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Here's a feature, let me add weight to my search results. I want to give preference to stackoverflow, HN, reddit, etc. I don't want to limit my search to only t

Here's a feature, let me add weight to my search results. I want to give preference to stackoverflow, HN, reddit, etc. I don't want to limit my search to only those sites, but I'd like to push them a little closer to the top. Also, let me setup a blacklist of sites to exclude. I don't want to see expertexchange... ever. I should be able to share my custom search setup with others, kind of like how AdBlock has subscriptions, I could select popular setups, or build my own. And, what if I could select my settings in a dropdown when searching. So, maybe the people at HN setup a whitelist of 100 of the best sites for programming help. I add this list to my account. Now, anytime I want to search for a programming question, I type in the query, select my custom search type from the dropdown, 'programming questions', and then click search. I'll only get results from those 100 sites. Google will never implement this for a variety of reasons, so it's room for competition.

jessedhillon 13y ago
I am not 100% sure but I believe that Google has some of this ground covered. If I do a search for "Java" (for example, not sure this particular term will produce distinct results) while logged into my Google account, I will get different results than if my non-programming friends searched for "Java." Again, not totally certain that this is the case but I have seen some evidence before that search results are customized based on past behavior and other models of my preferences.
throwawaykf03 13y ago
Actually Google did implement something like this: you could "personalize" your search by moving results up and down the page. They discontinued it some time (just a few months?) later... I'm guessing because it created more noise than signal. This was some years ago.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  Yeah, it was SearchWiki, launched in 2008, discontinued sometime in early 2011 IIRC. About the only thing people used it for was to kill expertsexchange.com, and that problem took care of itself when StackOverflow got popular.

jessedhillon 13y ago

I am not 100% sure but I believe that Google has some of this ground covered. If I do a search for "Java" (for example, not sure this particular term will produce distinct results) while logged into my Google account, I will get different results than if my non-programming friends searched for "Java." Again, not totally certain that this is the case but I have seen some evidence before that search results are customized based on past behavior and other models of my preferences.

throwawaykf03 13y ago

Actually Google did implement something like this: you could "personalize" your search by moving results up and down the page. They discontinued it some time (just a few months?) later... I'm guessing because it created more noise than signal. This was some years ago.

nostrademons 13y ago
Yeah, it was SearchWiki, launched in 2008, discontinued sometime in early 2011 IIRC. About the only thing people used it for was to kill expertsexchange.com, and that problem took care of itself when StackOverflow got popular.