3 ms·

> Some queries aren't always on par yet with Google I don't think google search is that great anymore. It's way too fuzzy of a match. If you're trying to remem

by logn 13y ago

> Some queries aren't always on par yet with Google I don't think google search is that great anymore. It's way too fuzzy of a match. If you're trying to remember an actor's name or find some reference with a vague query, it works ok. But google takes way too many liberties with search results and is super focused on showing maps, reviews, and youtube videos, and then results to alternate searches. Bing and DDG are better IMHO.

DanBC 13y ago
Google is useful to more people, which means it's less useful to people who are happy with things like the O Reilly Google Hacks. There's some switch somewhere to force it into "Literal" or "verbatim" mode. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3239452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3239452 http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your-terms-verbatim.html http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your... (These are the posts that give me the '1 in 600 searches used the + operator correctly' factoid.) I think my current problems with Google are 1) Lack of predictability. I have no idea what terms might be substituted, or what they'll get subbed for. I don't know what terms get stemmed or not. 2) Recentism. Google is great at finding things from this year. Finding stuff from before 2000 is harder, and before 1990 is really tricky. (I don't have any examples! Normally I keep them.)[1] 3) Desire to return many hits. I'm happy if I enter a search term and don't get many hits. I'd rather have a few hits, rather than many hits that are less relevant. I'd rather have a few really bad hits, and thus know that I need to tweak my search terms, than get many sort of okay hits. But for most people Google is great. Having said that, I switched to mostly DDG and I really like it, except I'd like to be able to force a more English (and not US) result cloud; and I'd like to be able to enter a term, have it translated into other languages, and search for those. This would be a way to break out of the English speaking bubble. [1] I find it weirdly hard to find minor news events from before 2000, even though they're online and covered by newspapers, even if I use Google's time limit settings. I'll start to keep these difficult searches.
- logn 13y ago
  > I find it weirdly hard to find minor news events from before 2000, even though they're online and covered by newspapers, even if I use Google's time limit settings. I'll start to keep these difficult searches. Might be because the pages are updated after the publication date. I don't know that google is able to find that type of structured info in each news page. Actually a specialized search engine which is focused on date functionality would be invaluable. Maybe someone like archive.org would tackle that. It would be great to search even pre-WWW results, such as historical archives or radio transcripts.
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  I've wired Safari directly up to a verbatim search, and it's made my life much less stressful. Don't know how long that'll be available for though…

by logn 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

Google is useful to more people, which means it's less useful to people who are happy with things like the O Reilly Google Hacks. There's some switch somewhere to force it into "Literal" or "verbatim" mode. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3239452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3239452 http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your-terms-verbatim.html http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your... (These are the posts that give me the '1 in 600 searches used the + operator correctly' factoid.) I think my current problems with Google are 1) Lack of predictability. I have no idea what terms might be substituted, or what they'll get subbed for. I don't know what terms get stemmed or not. 2) Recentism. Google is great at finding things from this year. Finding stuff from before 2000 is harder, and before 1990 is really tricky. (I don't have any examples! Normally I keep them.)[1] 3) Desire to return many hits. I'm happy if I enter a search term and don't get many hits. I'd rather have a few hits, rather than many hits that are less relevant. I'd rather have a few really bad hits, and thus know that I need to tweak my search terms, than get many sort of okay hits. But for most people Google is great. Having said that, I switched to mostly DDG and I really like it, except I'd like to be able to force a more English (and not US) result cloud; and I'd like to be able to enter a term, have it translated into other languages, and search for those. This would be a way to break out of the English speaking bubble. [1] I find it weirdly hard to find minor news events from before 2000, even though they're online and covered by newspapers, even if I use Google's time limit settings. I'll start to keep these difficult searches.

logn 13y ago
> I find it weirdly hard to find minor news events from before 2000, even though they're online and covered by newspapers, even if I use Google's time limit settings. I'll start to keep these difficult searches. Might be because the pages are updated after the publication date. I don't know that google is able to find that type of structured info in each news page. Actually a specialized search engine which is focused on date functionality would be invaluable. Maybe someone like archive.org would tackle that. It would be great to search even pre-WWW results, such as historical archives or radio transcripts.
matthewmacleod 13y ago
I've wired Safari directly up to a verbatim search, and it's made my life much less stressful. Don't know how long that'll be available for though…