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I find shit all the time. Google still works fine for me. I don't know what people on Hacker News are doing that they can never seem to find a single useful re

by krapp 3y ago

I find shit all the time. Google still works fine for me. I don't know what people on Hacker News are doing that they can never seem to find a single useful result on any search engine, ever.

akira2501 3y ago
I search for somewhat obscure and highly specific things. There are queries which used to reliably return the results I was looking for. Over the past several years these queries no longer work. It feels like the search engine used to accept whatever I typed and used that to query. The results had to be a good match for all the words in my query. This made it very easy to find exactly what I was looking for. Now google feels free to ignore terms from my query or to use synonyms instead of the exact term. The results are now exceptionally broad and no longer are a good match for the specific query I've entered. I now have to use "quotes" "around" "every" "single" "term" or go several pages deep to find the page I want.
tsunamifury 3y ago
Because they remember the past far more fondly than it was and converge the utility they get from the current day with the ideals of back then. The reality is there is far more creative and well produced content on the web and closed platforms today than there ever was in any other point in time. And if you can't find it fast enough, AI can generate direct, customized answers.
- Gud 3y ago
  No, it is not us "remembering the past far more fondly". Today Google search results yield the same crap without fail. For example, a search for "how do I repair widget X" will inevitable take me to a garbage SEO site following the same patterns. The internet is less useful today than it was 10 years ago. Probably it peaked 20 years ago, before big money completely took over and ruined the place.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    It did not peak 20 years ago. This is laughable rose tinted glasses. Also you can ask almost any LLM model for that type of answer and get it instantly and personalized.
    - Vrondi 3y ago
      ...and you will not know if the answer is accurate or where it came from.
      - tsunamifury 3y ago
        This is outdated. You can source with many modern public LLM products now. Why is hacker news full of so much outdated thinking?
        MrVandemar 3y ago
        We just don't chug enough kool-aid.
- rchaud 3y ago
  I can honestly say the Internet doesn't provide any additional utility compared to what I used it for 20 years ago: email, messageboards, P2P filesharing, Wikipedia, search and online shopping. Sure we have Youtube and streaming now. But streaming today is just cable TV by another name. You could subscribe to them all and still not have the selection that a Blockbuster or torrent tracker would.
- int_19h 3y ago
  It is objectively worse than it used to be because it tries to be too "smart" by rewriting queries in a way that genericizes them. Instead of getting 10 search results that are actually relevant to the question being asked, you get "10,000,000" results that are only vaguely related. I suspect the reason for this is that more search results -> more pages the user will likely click through just to make sure they are looking at the best links -> more ads served. Related to this is the dumbing down of query input. Like, in many cases, even using double quotes around search terms doesn't guarantee that the page that will be shown in search results actually contains the quoted word anywhere. I've had one case where Google would helpfully find articles talking only about Linux given a query like '"freebsd" foo bar' (and where it showed the snippets for them, highlighting the phrase it treated as a match, it would say 'linux foo bar', so you could tell right away what exactly was substituted). It used to be a power tool that had well-defined knobs and buttons that you could master to find exactly what you want. Now it's a magic wand that tends to do something inscrutable every time you wave it, and you "master" it by flailing around until it kinda sorta does what you want.
  - postalrat 3y ago
    Google says it finds millions of hits but only lets you scroll though a few hundred. The rest they don't want to show you.
valicord 3y ago
> I don't know what people on Hacker News are doing that they can never seem to find a single useful result on any search engine, ever. And they never give specific examples either.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bigstrat2003 3y ago
Yeah this one perplexes me too. I won't deny that there's a ton of blogspam on Google (or any other search engine), but Google is still the best search out there imo. I certainly don't understand people who say they find ChatGPT to be superior. Like, what? They don't even fill the same role!
calgoo 3y ago
I have been using DDG for the last 5 years and used google the other day after a fresh install, and i find the results are just worse (IMHO). Now, you also learn to write searches in specific ways depending on the search engine. DDG reminds me more of old school search engines (or at least it used to). Again, this is just my experience, there might also be something with google adapting to your search habits if you allow it, but not sure if that exists in google search like it does in YT.
rhdunn 3y ago
Searching e.g. "xq31 curlyarrayconstructor does not use enclosedexpr": 1. In google, I get 9 results, none of which are a reference to the W3C XQuery/XPath issue. This is because google is actually "helpfully" searching for "xq31 curly array constructor does not use enclosed expr" -- telling it to not do that finds the issue, returning two results. 2. In bing, the bug report (bug 29989) is the top result. 3. In DuckDuckGo, it is also the top result. I've had other problems searching google for specific error messages as it decides to remove quoting, tends to show results for space-separated compound identifiers (see the "curly array constructor" in what google searches for by default), does word stemming, and other "helpful" transformations on the search.
- valicord 3y ago
  "I had to do an extra click on a clearly labeled link" does not equate "search engines are borderline useless"

by krapp 3y ago

I find shit all the time. Google still works fine for me. I don't know what people on Hacker News are doing that they can never seem to find a single useful result on any search engine, ever.

akira2501 3y ago

I search for somewhat obscure and highly specific things. There are queries which used to reliably return the results I was looking for. Over the past several years these queries no longer work. It feels like the search engine used to accept whatever I typed and used that to query. The results had to be a good match for all the words in my query. This made it very easy to find exactly what I was looking for. Now google feels free to ignore terms from my query or to use synonyms instead of the exact term. The results are now exceptionally broad and no longer are a good match for the specific query I've entered. I now have to use "quotes" "around" "every" "single" "term" or go several pages deep to find the page I want.

tsunamifury 3y ago

Because they remember the past far more fondly than it was and converge the utility they get from the current day with the ideals of back then. The reality is there is far more creative and well produced content on the web and closed platforms today than there ever was in any other point in time. And if you can't find it fast enough, AI can generate direct, customized answers.

Gud 3y ago
No, it is not us "remembering the past far more fondly". Today Google search results yield the same crap without fail. For example, a search for "how do I repair widget X" will inevitable take me to a garbage SEO site following the same patterns. The internet is less useful today than it was 10 years ago. Probably it peaked 20 years ago, before big money completely took over and ruined the place.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  It did not peak 20 years ago. This is laughable rose tinted glasses. Also you can ask almost any LLM model for that type of answer and get it instantly and personalized.
  - Vrondi 3y ago
    ...and you will not know if the answer is accurate or where it came from.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      This is outdated. You can source with many modern public LLM products now. Why is hacker news full of so much outdated thinking?
      - MrVandemar 3y ago
        We just don't chug enough kool-aid.
rchaud 3y ago
I can honestly say the Internet doesn't provide any additional utility compared to what I used it for 20 years ago: email, messageboards, P2P filesharing, Wikipedia, search and online shopping. Sure we have Youtube and streaming now. But streaming today is just cable TV by another name. You could subscribe to them all and still not have the selection that a Blockbuster or torrent tracker would.
int_19h 3y ago
It is objectively worse than it used to be because it tries to be too "smart" by rewriting queries in a way that genericizes them. Instead of getting 10 search results that are actually relevant to the question being asked, you get "10,000,000" results that are only vaguely related. I suspect the reason for this is that more search results -> more pages the user will likely click through just to make sure they are looking at the best links -> more ads served. Related to this is the dumbing down of query input. Like, in many cases, even using double quotes around search terms doesn't guarantee that the page that will be shown in search results actually contains the quoted word anywhere. I've had one case where Google would helpfully find articles talking only about Linux given a query like '"freebsd" foo bar' (and where it showed the snippets for them, highlighting the phrase it treated as a match, it would say 'linux foo bar', so you could tell right away what exactly was substituted). It used to be a power tool that had well-defined knobs and buttons that you could master to find exactly what you want. Now it's a magic wand that tends to do something inscrutable every time you wave it, and you "master" it by flailing around until it kinda sorta does what you want.
- postalrat 3y ago
  Google says it finds millions of hits but only lets you scroll though a few hundred. The rest they don't want to show you.

valicord 3y ago

> I don't know what people on Hacker News are doing that they can never seem to find a single useful result on any search engine, ever. And they never give specific examples either.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bigstrat2003 3y ago

Yeah this one perplexes me too. I won't deny that there's a ton of blogspam on Google (or any other search engine), but Google is still the best search out there imo. I certainly don't understand people who say they find ChatGPT to be superior. Like, what? They don't even fill the same role!

calgoo 3y ago

I have been using DDG for the last 5 years and used google the other day after a fresh install, and i find the results are just worse (IMHO). Now, you also learn to write searches in specific ways depending on the search engine. DDG reminds me more of old school search engines (or at least it used to). Again, this is just my experience, there might also be something with google adapting to your search habits if you allow it, but not sure if that exists in google search like it does in YT.

rhdunn 3y ago

Searching e.g. "xq31 curlyarrayconstructor does not use enclosedexpr": 1. In google, I get 9 results, none of which are a reference to the W3C XQuery/XPath issue. This is because google is actually "helpfully" searching for "xq31 curly array constructor does not use enclosed expr" -- telling it to not do that finds the issue, returning two results. 2. In bing, the bug report (bug 29989) is the top result. 3. In DuckDuckGo, it is also the top result. I've had other problems searching google for specific error messages as it decides to remove quoting, tends to show results for space-separated compound identifiers (see the "curly array constructor" in what google searches for by default), does word stemming, and other "helpful" transformations on the search.

valicord 3y ago
"I had to do an extra click on a clearly labeled link" does not equate "search engines are borderline useless"