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So I tried these search engines. They're fun to try but kinda remind me of search before Google. I'm frustrated with Google search results lately, they don't r

So I tried these search engines. They're fun to try but kinda remind me of search before Google. I'm frustrated with Google search results lately, they don't reach far enough back and are diluted with all sorts of crud. But these alternative search engines kinda just remind me of why people started using Google. When I use them, I don't get spam, but I don't really get things I'm interested in either. It's like they don't understand what I'm really interested in and I either get no hits, or get hits on things that are just completely unrelated. It's like old-school chat software or something, complete with all the computer misunderstandings and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a lot of competition in search. I use DDG a lot. But I'm surprised at how positive people's comments are about these alt search engines, because to me they have problems on the opposite end of the spectrum. To me, what Google returns is a pretty good understanding of what I want, but corrupted by manipulative spam; the other ones generally return no spam, but also not at all what I want.

ufo 5y ago
With marginalia I think that is by design. They intentionally do not index any websites that are deemed "too modern", which includes most things one might be searching for. It does seem to be intended more for exploring unusual places.
amelius 5y ago
I just hope we can get a trust-based network combined with search. So if I trust some friends and search "best toaster", and one of my trusted friends has given a very high review score to a toaster, then I get that one as the top search result. Extend this to online communities, and you can ask "what laptop would HN recommend for Linux?", etc. Of course, there's a privacy issue to solve, but the functionality could be very useful compared to the crappy Google search results for commercial products.
- aabbcc1241 5y ago
  I'm having similar idea but with less user involve: a browser extension that extract keywords from the websites you actually visited, and form a p2p database with your followers. If you see spam / undesired ads in search result, you can rate down the content, and the system auto reduce the weighing from the peer providing that history. To avoid sharing sensitive page / habit, maybe let the user review in batch and confirm before sharing out the list.
andromeduck 5y ago
Yes! I was trying to find an article on polish objections to Nord Stream 2 a week or two ago and couldn't find anything. Tried a million search combinations, tried date restricting but it all favotrd recency. Ended up finding it as a footnote on Wikipedia
mattmanser 5y ago
I'm trying https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ at the moment, was mentioned here a few months back when it was still in beta and I finally remembered to switch one of my browsers to try it. So far, pretty happy with it. Before that I'd been using ddg but found myself so frequently !g that it was almost pointless. DDG feels absolutely rubbish at local searches, but I may have just lost patience with it. To be honest, I don't think DDG has a future purely because of the name. No way I'm telling non-techy friends that as I'll just get "what? Ducky go? Duck what? Are you being serious or is this a joke?"
- Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
  I’m delighted with Kagi. It finds the regulars I want (StackOverflow, Github, Wikipedia) just as well as Google, but is less infested with SEO spam and has a better selection of indie sites. Images and maps aren’t really up to par yet, but I mostly use OSM for maps anyway. I’ll be very happy to pay $10-$15 a month when Kagi start charging.
- pverghese 5y ago
  Anything that says sign up for beta to get me to provide an email and contact info, I and a lot of other people are not going to use.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    It's a beta now but it'll become a paid search. That you aren't willing to pay for search means it isn't very important to you.
    - krageon 5y ago
      > That you aren't willing to pay for search means it isn't very important to you. Or that they don't have money to throw away on things that aren't things necessary to live. Your statement is only true if the person you respond to is quite wealthy, which is a leap.
      - 5y ago
zozbot234 5y ago
When it comes to these older sites, it's hard for an automated engine to discover what they're about because (1) they lack the kind of structured description that's far more common on modern sites - including, to some limited extent, spammy ones (although extensive structured descriptions would nonetheless tend to favor legitimate content) - and that powers "smart" suggestions in search results. Also, (2) the web directories that would've provided an accurate description back when those sites were current are now dead. What we'd need to improve the Web search ecosystem is for "non-commercial", hobbyist sites to work on addressing both of these problems.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  HTML has had metadata tags for ever, it's just that they quickly stopped being used by search engines were so inaccurate and prone to abuse. Even now, the heavy presence of these types of tags is arguably a marker that a website is really interested in its google ranking, and probably fairly spammy. Any sort of description or tagging or keywords or genre description needs third party vetting to be of any use what so ever. It's simply too profitable to misrepresent your websites for it to be any other way.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Those metadata tags were just a simple textual description and a bunch of keywords with no reference to any controlled vocabulary. This is what made them so easy to abuse. Modern schema-based structured data is vastly different, and with a bit of human supervision (that's the "third party vetting") it's feasible to tell when the site is lying. (Of course, low-quality bulk content can also be given an accurate description. But this is good for users, who can then more easily filter out that sort of content.) One could even let this vetting happen in decentralized fashion, by extending Web Annotation standards to allow for claims of the sort "this page/site includes accurate/inaccurate structured content."
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      The thing is "a bit of human supervision" is difficult on a scale of ten thousand Wikipedias. It pretty much needs to be done completely automatically.
willis936 5y ago
>But these alternative search engines kinda just remind me of why people started using Google. When I use them, I don't get spam In the past few months at least half of my Google searches have had spam in the top 3 results. Literally malware domains that community-made filter lists are aware of but somehow Google chooses to share anyway.

ufo 5y ago

With marginalia I think that is by design. They intentionally do not index any websites that are deemed "too modern", which includes most things one might be searching for. It does seem to be intended more for exploring unusual places.

amelius 5y ago

I just hope we can get a trust-based network combined with search. So if I trust some friends and search "best toaster", and one of my trusted friends has given a very high review score to a toaster, then I get that one as the top search result. Extend this to online communities, and you can ask "what laptop would HN recommend for Linux?", etc. Of course, there's a privacy issue to solve, but the functionality could be very useful compared to the crappy Google search results for commercial products.

aabbcc1241 5y ago
I'm having similar idea but with less user involve: a browser extension that extract keywords from the websites you actually visited, and form a p2p database with your followers. If you see spam / undesired ads in search result, you can rate down the content, and the system auto reduce the weighing from the peer providing that history. To avoid sharing sensitive page / habit, maybe let the user review in batch and confirm before sharing out the list.

andromeduck 5y ago

Yes! I was trying to find an article on polish objections to Nord Stream 2 a week or two ago and couldn't find anything. Tried a million search combinations, tried date restricting but it all favotrd recency. Ended up finding it as a footnote on Wikipedia

mattmanser 5y ago

I'm trying https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ at the moment, was mentioned here a few months back when it was still in beta and I finally remembered to switch one of my browsers to try it. So far, pretty happy with it. Before that I'd been using ddg but found myself so frequently !g that it was almost pointless. DDG feels absolutely rubbish at local searches, but I may have just lost patience with it. To be honest, I don't think DDG has a future purely because of the name. No way I'm telling non-techy friends that as I'll just get "what? Ducky go? Duck what? Are you being serious or is this a joke?"

Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
I’m delighted with Kagi. It finds the regulars I want (StackOverflow, Github, Wikipedia) just as well as Google, but is less infested with SEO spam and has a better selection of indie sites. Images and maps aren’t really up to par yet, but I mostly use OSM for maps anyway. I’ll be very happy to pay $10-$15 a month when Kagi start charging.
pverghese 5y ago
Anything that says sign up for beta to get me to provide an email and contact info, I and a lot of other people are not going to use.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  It's a beta now but it'll become a paid search. That you aren't willing to pay for search means it isn't very important to you.
  - krageon 5y ago
    > That you aren't willing to pay for search means it isn't very important to you. Or that they don't have money to throw away on things that aren't things necessary to live. Your statement is only true if the person you respond to is quite wealthy, which is a leap.
    - 5y ago

zozbot234 5y ago

When it comes to these older sites, it's hard for an automated engine to discover what they're about because (1) they lack the kind of structured description that's far more common on modern sites - including, to some limited extent, spammy ones (although extensive structured descriptions would nonetheless tend to favor legitimate content) - and that powers "smart" suggestions in search results. Also, (2) the web directories that would've provided an accurate description back when those sites were current are now dead. What we'd need to improve the Web search ecosystem is for "non-commercial", hobbyist sites to work on addressing both of these problems.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
HTML has had metadata tags for ever, it's just that they quickly stopped being used by search engines were so inaccurate and prone to abuse. Even now, the heavy presence of these types of tags is arguably a marker that a website is really interested in its google ranking, and probably fairly spammy. Any sort of description or tagging or keywords or genre description needs third party vetting to be of any use what so ever. It's simply too profitable to misrepresent your websites for it to be any other way.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Those metadata tags were just a simple textual description and a bunch of keywords with no reference to any controlled vocabulary. This is what made them so easy to abuse. Modern schema-based structured data is vastly different, and with a bit of human supervision (that's the "third party vetting") it's feasible to tell when the site is lying. (Of course, low-quality bulk content can also be given an accurate description. But this is good for users, who can then more easily filter out that sort of content.) One could even let this vetting happen in decentralized fashion, by extending Web Annotation standards to allow for claims of the sort "this page/site includes accurate/inaccurate structured content."
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    The thing is "a bit of human supervision" is difficult on a scale of ten thousand Wikipedias. It pretty much needs to be done completely automatically.

willis936 5y ago

>But these alternative search engines kinda just remind me of why people started using Google. When I use them, I don't get spam In the past few months at least half of my Google searches have had spam in the top 3 results. Literally malware domains that community-made filter lists are aware of but somehow Google chooses to share anyway.