off season. Even if you haven't gotten to know the frequent posters during the sport's season you can use the (usually highly visible w/o any additional clicks) account age/# of posts/"karma" as a proxy of posters' trustworthiness. note: If you don't normally contribute on-topic (i.e., about the team and sport) posts, I would only search the forums for your questions and not post off-topic questions as that'll get you quickly banned.

gitfan86 5y ago

youtube has some great technical content

AugurCognito 5y ago

> Google with site:news.ycombinator.com if I want to find "forum-like" discussion on topics I'm interested in. Use https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/ instead. You can see your results as you type your query and even sort it based on time.

CA0DA 5y ago

Kagi search (currently in beta) is actually pretty good.

wldcordeiro 5y ago

It's particularly awful on mobile where you get Google's "smart" cards which can be ads, followed by ads then the actual results which are mostly SEO trash. Trying to find support for Google Fiber routers was nearly impossible because Google just tried to interpret what I wanted as signing up for Google Fiber and just overwhelmingly suggests that. It gets even worse on Youtube where after like 10 results for what you typed in they just show you "things you might like".

beatsie_ 5y ago

I have noticed the low effort posting. This may extend beyond just Reddit though. Everyone wants the biggest reward for the least amount of effort.

toomanydoubts 5y ago

I've replaced "site:news.ycombinator.com" with hn.algolia.com and couldn't be happier.

radicalriddler 5y ago
If I'm interested in anything technical, I'll search hn.algolia, it's a brilliant tool.

8organicbits 5y ago

`site:reddit.com` has been worked poorly for me recently, although I've used it many times in the past. He's my most recent search (I was traveling and trying to watch Netflix, but geo-block was preventing some shows from appearing): https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Areddit.com%20netflix%20vpn https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Areddit.com%20ne... The entire first page is for NetflixViaVPN subreddit (not linking to avoid SEO). They have a stickied post that seems to shill two VPN providers I haven't heard of. This is plausible, as maybe Netflix hasn't either... The stickied post has comments disabled, so it's hard to tell. Then if you click other posts, a bot auto-links the stickied post, but everyone is making different suggestions that may imply the stickied post is wrong. Interestingly, the same search on DuckDuckGo only has three posts from that subreddit. This better matches what I wanted! The first one I'm seeing is: https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN_Guide/comments/rgh2xn/best_netflix_vpn_reddit_2022/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN_Guide/comments/rgh2xn/best_netf... This seems much more plausible. All those comments suggest a provider I've heard of and that I've heard other people mention IRL. Google seems to rely too much on the URL or the page header, so it's stuck in a single subreddit.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

>What I'm having a heck of a time finding is technical content; long-form programming tutorials, deep dives into academic concepts github search is good for that. search for 'list of awesome anytopic'/'curated list of anytopic'/'list of anytopic' and you might find a repository with a curated lists of links on anytopic. (search box on the main page of github) You even have the 'The definitive list of lists (of lists)' https://github.com/jnv/lists https://github.com/jnv/lists You might also want to check my side project: I have a search tool / catalog of duckduckgo !bang operators, i am hoping that it allows for better discoverability of specialized search engines. https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html - (best viewed on a PC) here is the project page on github: https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang