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I recently googled something like "modal fabric weave diagram". On my phone I was given five places to buy modal clothing and a message that "x other similar r

I recently googled something like "modal fabric weave diagram". On my phone I was given five places to buy modal clothing and a message that "x other similar results have been omitted". I persisted, I rephrased. I was asked if I was a robot, I clicked on CAPTCHAs, and now Google is willing to give me some results that are relevant to textile design but I still haven't been able to find out what weave patterns are common in modern modal fabrics. On my work computer Google knows I'm an engineer so it gives me papers on visco-elastic properties of the fabric but it's not actually processing my query well and giving me weaves, it's just saying "I guess you're fancy and technical, huh?" In 1997 there would have been a text/image website with forty diagrams of various weave patterns and it would have come up in the top twenty results. I would like a little more 1997 in my internet, please.

Minor49er 3y ago
You might have better luck using a search engine like Fireball https://fireball.com/ https://fireball.com/
pixl97 3y ago
In 1997 there wouldn't have been 50,000 spam responses in the query. In 1997 there would have been some place that made it, or someone interested in it that would have made the site for their own interests in spreading the information. Today there are countless entities looking to scrape a penny from your view in any way possible, and will create an ocean of spam in order to capture that revenue. At least with search engines we cannot go back. That internet is dead. Any new system you create to bring back the old internet will attract the previous group because your system would be valuable, and like parasites, they will steal value from your system.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > In 1997 there wouldn't have been 50,000 spam responses in the query. If what the GP wants exists, and none of the given options are any bit similar to it, why do you think the amount of spam is relevant? If Google couldn't find a real thing between a mountain of invented low quality content, you would have a point. But Google keeps pushing unrelated results instead.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Define "real thing". Again in the past it's really easy, people didn't put much "fake" content up. Now there is mountain of documents that have 'content' that matches your request... How much energy are you going to put in to determine if its low or high quality content? I did the search that OP did and I got tangentially related documents, but not the exact think that OP was likely looking for. And this defines the problem, there is far more noise than signal, and the ancient internet did not look like that at all.
    - StrictDabbler 3y ago
      The content doesn't match the request, though. I click on it and search for the keywords I gave and they aren't in the result. Put the search in quotes. Nope. Add +, -, whatever. Uh-uh. Inspect the source. Search for the keyword in hidden keyword tags. Nada. The result is not fake, it's just not a result for my search. Google is no longer a search engine. It is only a suggestion engine. It is the Mega-Clippy. "You look like you might want to buy Modal underwear!" This works for the majority of searches but it's useless for research into any novel corridor. And now Bing using ChatGPT to get closer, for sure, but only until they figure out how to inject advertising into it better. We really needed the first big search engine to stay focused on search instead of suggestion and they chose not to. That's where we are.
kanzure 3y ago
It would be a lot better if you could just search an index of all the words on the web, and then we can refine our queries against the results to narrow things down even more. As it is right now, search just doesn't work anymore.

Minor49er 3y ago

You might have better luck using a search engine like Fireball https://fireball.com/ https://fireball.com/

pixl97 3y ago

In 1997 there wouldn't have been 50,000 spam responses in the query. In 1997 there would have been some place that made it, or someone interested in it that would have made the site for their own interests in spreading the information. Today there are countless entities looking to scrape a penny from your view in any way possible, and will create an ocean of spam in order to capture that revenue. At least with search engines we cannot go back. That internet is dead. Any new system you create to bring back the old internet will attract the previous group because your system would be valuable, and like parasites, they will steal value from your system.

marcosdumay 3y ago
> In 1997 there wouldn't have been 50,000 spam responses in the query. If what the GP wants exists, and none of the given options are any bit similar to it, why do you think the amount of spam is relevant? If Google couldn't find a real thing between a mountain of invented low quality content, you would have a point. But Google keeps pushing unrelated results instead.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Define "real thing". Again in the past it's really easy, people didn't put much "fake" content up. Now there is mountain of documents that have 'content' that matches your request... How much energy are you going to put in to determine if its low or high quality content? I did the search that OP did and I got tangentially related documents, but not the exact think that OP was likely looking for. And this defines the problem, there is far more noise than signal, and the ancient internet did not look like that at all.
  - StrictDabbler 3y ago
    The content doesn't match the request, though. I click on it and search for the keywords I gave and they aren't in the result. Put the search in quotes. Nope. Add +, -, whatever. Uh-uh. Inspect the source. Search for the keyword in hidden keyword tags. Nada. The result is not fake, it's just not a result for my search. Google is no longer a search engine. It is only a suggestion engine. It is the Mega-Clippy. "You look like you might want to buy Modal underwear!" This works for the majority of searches but it's useless for research into any novel corridor. And now Bing using ChatGPT to get closer, for sure, but only until they figure out how to inject advertising into it better. We really needed the first big search engine to stay focused on search instead of suggestion and they chose not to. That's where we are.

kanzure 3y ago

It would be a lot better if you could just search an index of all the words on the web, and then we can refine our queries against the results to narrow things down even more. As it is right now, search just doesn't work anymore.