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If you search for something on google it says it is returning "x of 82,000,000 results." at the top. But if you actually click through the results pages you'll

If you search for something on google it says it is returning "x of 82,000,000 results." at the top. But if you actually click through the results pages you'll find that it will only ever return 400 results max for any unchanging search string. If you have 10 results per page that's 39 pages. If you have 100 per page that's 4 pages. Of those 400 results at least half (near the start) are ads and SEO trash. So it is only possible to actually look at ~200 results per search with google. And that is why search is so useless these days. It's 900 instead of 400 for bing, but it's the same problem. There are no free search engines anymore. AI spam doesn't really change the dynamic.

renegat0x0 3y ago
Exactly. One may argue that the only first result of search is important, but that is not true. For any general topic I should be swamped with results. I have my own link database for news. For search term 'Elon Musk' I have 4 thousands of links alone. 400 results for search term is laughable. It is hard to control flow of thousands of links. It is easier to control information if you narrow people scope of visibility close to nothing.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> There are no free search engines anymore Search is now worse than it was in 1996, Trust me I was there kids :) What you have now is a pale shadow of a real, functioning internet. Perhaps the way forwards radically different. If a consortium of independent crawlers could release a massively compressed model periodically, say 12 times per year, then search could move to the client side. Anyone got sensible estimates on what the size of a model could be to give say about 80% of the capability of Google/Bing? I think it would weigh in smaller than 1TB, and with clever differential code you'd only have to download the changes. Isn't it time to move search of the web off the web?
- cinntaile 3y ago
  Altavista, Yahoo, Lycos and the likes weren't great in 1996, that's why everyone switched to Google in the first place.
- superkuh 3y ago
  Yep. I remember when I used to be able to search for exact strings and engines would find them! Booleans even worked. It was a magical time for web search from ~1999 to 2015.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Here's something that should be shocking: At universities all around the world you'll sit a course called "Research Methods". It's a bit of statistics, philosophy of science, hypothesis formulation, significance testing, understanding epistemology, quality, quantity, bias..... I've a fairly good overview of it, because I've taught it at least 10 semesters. One of the things baked into every research methods course is search. Sometimes you learn the interfaces to specific tools for searching papers. But most of it is what you describe; boolean operators, regular expressions, sorting and filtering... The students are still told to use Google and that this works with Google. But this information hasn't been useful for almost 5 years now. For 5 years we've been training bachelors, masters and PhD students to go out there and use tools and techniques that are almost completely irrelevant. The primary official tool at the foundation of all academic research is broken. Almost no research methods professors I know at any university have though to train students to deal with advertising, spam, AI clutter, disinformation - to deal with the reality of Google as it actually is. For 5 years we've been misleading students. Because we got so hung-up on a monopoly, we've allowed a single corporation to fuck the whole of Western academic research - because year after year I definitely see poorer results. One day I hope the world is able to look back at the colossal cost of BigTech to culture.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  Remember the "I'm feeling lucky" button on google. Their search was so good that you could, for a while at least, count on that button getting to where you wanted to go in a single click.
- crisply5706 3y ago
  I remember in elementary school around the year 2000, we had a special class where we all learned boolean operators and advanced search functions. Absolutely none of that works on any modern search engine-- except kagi.
IshKebab 3y ago
Come on that's a ridiculous criticism. Nobody* actually clicks through all those pages. People rarely even click to the second page. Instead they adjust their search terms. The reason Google is starting to suck is that the first page results are often trash. *standard HN disclaimer

renegat0x0 3y ago

Exactly. One may argue that the only first result of search is important, but that is not true. For any general topic I should be swamped with results. I have my own link database for news. For search term 'Elon Musk' I have 4 thousands of links alone. 400 results for search term is laughable. It is hard to control flow of thousands of links. It is easier to control information if you narrow people scope of visibility close to nothing.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> There are no free search engines anymore Search is now worse than it was in 1996, Trust me I was there kids :) What you have now is a pale shadow of a real, functioning internet. Perhaps the way forwards radically different. If a consortium of independent crawlers could release a massively compressed model periodically, say 12 times per year, then search could move to the client side. Anyone got sensible estimates on what the size of a model could be to give say about 80% of the capability of Google/Bing? I think it would weigh in smaller than 1TB, and with clever differential code you'd only have to download the changes. Isn't it time to move search of the web off the web?

cinntaile 3y ago
Altavista, Yahoo, Lycos and the likes weren't great in 1996, that's why everyone switched to Google in the first place.
superkuh 3y ago
Yep. I remember when I used to be able to search for exact strings and engines would find them! Booleans even worked. It was a magical time for web search from ~1999 to 2015.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Here's something that should be shocking: At universities all around the world you'll sit a course called "Research Methods". It's a bit of statistics, philosophy of science, hypothesis formulation, significance testing, understanding epistemology, quality, quantity, bias..... I've a fairly good overview of it, because I've taught it at least 10 semesters. One of the things baked into every research methods course is search. Sometimes you learn the interfaces to specific tools for searching papers. But most of it is what you describe; boolean operators, regular expressions, sorting and filtering... The students are still told to use Google and that this works with Google. But this information hasn't been useful for almost 5 years now. For 5 years we've been training bachelors, masters and PhD students to go out there and use tools and techniques that are almost completely irrelevant. The primary official tool at the foundation of all academic research is broken. Almost no research methods professors I know at any university have though to train students to deal with advertising, spam, AI clutter, disinformation - to deal with the reality of Google as it actually is. For 5 years we've been misleading students. Because we got so hung-up on a monopoly, we've allowed a single corporation to fuck the whole of Western academic research - because year after year I definitely see poorer results. One day I hope the world is able to look back at the colossal cost of BigTech to culture.
Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
Remember the "I'm feeling lucky" button on google. Their search was so good that you could, for a while at least, count on that button getting to where you wanted to go in a single click.
crisply5706 3y ago
I remember in elementary school around the year 2000, we had a special class where we all learned boolean operators and advanced search functions. Absolutely none of that works on any modern search engine-- except kagi.

IshKebab 3y ago

Come on that's a ridiculous criticism. Nobody* actually clicks through all those pages. People rarely even click to the second page. Instead they adjust their search terms. The reason Google is starting to suck is that the first page results are often trash. *standard HN disclaimer