11 ms·

I don't doubt that's what you see. What I get for: "starfish buttercup pickle mouse" is exactly one result [About 1 results (0.32 seconds)], which is your YC

I don't doubt that's what you see. What I get for: "starfish buttercup pickle mouse" is exactly one result [About 1 results (0.32 seconds)], which is your YC post. Removing the quotes gives me [About 34 results (0.63 seconds)]. The difference is that I have setup Google to show 100 results per page by default. I believe that this allows the (very approximate) results estimation algorithm to be more accurate. When I switch to 10 results, I get [About 591,000 results (0.53 seconds)]. Feel free to verify that this is the case for you as well. There is no foul play here. I work at search serving, I've seen that algorithm. My personal opinion is that nobody cared to improve it because almost nobody (modulo YC crowd) cares.

antonvs 4y ago
> There is no foul play here. I work at search serving, I've seen that algorithm. My personal opinion is that nobody cared to improve it because almost nobody (modulo YC crowd) cares. In other words, the product is shitty because no-one at the company really cares about it - because of course, that “product” is just a vehicle for a big ad company. On top of that, there’s no meaningful competition. Hopefully we’ll get some DoJ action on this at some point.
- utopcell 4y ago
  By all means, feel free to use any other search engine that you feel is better than Google. Or better yet, wow us with the better engine that you can build.
  - antonvs 4y ago
    It’s almost as if you didn’t even make it to the second sentence of my comment. Maybe take another stab at it? You’re really going to enjoy the third sentence.
    - nostrademons 4y ago
      FWIW my default browser is Brave, and Brave's default search engine is Brave Search. I almost switched back to Safari because the Brave Search results were so much worse than Google. Eventually found that you can set the default search engine in Brave - there's Brave, Google, DDG, Qwant, Bing, StartPage, and Ecosia available. I'd highly recommend this exercise for everyone who complains that there's no competition for Google, because a.) you're actually trying the competition and b.) you might realize how much Google does for you, and how far ahead they are against the competition. Who knows, you might even find a better search engine, and then next time you can come make recommendations for other HNers.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      A lesser man wouldn’t snark so hard while pointing people to an obviously absurd claim (no competition for Google search). Clearly we are in the presence of greatness!
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    Google used to be much better. If I could use the old Google, I would. I really do want content beyond the top 500 websites, and sometimes it was on page two. Now it’s not there at all. Most daily usage now I use Bing for the rewards points, and it’s approximately as good as current Google. Never have I failed to find something with Bing I then found with Google, despite it being a regular occurrence.
  - Razengan 4y ago
    Wow, I had strong suspicions Google was dicks (because of too much anti-user BS in their products) but here is proof!
nomel 4y ago
> Feel free to verify this is the case for you. Yes, if only one page is shown, it’s accurate. I picked that (unquoted, sorry) phrase because it resulted in two results pages for me, showing a worse case scenario. With your settings, it would require a term with > 100 results to see the fiction. I actually do assume it’s intentional, because 1. It’s predominant, at the top left of the page 2. I assume your UI team is competent and cares about every pixel shown on the screen, especially predominantly placed ones 3. it’s great marketing 4. It’s absurdly incorrect. 10x could be ubderstandable. It’s off by nearly 27,000x error here.
- utopcell 4y ago
  It was a good query, I'd have done something similar to replicate. I can guarantee you that it's not intentional. It was definitely easier to estimate in the past, when a single query was fired on a single corpus for a given user input, but modern web search is vastly more complicated than this.

antonvs 4y ago

> There is no foul play here. I work at search serving, I've seen that algorithm. My personal opinion is that nobody cared to improve it because almost nobody (modulo YC crowd) cares. In other words, the product is shitty because no-one at the company really cares about it - because of course, that “product” is just a vehicle for a big ad company. On top of that, there’s no meaningful competition. Hopefully we’ll get some DoJ action on this at some point.

utopcell 4y ago
By all means, feel free to use any other search engine that you feel is better than Google. Or better yet, wow us with the better engine that you can build.
- antonvs 4y ago
  It’s almost as if you didn’t even make it to the second sentence of my comment. Maybe take another stab at it? You’re really going to enjoy the third sentence.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    FWIW my default browser is Brave, and Brave's default search engine is Brave Search. I almost switched back to Safari because the Brave Search results were so much worse than Google. Eventually found that you can set the default search engine in Brave - there's Brave, Google, DDG, Qwant, Bing, StartPage, and Ecosia available. I'd highly recommend this exercise for everyone who complains that there's no competition for Google, because a.) you're actually trying the competition and b.) you might realize how much Google does for you, and how far ahead they are against the competition. Who knows, you might even find a better search engine, and then next time you can come make recommendations for other HNers.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    A lesser man wouldn’t snark so hard while pointing people to an obviously absurd claim (no competition for Google search). Clearly we are in the presence of greatness!
- Amezarak 4y ago
  Google used to be much better. If I could use the old Google, I would. I really do want content beyond the top 500 websites, and sometimes it was on page two. Now it’s not there at all. Most daily usage now I use Bing for the rewards points, and it’s approximately as good as current Google. Never have I failed to find something with Bing I then found with Google, despite it being a regular occurrence.
- Razengan 4y ago
  Wow, I had strong suspicions Google was dicks (because of too much anti-user BS in their products) but here is proof!

nomel 4y ago

> Feel free to verify this is the case for you. Yes, if only one page is shown, it’s accurate. I picked that (unquoted, sorry) phrase because it resulted in two results pages for me, showing a worse case scenario. With your settings, it would require a term with > 100 results to see the fiction. I actually do assume it’s intentional, because 1. It’s predominant, at the top left of the page 2. I assume your UI team is competent and cares about every pixel shown on the screen, especially predominantly placed ones 3. it’s great marketing 4. It’s absurdly incorrect. 10x could be ubderstandable. It’s off by nearly 27,000x error here.

utopcell 4y ago
It was a good query, I'd have done something similar to replicate. I can guarantee you that it's not intentional. It was definitely easier to estimate in the past, when a single query was fired on a single corpus for a given user input, but modern web search is vastly more complicated than this.