6 ms·
The OP raises a wider point: For the longest time google made good on their promise to keep their search page simple and easy to use. Now, bit by bit the s
by wgx 15y ago
The OP raises a wider point:
For the longest time google made good on their promise to keep their search page simple and easy to use.
Now, bit by bit the search page is getting more filled up with cruft that you don't need and stuff that you do need gets removed.
I am getting a hunch (just a vague feeling) that we might be approaching a time where a new, simpler search experience would pick up a lot of users - maybe amongst us HN/early adopters?
- ssp 15y agoI wonder whether they split test these types of things? They probably do, but Google is unlikely to be immune to corporate pathologies, where for example it is politically impossible for some team to leave well enough alone. I suspect that could easily end up trumping split test results.
- petenixey 15y agoI believe they do a tonne of testing, this video from Google is a great illustration of their process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q
- william42 15y agoIsn't Google incredibly famous for their dedication to A/B testing?
- stordoff 15y agoA/B/N testing from what I heard. One of the examples I know of it that they split the users into about ten groups, and very slightly changed the blue hyperlink colour between them. They found that even a slight variation made a difference to the click-through rate.
- xiaomai 15y agoI've had this same experience at work. I've complained about how ugly some features of our sites are on several occasions, only to learn that they are that way because the ugly (version/size/whatever) performed so much better than the others in our tests. Other times the differences are subtle but increase the click-through rate by surprising amounts.
- dave1010uk 15y agohttp://www.google.com/xhtml http://www.google.com/xhtml is a simple, less-cruft version. Unfortunately it doesn't have cache links.
- vasco 15y agoYes it does. Click options, a little dropdown appears with "Cached, Similar and Mobile formatted"
- dave1010uk 15y agoI couldn't find that, then I loaded it in Chrome and saw the "Options" links. Viewing it in Chrome also enables search suggestions. I guess Google are sniffing for a WebKit useragent to detect a modern mobile browser.
- johnbatch 15y agoStrange messing with user agents. The only one it shows an ad on is the "iPad" user agent.
- ukaszg 15y agoIt already is happening, look at ddg.gg
- ugh 15y agoWhat’s that cruft you are talking about? Ignoring for a moment the cache link (I’m not sure how many people use it, maybe it’s worth testing whether Google could do with it being a bit more hidden) Google’s results page is very sparse and only provides truly useful tools. I use Google’s ability to search for links from a specific time frame all the time, for example. I couldn’t do without it, it’s also accessible and minimalist. I also quite often switch between the different kinds of links I can search for. I don’t see much on the results page one could reasonably remove. Exposing some of the advanced search options in the UI was the right step for Google to take. They didn’t pick everything, only the most important stuff. It’s all still very minimal.
- wgx 15y agoFor me, more than visual cruft (although I would argue there is more of that than before) - it's interaction cruft. Big annoyances for me: 1. Auto suggesting and searching for words I didn't mean - common with technical phrases 2. Ignoring "quoted terms" and searching for them as an AND instead 3. Auto refreshing the results page as I modify my terms - it makes the experience slower, and I don't need to see results for half-typed words There's probably more I can't bring to mind right now.
- joelhaus 15y agoYou can add a "+" before a quoted phrase to enforce a strict search, but share some of these same frustrations.
- thomasgerbe 15y ago99% of the time I'm searching, I don't need to use the cache feature. Thus, I think it makes sense that it's hidden in the preview flyout than having "cached" repeated over and over again. Makes for a much cleaner search results page.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoIf you want Googles search results, but without all the interface spaff, use Scroogle: https://ssl.scroogle.org/ https://ssl.scroogle.org/
- blauwbilgorgel 15y agoGoogle accessibility search doesn't violate Google's TOS, yet gives the cleanest possible interface: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=000183394137052953072%3Azc1orsc6mbq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=test&sa=Search http://www.google.com/cse?cx=000183394137052953072%3Azc1orsc... But scrolling seems to be somewhat broken. Removing the "In Cache" link probably makes the user interface less cluttered. I used it a lot, and had to go look for it yesterday. From the official support thread: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=3340c5b01f83f283&hl=en#all http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=... But I don't have the user data that Google has. If less than 1% of the users account for the "in cache"-usage, the solution to require an extra click to get to it, is more sane, viewed in that light. Shouldn't be too hard to make a browser plug-in / Greasemonkey script, so to add a link to: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ycombinator.com https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.yc... directly under search results.
- icebraining 15y agoI really dislike services like that. Searches cost real money to Google, using them through that is almost stealing, in my opinion. Just use a different search engine. EDIT: I'd like if someone would reply if they disagree. Do you dispute that each search costs money to Google, or what?
- udp 15y agoLet's not forget DuckDuckGo. I finally switched around when Google Instant came out, and never feel I'm missing anything.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoAlso, DuckDuckGo renders better in elinks (Google has a lot of header junk you have to scroll past).
- masklinn 15y agoI feel like I'm missing relevant and useful results a thousand times a day. More and more, DDG is just a !gateway to google.
- epi0Bauqu 15y agoThat's concerning! I'd really appreciate if you could collect a set of specific examples and report at http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html That's how we improve fastest. But generally, the way we get results shouldn't result in a lot of stuff actually missing, which may speak to some bugs in there.
- thaumaturgy 15y agoI've been noticing the same pattern -- the results from DDG aren't quite complete enough. Sometimes, it's just missing a few minor things, other times, I'll run a search query and there will be a major search result that I know is missing, that I can get in one of the top 5 results from Google. Which sucks, because I hands-down full-on no-buts prefer DDG's interface to Google. I hope I'm not being uncool here, but a while back I privately suggested mining the data from "!g" queries as a way to see where DDG wasn't returning the results that people expected. Is there a reason you can't do that? In my case at least, I usually start with DDG, and if I don't get what I'm expecting, then I use a "!g" -- so you'd have a nice little database of results to perform comparisons from.
- 15y ago