4 ms·

To improve search results on Google, append site:reddit.com to your query :)

kitsunesoba 4y ago
It's crazy how often I find myself doing this. The results returned still aren't always amazing but it pretty consistently massively improves signal-to-noise.
beebeepka 4y ago
What good would that be if I am not interested in visiting that site? What an odd suggestion
- 8organicbits 4y ago
  The point is to force Google towards a site you expect may have the result you want. site:news.ycombinator.com works for similar reasons. Basically, you can find (likely organic) discussion of topics by groups who are familiar with the subject and are likely to quickly correct any incorrect or misleading statements. Otherwise, Google will believe that some no-name site with generated content is... somehow... a good search result. The 'reddit' approach works poorly for me recently, Google gets stuck in certain sub-reddits and there's a lot of low quality or bot content on reddit to filter out anyway.
baxuz 4y ago
Google's search is amazingly stupid as of late. For the query "monkeypox gym" I'm getting COVID-19 results. For the query "social network without kids" I'm getting results for social networks aimed at kids. For the query "cakes without strawberries" I'm getting... This: https://imgur.com/a/Os1kkcP https://imgur.com/a/Os1kkcP
- RugnirViking 4y ago
  while those are pretty ridiculous examples that google should definately handle better, the cake one can be effectively done as "cakes -strawberries"
  - baxuz 4y ago
    Kinda. This was an example I made up on the fly, but sometimes you don't just want to exclude a term from the search, but you want to see it explicitly semantically excluded in the document. Eg, "js without transpilation" gives quality results, but often times, especially when it's dealing with more popular search queries, it just kinda focuses on the keywords without any context. For the search "social media without kids" I was actually looking for some articles that would focus on how the content changes depending on the age group. Or articles about social media focused on "adult things" like HN. What I got was https://imgur.com/a/0tt8g4r https://imgur.com/a/0tt8g4r And I won't even get started on the blog spam content aggregate sites which seem to be over half of the results. Google seriously needs to find a way out of this mess.
  - henriquecm8 4y ago
    You are right, but even if it's simple, it's not something the average user will know.

It's crazy how often I find myself doing this. The results returned still aren't always amazing but it pretty consistently massively improves signal-to-noise.

beebeepka 4y ago

What good would that be if I am not interested in visiting that site? What an odd suggestion

8organicbits 4y ago
The point is to force Google towards a site you expect may have the result you want. site:news.ycombinator.com works for similar reasons. Basically, you can find (likely organic) discussion of topics by groups who are familiar with the subject and are likely to quickly correct any incorrect or misleading statements. Otherwise, Google will believe that some no-name site with generated content is... somehow... a good search result. The 'reddit' approach works poorly for me recently, Google gets stuck in certain sub-reddits and there's a lot of low quality or bot content on reddit to filter out anyway.

baxuz 4y ago

Google's search is amazingly stupid as of late. For the query "monkeypox gym" I'm getting COVID-19 results. For the query "social network without kids" I'm getting results for social networks aimed at kids. For the query "cakes without strawberries" I'm getting... This: https://imgur.com/a/Os1kkcP https://imgur.com/a/Os1kkcP

RugnirViking 4y ago
while those are pretty ridiculous examples that google should definately handle better, the cake one can be effectively done as "cakes -strawberries"
- baxuz 4y ago
  Kinda. This was an example I made up on the fly, but sometimes you don't just want to exclude a term from the search, but you want to see it explicitly semantically excluded in the document. Eg, "js without transpilation" gives quality results, but often times, especially when it's dealing with more popular search queries, it just kinda focuses on the keywords without any context. For the search "social media without kids" I was actually looking for some articles that would focus on how the content changes depending on the age group. Or articles about social media focused on "adult things" like HN. What I got was https://imgur.com/a/0tt8g4r https://imgur.com/a/0tt8g4r And I won't even get started on the blog spam content aggregate sites which seem to be over half of the results. Google seriously needs to find a way out of this mess.
- henriquecm8 4y ago
  You are right, but even if it's simple, it's not something the average user will know.