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In my experience it's not that there's better quality results found, but rather low quality results are skipped. There's a lot filtered by default + it's easy t

In my experience it's not that there's better quality results found, but rather low quality results are skipped. There's a lot filtered by default + it's easy to click "block this domain" when you run into yet another stackoverflow copy. It means that when you're searching for code related things, you often get small relevant blogs in position 3+ rather than SEO spam. For example searching for "current time on JavaScript" on Google, I get SO, MDN, and basically a lot of SEO spam sites. Same thing on Kagi https://kagi.com/search?q=current+time+in+JavaScript&r=au&sh=M69XtTvQiEqY0N-zAmYw_A https://kagi.com/search?q=current+time+in+JavaScript&r=au&sh... ends with an actually interesting blog on position 5, link to moment.js on GH, further down posts about accuracy and about the Temporal API proposal, etc.

JoshuaEN 3y ago
This is my experience as well. Low quality junk is often not present, and if it does show up, it's two mouse clicks to never see that domain again. Also the ability to promote high quality domains helps even more with this (though i have found one needs to be careful with pinning domains, as it can lead to irrelevant results being shown first because they have some if the same keywords).
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Feels like I'm paying to do someone elses job.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Well, your alternative is that the job doesn't get done, for free.
    - hk__2 3y ago
      > Well, your alternative is that the job doesn't get done, for free. You can do it with uBlacklist [1]. See also [2]. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi... [2]: https://github.com/rjaus/awesome-ublacklist https://github.com/rjaus/awesome-ublacklist
      - stavros 3y ago
        I didn't know about that, thanks! Excellent.
kelnos 3y ago
> yet another stackoverflow copy I never got why these even ever appear in Google search results (or any search results, really). It feels like it would be super trivial to identify sites that are scraped copies of other sites. Granted, without foreknowledge, the engine doesn't know which is the original. But at the very least this can be determined by a human once, and then the problem goes away forever for that particular site.
- tiagod 3y ago
  That ship has already sailed, they are already using AI in mass to generate original looking content.
  - waynesonfire 3y ago
    it's kind of upsetting that the first to benefit from LLMs are the scum of the internet.
    - boxed 3y ago
      It's googles fault. They are the ones who make this a viable business model. They pay the ads, and they pollute their search results with this garbage. 100% Google who are destroying this part of the internet.
      - yard2010 3y ago
        Google gave and google took
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      The love of money
  - BizarreByte 3y ago
    At this point it's just safer to treat any content newer than about a year ago as highly suspect. Bots and fake content have been around for years, but things changed when ChatGPT and the copycats went live.
FpUser 3y ago
I just did exactly this search on Google. The first result was this -[0] which is exactly spot on. Not sure if it is because I use Brave browser which also blocks ads on websites. [0] - https://tecadmin.net/get-current-date-time-javascript/#:~:text=Current%20Time%20in%20JavaScript,%3Ai%3As%E2%80%9D%20format.&text=2-,var%20today%20%3D%20new%20Date()%3B,)%20%2B%20%22%3A%22%20%2B%20today https://tecadmin.net/get-current-date-time-javascript/#:~:te...
- MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
  You clearly use an ad blocker. That page is over 50% ads.
  - FpUser 3y ago
    Well I did not see any thanks to Brave and the content was spot on and that is all that really matters to me
    - spencerchubb 3y ago
      My goodness, I thought you were exaggerating. I've been using ad blockers for so long, I forgot the web had this many ads. Or has it just gotten worse over time?
      - abustamam 3y ago
        I think it depends on the site. I remember early 00s where many download sites would have ads with a download button, or pop-ups that blasted sound like YOU JUST WON. Now I think that sorta thing has been normalized to even non shady sites. My primary use of ad blocker is so that I don't get random autoplaying videos.
      - tacitusarc 3y ago
        It has gotten significantly worse.
      - retsibsi 3y ago
Grimburger 3y ago
> it's easy to click "block this domain" Friendly reminder that google had this feature a decade ago then removed it. Hopefully someone in the C-Suite got a few back pats for that decision. https://searchengineland.com/google-brings-back-blocking-sites-in-search-results-67723 https://searchengineland.com/google-brings-back-blocking-sit...
- xnx 3y ago
  Counterpoint: That feature has very little utility to all but a tiny fraction of users. Those users can readily find other means (e.g. extensions) to achieve the same thing. In the interest of simplicity, it was the right call to remove this. I imagine it was pitched for its ability to gather feedback on search quality, but the type of people using the feature aren't representative.
- Gustomaximus 3y ago
  This seems the most obvious value add feature for search results at both an individual level and for reviewing overall moderation. I wonder what possible logic there could be to not allow it? The only one I can think of is they don't want bridgading to create a wider system block but that seems easily enough to resolve.
  - beefield 3y ago
    The easiest is to look where the money is. Might be risky to let your custo^H products hide the pages where you have most revenue generating ads.
  - zo1 3y ago
    Eventually someone was going to create an easy to list/share/subscribe list that individuals could easily add to their personal Google domain block list. Think EasyList. At that point they would be bleeding ad revenue as all the nasty, fake, abusive, spammy websites would be insta blocked. Imagine being able to add a list and all of a sudden half the SEO blogs are excluded from results. Assuming Google even allows it, they would then have to work even harder to find relevant content to your search query. They can't rely on throwing a huge wall of semi-relevant results that you have to wade through, generating ad impressions as you go along.
alberth 3y ago
> “searching … on Google, I get SO, MDM and basically a lot of SEO spam sites” I get the same in Kagi clicking your link above. Both the 1st and 3rd result is SO. 2nd result is MDM. I’m confused, so what’s different between paid Kagi and free Google search then? (Note: I’m not hating on Kagi, I’m just genuinely wanting to understand)
- pasc1878 3y ago
  SO, MDM are the good results together with the blog Kagi gave in 5th place. In google you got the first two then a lot of spam and not the other good results.
retsibsi 3y ago
Is this after you've done a lot of blocking (or other customisation)? For me the top Kagi results are mostly similar to the Google ones, and when I scroll down a bit Kagi doesn't save me from articles with openings like > Time is an important part of our life and we cannot avoid it. In our daily routine, we need to know the current date or time frequently. and > Time, a measure of the passing of moments.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Not too much. I've got maybe 5 straight up SO clones blocked, but that's about it.
dbish 3y ago
That's still an example of better quality results that should be quantifiable, that's ranking. We have things like precision@n/NDCG@n/etc. where it should be straight forward to show a metric for some smaller n where Kagi beats Google since it doesn't show some set of irrelebant/low quality results interspersed.
eviks 3y ago
But with an extension I can have a personal garbage block list or hide/collapse website preview without removing the result completely that works on other search engines Btw, can you hide text preview on Kagi instead of removing the domain completely (in case you're not certain the website is garbage and sometimes want to check the results, but just want them less visible)?
vachina 3y ago
The fact that Kagi has a blocklist tells me their algo isn’t any superior. The best kind of search engine is the kind that can read your mind (by inferring your intention or something)
- efdee 3y ago
  I feel that Google's going downhill ever since they started to try reading my mind.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  Maybe for you that is better, but I want word negation to work, and "verbose" to actually require words I specify to be on the page. Word stemming would be good as an option. Sure, I'd like Booleans to work again, and intitle:. That said, Google could probably make an inferred search interpretation work well if they wanted to return results that were good for the user rather than return results that optimise their ad revenue.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Why stop there? The best mind-reading search engine is one that doesn't even let me type queries, it tells me what I need to know before I even know I need to know it. The fact that all search engines still have query fields tells me they all still suck at reading my mind.
bambax 3y ago
> when you run into yet another stackoverflow copy OMG. Why doesn't Google filter out the likes of geeksforgeeks for instance? How is it possible that it always come before the genuine SO answer? Even without offering the possibility to filter out a domain (which they had, and later removed), how does the ranking algorithm not see those horrible, zero value clones??
- oblio 3y ago
  Misaligned incentives (in corporate terms, $$$). I can't tell you what they are, but there are probably internal Google incentives to filter and internal Google incentives to not filter, and the ones to not filter are probably stronger.
  - willvarfar 3y ago
    My theory is that google went from ads in search results to ads on visited pages. By buying doubleclick etc they are suddenly incentivised to drive traffic to ad-supported websites. Almost all the interesting factual websites are not ad-monetized. The SO spam etc are all scraps of the factual websites with ads injected. If google simply deprioritized ad-supported websites the search results would be much cleaner, but the part of google that sells the ads on sites instead of in search results would throw a fit.
    - Phemist 3y ago
      Aha. This makes a lot of sense for Google. But the same websites show up in e.g. DDG (through Bing), as far as I know neither DDG nor Microsoft make a dime from ad-supported websites like Google would, why are these results not nuked similarly to what Kagi is doing?
      - Phemist 3y ago
        Aha. Couldn't help but scratch my own itch. I wonder if DDG has a deal with Google where they get a cut of the ad profit if they are mentioned as a `ref` in the doubleclick ad request. :path: /pagead/viewthroughconversion/796001856/?random=1695374589838&cv=11&fst=1695374589838&bg=ffffff&guid=ON&async=1&gtm=45be39k0&u_w=2704&u_h=1756&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.geeksforgeeks.org%2Fc-plus-plus%2F &ref=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F. <<<< What does this do? &hn=www.googleadservices.com&frm=0&tiba=C%2B%2B%20Programming%20Language%20-%20GeeksforGeeks&auid=68284397.1695374483&data=event%3Dgtag.config&rfmt=3&fmt=4 Hence providing the same incentives to keep shitty sites like geeksforgeeks in the results. I guess also geeksforgeeks is incentivized to report these references, so that search engines and other linking services will continue to show their links. To reproduce: 1. Go to duckduckgo.com and do a search that will turn up a geekforgeeks website 2. click on the link 3. watch the network tab as requests are made to googleads.g.doubleclick.net and check the path.
ShakataGaNai 3y ago
Wait? I can kill yummly results when looking for a recipe? Ok, I'm in.
dark-star 3y ago
> yet another stackoverflow copy I get those in Google as well. But tbh, I don't care. If I'm looking for "current time in JavaScript", I don't care if the answer comes from stackoverflow or any of it's clones. It's not like I want to interact with that site somehow. I just want answers. If I want interaction, I obviously go to stackoverflow directly. It might matter that I'm using Ad-blockers, so maybe if I didn't, those sites would feed me obnoxious popups and malware, but as it stands, I don't see any difference...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

JoshuaEN 3y ago

This is my experience as well. Low quality junk is often not present, and if it does show up, it's two mouse clicks to never see that domain again. Also the ability to promote high quality domains helps even more with this (though i have found one needs to be careful with pinning domains, as it can lead to irrelevant results being shown first because they have some if the same keywords).

ipaddr 3y ago
Feels like I'm paying to do someone elses job.
- stavros 3y ago
  Well, your alternative is that the job doesn't get done, for free.
  - hk__2 3y ago
    > Well, your alternative is that the job doesn't get done, for free. You can do it with uBlacklist [1]. See also [2]. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi... [2]: https://github.com/rjaus/awesome-ublacklist https://github.com/rjaus/awesome-ublacklist
    - stavros 3y ago
      I didn't know about that, thanks! Excellent.

kelnos 3y ago

> yet another stackoverflow copy I never got why these even ever appear in Google search results (or any search results, really). It feels like it would be super trivial to identify sites that are scraped copies of other sites. Granted, without foreknowledge, the engine doesn't know which is the original. But at the very least this can be determined by a human once, and then the problem goes away forever for that particular site.

tiagod 3y ago
That ship has already sailed, they are already using AI in mass to generate original looking content.
- waynesonfire 3y ago
  it's kind of upsetting that the first to benefit from LLMs are the scum of the internet.
  - boxed 3y ago
    It's googles fault. They are the ones who make this a viable business model. They pay the ads, and they pollute their search results with this garbage. 100% Google who are destroying this part of the internet.
    - yard2010 3y ago
      Google gave and google took
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    The love of money
- BizarreByte 3y ago
  At this point it's just safer to treat any content newer than about a year ago as highly suspect. Bots and fake content have been around for years, but things changed when ChatGPT and the copycats went live.

FpUser 3y ago

I just did exactly this search on Google. The first result was this -[0] which is exactly spot on. Not sure if it is because I use Brave browser which also blocks ads on websites. [0] - https://tecadmin.net/get-current-date-time-javascript/#:~:text=Current%20Time%20in%20JavaScript,%3Ai%3As%E2%80%9D%20format.&text=2-,var%20today%20%3D%20new%20Date()%3B,)%20%2B%20%22%3A%22%20%2B%20today https://tecadmin.net/get-current-date-time-javascript/#:~:te...

MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
You clearly use an ad blocker. That page is over 50% ads.
- FpUser 3y ago
  Well I did not see any thanks to Brave and the content was spot on and that is all that really matters to me
  - spencerchubb 3y ago
    My goodness, I thought you were exaggerating. I've been using ad blockers for so long, I forgot the web had this many ads. Or has it just gotten worse over time?
    - abustamam 3y ago
      I think it depends on the site. I remember early 00s where many download sites would have ads with a download button, or pop-ups that blasted sound like YOU JUST WON. Now I think that sorta thing has been normalized to even non shady sites. My primary use of ad blocker is so that I don't get random autoplaying videos.
    - tacitusarc 3y ago
      It has gotten significantly worse.
    - retsibsi 3y ago

Grimburger 3y ago

> it's easy to click "block this domain" Friendly reminder that google had this feature a decade ago then removed it. Hopefully someone in the C-Suite got a few back pats for that decision. https://searchengineland.com/google-brings-back-blocking-sites-in-search-results-67723 https://searchengineland.com/google-brings-back-blocking-sit...

xnx 3y ago
Counterpoint: That feature has very little utility to all but a tiny fraction of users. Those users can readily find other means (e.g. extensions) to achieve the same thing. In the interest of simplicity, it was the right call to remove this. I imagine it was pitched for its ability to gather feedback on search quality, but the type of people using the feature aren't representative.
Gustomaximus 3y ago
This seems the most obvious value add feature for search results at both an individual level and for reviewing overall moderation. I wonder what possible logic there could be to not allow it? The only one I can think of is they don't want bridgading to create a wider system block but that seems easily enough to resolve.
- beefield 3y ago
  The easiest is to look where the money is. Might be risky to let your custo^H products hide the pages where you have most revenue generating ads.
- zo1 3y ago
  Eventually someone was going to create an easy to list/share/subscribe list that individuals could easily add to their personal Google domain block list. Think EasyList. At that point they would be bleeding ad revenue as all the nasty, fake, abusive, spammy websites would be insta blocked. Imagine being able to add a list and all of a sudden half the SEO blogs are excluded from results. Assuming Google even allows it, they would then have to work even harder to find relevant content to your search query. They can't rely on throwing a huge wall of semi-relevant results that you have to wade through, generating ad impressions as you go along.

alberth 3y ago

> “searching … on Google, I get SO, MDM and basically a lot of SEO spam sites” I get the same in Kagi clicking your link above. Both the 1st and 3rd result is SO. 2nd result is MDM. I’m confused, so what’s different between paid Kagi and free Google search then? (Note: I’m not hating on Kagi, I’m just genuinely wanting to understand)

pasc1878 3y ago
SO, MDM are the good results together with the blog Kagi gave in 5th place. In google you got the first two then a lot of spam and not the other good results.

retsibsi 3y ago

Is this after you've done a lot of blocking (or other customisation)? For me the top Kagi results are mostly similar to the Google ones, and when I scroll down a bit Kagi doesn't save me from articles with openings like > Time is an important part of our life and we cannot avoid it. In our daily routine, we need to know the current date or time frequently. and > Time, a measure of the passing of moments.

viraptor 3y ago
Not too much. I've got maybe 5 straight up SO clones blocked, but that's about it.

dbish 3y ago

That's still an example of better quality results that should be quantifiable, that's ranking. We have things like precision@n/NDCG@n/etc. where it should be straight forward to show a metric for some smaller n where Kagi beats Google since it doesn't show some set of irrelebant/low quality results interspersed.

eviks 3y ago

But with an extension I can have a personal garbage block list or hide/collapse website preview without removing the result completely that works on other search engines Btw, can you hide text preview on Kagi instead of removing the domain completely (in case you're not certain the website is garbage and sometimes want to check the results, but just want them less visible)?

vachina 3y ago

The fact that Kagi has a blocklist tells me their algo isn’t any superior. The best kind of search engine is the kind that can read your mind (by inferring your intention or something)

efdee 3y ago
I feel that Google's going downhill ever since they started to try reading my mind.
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
Maybe for you that is better, but I want word negation to work, and "verbose" to actually require words I specify to be on the page. Word stemming would be good as an option. Sure, I'd like Booleans to work again, and intitle:. That said, Google could probably make an inferred search interpretation work well if they wanted to return results that were good for the user rather than return results that optimise their ad revenue.
mcpackieh 3y ago
Why stop there? The best mind-reading search engine is one that doesn't even let me type queries, it tells me what I need to know before I even know I need to know it. The fact that all search engines still have query fields tells me they all still suck at reading my mind.

bambax 3y ago

> when you run into yet another stackoverflow copy OMG. Why doesn't Google filter out the likes of geeksforgeeks for instance? How is it possible that it always come before the genuine SO answer? Even without offering the possibility to filter out a domain (which they had, and later removed), how does the ranking algorithm not see those horrible, zero value clones??

oblio 3y ago
Misaligned incentives (in corporate terms, $$$). I can't tell you what they are, but there are probably internal Google incentives to filter and internal Google incentives to not filter, and the ones to not filter are probably stronger.
- willvarfar 3y ago
  My theory is that google went from ads in search results to ads on visited pages. By buying doubleclick etc they are suddenly incentivised to drive traffic to ad-supported websites. Almost all the interesting factual websites are not ad-monetized. The SO spam etc are all scraps of the factual websites with ads injected. If google simply deprioritized ad-supported websites the search results would be much cleaner, but the part of google that sells the ads on sites instead of in search results would throw a fit.
  - Phemist 3y ago
    Aha. This makes a lot of sense for Google. But the same websites show up in e.g. DDG (through Bing), as far as I know neither DDG nor Microsoft make a dime from ad-supported websites like Google would, why are these results not nuked similarly to what Kagi is doing?
    - Phemist 3y ago
      Aha. Couldn't help but scratch my own itch. I wonder if DDG has a deal with Google where they get a cut of the ad profit if they are mentioned as a `ref` in the doubleclick ad request. :path: /pagead/viewthroughconversion/796001856/?random=1695374589838&cv=11&fst=1695374589838&bg=ffffff&guid=ON&async=1&gtm=45be39k0&u_w=2704&u_h=1756&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.geeksforgeeks.org%2Fc-plus-plus%2F &ref=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F. <<<< What does this do? &hn=www.googleadservices.com&frm=0&tiba=C%2B%2B%20Programming%20Language%20-%20GeeksforGeeks&auid=68284397.1695374483&data=event%3Dgtag.config&rfmt=3&fmt=4 Hence providing the same incentives to keep shitty sites like geeksforgeeks in the results. I guess also geeksforgeeks is incentivized to report these references, so that search engines and other linking services will continue to show their links. To reproduce: 1. Go to duckduckgo.com and do a search that will turn up a geekforgeeks website 2. click on the link 3. watch the network tab as requests are made to googleads.g.doubleclick.net and check the path.

ShakataGaNai 3y ago

Wait? I can kill yummly results when looking for a recipe? Ok, I'm in.

dark-star 3y ago

> yet another stackoverflow copy I get those in Google as well. But tbh, I don't care. If I'm looking for "current time in JavaScript", I don't care if the answer comes from stackoverflow or any of it's clones. It's not like I want to interact with that site somehow. I just want answers. If I want interaction, I obviously go to stackoverflow directly. It might matter that I'm using Ad-blockers, so maybe if I didn't, those sites would feed me obnoxious popups and malware, but as it stands, I don't see any difference...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]