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Google had a "search only forums" filter. I was devastated when they took it away. You can fake it by searching one forum at a time with "site:whatever.com", b

Google had a "search only forums" filter. I was devastated when they took it away. You can fake it by searching one forum at a time with "site:whatever.com", but you have to do one at a time and that doesn't help if there are forums you don't know about. Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.

aww_dang 5y ago
Forums were somewhat decentralized. Without attributing motive, platforms are interested in moving in the opposite direction.
visarga 5y ago
You can make custom search engines by selecting an explicit list of sites on top of Google here https://cse.google.com/all https://cse.google.com/all
- dantyti 5y ago
  it requires a google account. I like teddit.net's approach of allowing the user to set up preferences and import them as a json.
vopi 5y ago
idk if you know this but kagi has a "discussion" filter (among other filters)
Melatonic 5y ago
I feel this same way about a lot of aspects of Google search.
sph 5y ago
> Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back. It is now evident Google is not in the business of making its search any better.
- tomxor 5y ago
  Which is why we need more competitors in this space. When you are an underdog, making something "better" even for no direct monetisation path, is an obvious win because it all creates more noise and attracts people to your platform. More noise = more business - but Google don't need more noise, they have all the attention they need, they are basically king, they just need to figure out how to milk it, which means the only intrinsic business force is direct monetisation paths... completely different incentives.
  - passerby1 5y ago
    Where should the profit come from for a search-oriented product/business?
    - mescaline 5y ago
      From a business model that doesn't make money off ads.
    - garbagetime 5y ago
      Governments
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Because indexing the web and organizing all that information is expensive. It’s also a lot of power so we can’t exactly trust that job to a single government or even a group of allied governments. Universities could potentially handle it by pooling a lot of resources, but I can’t really think of who else I would trust to be The Search Engine. Google isn’t ideal but at least it’s priorities are mostly aligned with the average user’s.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Users? Imagine that every Internet user pays just one dollar a month. That's still billions worth of revenue, and it can be segmented further such as basic features available for free and more advanced users (such as large-scale API access) can pay more.
srcreigh 5y ago
But do those forums run Google ads?
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Yes
jessriedel 5y ago
Are there any wrappers for Google search that try to implement a bag of these sorts of workarounds this with a nice UI?
wolpoli 5y ago
This could be solved with selectable ranking strategies. Of course Google isn't going to offer that.
- mtgx 5y ago
pinky1417 5y ago
Shouldn't there be a way to only search multiple forums through some userscript? Only found out about userscript after messing around with an iOS app called HyperWeb. At least in my limited understanding of userscript's capabilities, you'd still need to explicitly specify the forums you want to search, but I imagine that would solve lots of use cases for search filters.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Google has a limit to how long searches can be. So if it’s a complex one, it can’t be too long. I think you can only specify searching one site at a time. With site: search filter. — Google’s custom search engine’s where you can give a whitelisted amount of sites isn’t very good. At least not any more. It didn’t include lots of pages it’s main index does. Or the rankings were all out of sorts rendering not useful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

aww_dang 5y ago

Forums were somewhat decentralized. Without attributing motive, platforms are interested in moving in the opposite direction.

visarga 5y ago

You can make custom search engines by selecting an explicit list of sites on top of Google here https://cse.google.com/all https://cse.google.com/all

dantyti 5y ago
it requires a google account. I like teddit.net's approach of allowing the user to set up preferences and import them as a json.

vopi 5y ago

idk if you know this but kagi has a "discussion" filter (among other filters)

Melatonic 5y ago

I feel this same way about a lot of aspects of Google search.

sph 5y ago

> Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back. It is now evident Google is not in the business of making its search any better.

tomxor 5y ago
Which is why we need more competitors in this space. When you are an underdog, making something "better" even for no direct monetisation path, is an obvious win because it all creates more noise and attracts people to your platform. More noise = more business - but Google don't need more noise, they have all the attention they need, they are basically king, they just need to figure out how to milk it, which means the only intrinsic business force is direct monetisation paths... completely different incentives.
- passerby1 5y ago
  Where should the profit come from for a search-oriented product/business?
  - mescaline 5y ago
    From a business model that doesn't make money off ads.
  - garbagetime 5y ago
    Governments
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Because indexing the web and organizing all that information is expensive. It’s also a lot of power so we can’t exactly trust that job to a single government or even a group of allied governments. Universities could potentially handle it by pooling a lot of resources, but I can’t really think of who else I would trust to be The Search Engine. Google isn’t ideal but at least it’s priorities are mostly aligned with the average user’s.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Users? Imagine that every Internet user pays just one dollar a month. That's still billions worth of revenue, and it can be segmented further such as basic features available for free and more advanced users (such as large-scale API access) can pay more.

srcreigh 5y ago

But do those forums run Google ads?

aww_dang 5y ago
Yes

jessriedel 5y ago

Are there any wrappers for Google search that try to implement a bag of these sorts of workarounds this with a nice UI?

wolpoli 5y ago

This could be solved with selectable ranking strategies. Of course Google isn't going to offer that.

mtgx 5y ago

pinky1417 5y ago

Shouldn't there be a way to only search multiple forums through some userscript? Only found out about userscript after messing around with an iOS app called HyperWeb. At least in my limited understanding of userscript's capabilities, you'd still need to explicitly specify the forums you want to search, but I imagine that would solve lots of use cases for search filters.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Google has a limit to how long searches can be. So if it’s a complex one, it can’t be too long. I think you can only specify searching one site at a time. With site: search filter. — Google’s custom search engine’s where you can give a whitelisted amount of sites isn’t very good. At least not any more. It didn’t include lots of pages it’s main index does. Or the rankings were all out of sorts rendering not useful.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]