7 ms·

I append the word "reddit" to most non-technical google searches. Platform has been around long enough that _someone_ on it has discussed the issue I'm looking

by zelias 4y ago

I append the word "reddit" to most non-technical google searches. Platform has been around long enough that _someone_ on it has discussed the issue I'm looking for

borplk 4y ago
Google used to have a "forums" search type option which brought up some great results from forums. The "reddit" trick seems similar to that.
rdudek 4y ago
I've been doing this too with additional step to check the user's post history to make sure it's not some SEO spam. Most of the time, the advice is legit.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > I've been doing this too with additional step to check the user's post history to make sure it's not some SEO spam How exactly you do this? People sell their "organically grown" reddit accounts all the time, so they look like normal users, while just a specific post is the ad itself, then the account is dumped after that.
  - Serenacula 4y ago
    You can sell your Reddit account? Where and for how much?
    - capableweb 4y ago
      PlayerUp.com, Signals.sh, EpicNPC.com, the number of sites you can sell your social media account is endless. Don't expect to get too much from it though.
dzek69 4y ago
it doesn't work for me. The only threads I can find on reddit are those that are dead and unanswered :(
harshalizee 4y ago
This is my go to search hack too. Recently, I've started to see it becoming more and more ineffective. Corps have figured out that reddit is the new SEO hack. Now there's a sudden influx of 'ad' posts by corps. Lots and lots of posts with a title "Samsung's new Galaxy 28 is cool!". Minimal upvotes, no comments.
- jijijijij 4y ago
  IMO it’s not just astroturfing, the general sickness of social media has spread into every subreddit now. Lots of unqualified, angry comments, or none at all. I think during the pandemic and the Ukrainian war the user base and engagement dynamics have changed. I find Reddit to be less useful for anything recent. There is a void of quality content for the last two years. It’s not just burrowed. The frontpage is only bot-reposts, ragebait and violence porn, now, and I think many sane people left Reddit or became rage junkies themselves.
carterschonwald 4y ago
Yeah, I’m horrified but it’s wound up being the only way to find quality amateur writing about dog breeds. Most websites in that subject matter seem to be semi algorithmic content farms that echo the same uncited information.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  Not to mention, most of those websites are loaded up to the hilt on a bunch of annoying adware. You can read 2-3 sentences, then you hit ad add you have to scroll past to read another 2-3 sentences to hit yet another ad you have to scroll past.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    You browse the web without an adblocker? Courageous.
  - ornornor 4y ago
    Reddit falls in that category as well unless you use old.Reddit.com
pricci 4y ago
site:reddit.com edit: it's better to use site:reddit.com/r/ to remove some spam from /users/
- mech422 4y ago
  site:old.reddit.com FTW! :-D edit: its a joke..it would save me manually changing the url, cuz I'm too lazy to install the plugin to auto-change it for me.
  - rationalist 4y ago
    Ever since Firefox from Android removed the ability to install any extension, I now have to edit it manually every f***ing time. Surely someone who works on Firefox for Android is reading this, please add that extension back!
    - mech422 4y ago
      I wonder how many people actually use/prefer old.reddit.com ? Seems like everyone I know uses it ... Even the ones with reddit accounts.
      - ornornor 4y ago
        In our tech bubble, yes. Go to /r/popular to get a sense of the average Reddit user, they don’t use old.
        mech422 4y ago
        Is reddit's interface really better if you login? I've never bothered creating an account...
        ornornor 4y ago
        No, the redesign is awful no matter what. old.Reddit.com works whether you’re logged in or not.
AmericanOP 4y ago
It is amusing I uninstalled the Reddit app because I use google as an entry-point so often and it’s really a pain universal links forced me to open the app for a worse experience. Stupid product strategy to ignore Google!
- flangola7 4y ago
  Universal links?
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    When clicking on a link in any browser, if the URL matches an app that you have installed - it will switch to the app rather than stay in the browser. So anything reddit.com will bring up the Reddit app.
    - flangola7 4y ago
      But you can change which app is the default. I use RiF for example.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    Presumably the ability for an app to register itself as the handler for links matching a pattern. So, when you click a link to a reddit thread from a search result, it opens in the reddit app rather than the default browser.
    - funcDropShadow 4y ago
      Is it possible to do that with Chrome/Chromium on a Linux desktop? I would like to reroute certain URL to different browsers.
      - sgtnoodle 4y ago
        Not that I am familiar with. You could try an extension like this one, though I haven't tried it myself. It looks like you would click the link, then click the toolbar button. https://add0n.com/open-in.html https://add0n.com/open-in.html
cjauvin 4y ago
When you think about it, adding "reddit" is a kind of counterpart mechanism to the rise of AI and generated content in a general sense. There's a real thirst for answers coming from real, genuine people, and adding "reddit" is the last resort we have to maximize the likelihood of it.
- aprdm 4y ago
  I believe there's likely a lot of AI and generated content there too.
- ttt3ts 4y ago
  Hardly, reddit, in its current form, will die because of LLMs. It is too easy to get an account and post. They will have to wall the garden or trash will fill it. :(
guelo 4y ago
Not sure why reddit has been able to resist the ever present corruption of money, but I think that's also why reddit is one of the few remaining politically progressive strongholds.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  It hasn't, have you seen the new design and forceful push to the app where your data gets sold. They haven't gotten rid of old. yet but they will. Not sure about the progressive stronghold or if it's a woke heaven, that might be your subreddit
  - mech422 4y ago
    gah - the new layout drives me batty. I guess its worse when you're not logged in (like me) - it won't just display the full thread in simple chronological order. old.reddit is better though
- Our_Benefactors 4y ago
  > reddit has been able to resist the ever present corruption of money Ah yes the small family businesses of Condé Nast and Tencent.
  - guelo 4y ago
    I wasn't clear. The point I was trying to make is about what we're discussing in this thread, how reddit is somehow still useful for search and hasn't been completely ruined by seo and ad spam.
    - itchyouch 4y ago
      The thankless job and passion projects of subreddit moderators. Most large subs will curate the content via their opinionated rules and enforce them. There's teams of humans that are basically cleaning up the garbage.
- mancerayder 4y ago
deafpolygon 4y ago
That is sadly what I do now.
nicbou 4y ago
Another one is "-best" when looking for just about anything.
- MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
  If I -best -top -2023 with an adblocker, I often get zero results. It's incredible.
SMAAART 4y ago
you could use this https://redditle.com/ https://redditle.com/
emrah 4y ago
Metafilter is another possibility
ekanes 4y ago
Re: Reddit -- I'd love for YC to issue a Request For Startups around verified human identity - soon it will be hard to distinguish people from AI that posts comments, participates and then astroturfs sites like reddit. Account creation date will help as a band-aid but isn't the right solution.
- mambru 4y ago
  You mean like worldcoin, by yc's very own Sam Altman?
  - latexr 4y ago
    I’ve never seen any indication that Worldcoin is more than a dystopian scam. Even on HN the stories are negative. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/worldcoin-the-eyeball-scanning-crypto-unicorn-hits-signup-snags https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/worldcoin... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=worldcoin&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
nvarsj 4y ago
Oh god don't give this away, or it will be ruined. I've said it before but for me the best search I ever used was back in the day when delicio.us was a thing and everyone used it. Basically curated tags/websites, I could find really good, niche things that google would never find for me. Basically, human powered indexing is almost always better than algo/crawler search which only surfaces popular/gamed pages - it's a fundamental flaw of pagerank type crawling. This is also kinda why ChatGPT is good, because it's basically a model trained on places like reddit, not using link popularity or whatever. So it's basically a model which builds an index of information from actual humans. I think it's the future of search, albeit with its own anti SEO challenges. For now we have site:reddit.com, site:news.ycombinator.com, site:stackoverflow.com, site:wikipedia.com to actually get useful info out of Google.

by zelias 4y ago

I append the word "reddit" to most non-technical google searches. Platform has been around long enough that _someone_ on it has discussed the issue I'm looking for

borplk 4y ago

Google used to have a "forums" search type option which brought up some great results from forums. The "reddit" trick seems similar to that.

rdudek 4y ago

I've been doing this too with additional step to check the user's post history to make sure it's not some SEO spam. Most of the time, the advice is legit.

capableweb 4y ago
> I've been doing this too with additional step to check the user's post history to make sure it's not some SEO spam How exactly you do this? People sell their "organically grown" reddit accounts all the time, so they look like normal users, while just a specific post is the ad itself, then the account is dumped after that.
- Serenacula 4y ago
  You can sell your Reddit account? Where and for how much?
  - capableweb 4y ago
    PlayerUp.com, Signals.sh, EpicNPC.com, the number of sites you can sell your social media account is endless. Don't expect to get too much from it though.

dzek69 4y ago

it doesn't work for me. The only threads I can find on reddit are those that are dead and unanswered :(

harshalizee 4y ago

This is my go to search hack too. Recently, I've started to see it becoming more and more ineffective. Corps have figured out that reddit is the new SEO hack. Now there's a sudden influx of 'ad' posts by corps. Lots and lots of posts with a title "Samsung's new Galaxy 28 is cool!". Minimal upvotes, no comments.

jijijijij 4y ago
IMO it’s not just astroturfing, the general sickness of social media has spread into every subreddit now. Lots of unqualified, angry comments, or none at all. I think during the pandemic and the Ukrainian war the user base and engagement dynamics have changed. I find Reddit to be less useful for anything recent. There is a void of quality content for the last two years. It’s not just burrowed. The frontpage is only bot-reposts, ragebait and violence porn, now, and I think many sane people left Reddit or became rage junkies themselves.

carterschonwald 4y ago

Yeah, I’m horrified but it’s wound up being the only way to find quality amateur writing about dog breeds. Most websites in that subject matter seem to be semi algorithmic content farms that echo the same uncited information.

tcmart14 4y ago
Not to mention, most of those websites are loaded up to the hilt on a bunch of annoying adware. You can read 2-3 sentences, then you hit ad add you have to scroll past to read another 2-3 sentences to hit yet another ad you have to scroll past.
- seanw444 4y ago
  You browse the web without an adblocker? Courageous.
- ornornor 4y ago
  Reddit falls in that category as well unless you use old.Reddit.com

pricci 4y ago

site:reddit.com edit: it's better to use site:reddit.com/r/ to remove some spam from /users/

mech422 4y ago
site:old.reddit.com FTW! :-D edit: its a joke..it would save me manually changing the url, cuz I'm too lazy to install the plugin to auto-change it for me.
- rationalist 4y ago
  Ever since Firefox from Android removed the ability to install any extension, I now have to edit it manually every f***ing time. Surely someone who works on Firefox for Android is reading this, please add that extension back!
  - mech422 4y ago
    I wonder how many people actually use/prefer old.reddit.com ? Seems like everyone I know uses it ... Even the ones with reddit accounts.
    - ornornor 4y ago
      In our tech bubble, yes. Go to /r/popular to get a sense of the average Reddit user, they don’t use old.
      - mech422 4y ago
        Is reddit's interface really better if you login? I've never bothered creating an account...
        ornornor 4y ago
        No, the redesign is awful no matter what. old.Reddit.com works whether you’re logged in or not.

AmericanOP 4y ago

It is amusing I uninstalled the Reddit app because I use google as an entry-point so often and it’s really a pain universal links forced me to open the app for a worse experience. Stupid product strategy to ignore Google!

flangola7 4y ago
Universal links?
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  When clicking on a link in any browser, if the URL matches an app that you have installed - it will switch to the app rather than stay in the browser. So anything reddit.com will bring up the Reddit app.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    But you can change which app is the default. I use RiF for example.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  Presumably the ability for an app to register itself as the handler for links matching a pattern. So, when you click a link to a reddit thread from a search result, it opens in the reddit app rather than the default browser.
  - funcDropShadow 4y ago
    Is it possible to do that with Chrome/Chromium on a Linux desktop? I would like to reroute certain URL to different browsers.
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      Not that I am familiar with. You could try an extension like this one, though I haven't tried it myself. It looks like you would click the link, then click the toolbar button. https://add0n.com/open-in.html https://add0n.com/open-in.html

cjauvin 4y ago

When you think about it, adding "reddit" is a kind of counterpart mechanism to the rise of AI and generated content in a general sense. There's a real thirst for answers coming from real, genuine people, and adding "reddit" is the last resort we have to maximize the likelihood of it.

aprdm 4y ago
I believe there's likely a lot of AI and generated content there too.
ttt3ts 4y ago
Hardly, reddit, in its current form, will die because of LLMs. It is too easy to get an account and post. They will have to wall the garden or trash will fill it. :(

guelo 4y ago

Not sure why reddit has been able to resist the ever present corruption of money, but I think that's also why reddit is one of the few remaining politically progressive strongholds.

ipaddr 4y ago
It hasn't, have you seen the new design and forceful push to the app where your data gets sold. They haven't gotten rid of old. yet but they will. Not sure about the progressive stronghold or if it's a woke heaven, that might be your subreddit
- mech422 4y ago
  gah - the new layout drives me batty. I guess its worse when you're not logged in (like me) - it won't just display the full thread in simple chronological order. old.reddit is better though
Our_Benefactors 4y ago
> reddit has been able to resist the ever present corruption of money Ah yes the small family businesses of Condé Nast and Tencent.
- guelo 4y ago
  I wasn't clear. The point I was trying to make is about what we're discussing in this thread, how reddit is somehow still useful for search and hasn't been completely ruined by seo and ad spam.
  - itchyouch 4y ago
    The thankless job and passion projects of subreddit moderators. Most large subs will curate the content via their opinionated rules and enforce them. There's teams of humans that are basically cleaning up the garbage.
mancerayder 4y ago

deafpolygon 4y ago

That is sadly what I do now.

nicbou 4y ago

Another one is "-best" when looking for just about anything.

MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
If I -best -top -2023 with an adblocker, I often get zero results. It's incredible.

SMAAART 4y ago

you could use this https://redditle.com/ https://redditle.com/

emrah 4y ago

Metafilter is another possibility

ekanes 4y ago

Re: Reddit -- I'd love for YC to issue a Request For Startups around verified human identity - soon it will be hard to distinguish people from AI that posts comments, participates and then astroturfs sites like reddit. Account creation date will help as a band-aid but isn't the right solution.

mambru 4y ago
You mean like worldcoin, by yc's very own Sam Altman?
- latexr 4y ago
  I’ve never seen any indication that Worldcoin is more than a dystopian scam. Even on HN the stories are negative. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/worldcoin-the-eyeball-scanning-crypto-unicorn-hits-signup-snags https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/worldcoin... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=worldcoin&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

nvarsj 4y ago

Oh god don't give this away, or it will be ruined. I've said it before but for me the best search I ever used was back in the day when delicio.us was a thing and everyone used it. Basically curated tags/websites, I could find really good, niche things that google would never find for me. Basically, human powered indexing is almost always better than algo/crawler search which only surfaces popular/gamed pages - it's a fundamental flaw of pagerank type crawling. This is also kinda why ChatGPT is good, because it's basically a model trained on places like reddit, not using link popularity or whatever. So it's basically a model which builds an index of information from actual humans. I think it's the future of search, albeit with its own anti SEO challenges. For now we have site:reddit.com, site:news.ycombinator.com, site:stackoverflow.com, site:wikipedia.com to actually get useful info out of Google.