4 ms·

Every other search engine is worse because they are simply following Google. Every existing search engine that I'm aware of is essentially based on the PageRan

Every other search engine is worse because they are simply following Google. Every existing search engine that I'm aware of is essentially based on the PageRank algorithm, an innovation which Google created. At the time it was created, it was not obvious that it was the best option - only that it was better than AltaVista's algorithm and Yahoo's curated portal model that were the options in 1999. Why are search engines not innovating? Or, if they are, where are they?

millstone 11y ago
I would say that it's because search engine ranking is good enough. At the very least we are in the domain of diminishing returns. In terms of innovations, there was a weird and misguided attempt to integrate "social search" into your results, which thankfully seems to have disappeared. There is also Google's Knowledge Graph, which is a promising idea but doesn't work well yet. Search for "calories in a cup of corn" and Google's answer is wildly off. Or try "activation fee" and find out that it's $40 (huh?). It remains to be seen whether this feature can be rendered trustworthy and relevant.
- davidgerard 11y ago
  My Google results are noticeably worse for me logged-out (or through DDG) than logged-in. This suggests that search is in fact such a hard problem that my search engine literally needs to know more about me than I know about myself to do a good job for me. Which explains why Bing has such a hard time unseating Google - I'm always logged into GMail, so Google has known it's me doing my searches for the past eleven years.
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
> the PageRank algorithm, an innovation which Google created. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306457376900480# http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/03064573769... http://www.w3.org/People/Massimo/papers/WWW6/ http://www.w3.org/People/Massimo/papers/WWW6/

millstone 11y ago

I would say that it's because search engine ranking is good enough. At the very least we are in the domain of diminishing returns. In terms of innovations, there was a weird and misguided attempt to integrate "social search" into your results, which thankfully seems to have disappeared. There is also Google's Knowledge Graph, which is a promising idea but doesn't work well yet. Search for "calories in a cup of corn" and Google's answer is wildly off. Or try "activation fee" and find out that it's $40 (huh?). It remains to be seen whether this feature can be rendered trustworthy and relevant.

davidgerard 11y ago
My Google results are noticeably worse for me logged-out (or through DDG) than logged-in. This suggests that search is in fact such a hard problem that my search engine literally needs to know more about me than I know about myself to do a good job for me. Which explains why Bing has such a hard time unseating Google - I'm always logged into GMail, so Google has known it's me doing my searches for the past eleven years.

stefantalpalaru 11y ago

> the PageRank algorithm, an innovation which Google created. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306457376900480# http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/03064573769... http://www.w3.org/People/Massimo/papers/WWW6/ http://www.w3.org/People/Massimo/papers/WWW6/