Good start, now if they would just downrank sites that were trying to sell me things or were using identical copy, maybe if I search for subject X, I might be able to find websites with people discussing or explaining subject X.
Generally, when I search for a movie or a book on a search engine, I'm not trying to buy, pirate, or read the wikipedia article about it (or I would have just searched wikipedia.)
My web use is basically: tracking down a technical reference that is almost always at the vendor's website or github repo; looking up an idle curiosity on imdb or wikipedia; searching reddit for a specific discussion topic with multiple perspectives, or lingering around here on HN to kill time.
I barely even use a search engine, and when I do it's usually tagged with "wiki", "reddit", "github", "imdb" etc because I know the source I want to explore and know how to interpret that source when presented to me in its familiar format.
For deeper understandings of things, I collect and read books about them or use something like JSTOR for narrower or fresher interpretations and perspectives.
LLM-powered searches just put an obscuring layer between me and the specific, attributed, source information that I find valuable.
Except that the "correct" link on Google is useless. If I search for a movie I want to watch it, if I search for a song I want to hear it, if I search for a book I want to read it. Sending me to informative pages can be useful but if I'm looking for an action I want an action to be my first result.
I've been trying to ween myself off search engines, and rather search directly from within specific websites:
Wikipedia - general information
StackOverflow - programming
IMDB - actors/movies
etc...
Obviously finding those websites in the 1st place requires a search engine or index of some kind, but I'm getting faster results going directly to the source :)
If I want to find content that falls off the back of truck, I know where to look. But the people using Google to find content, are likely looking for legitimate content. I actually appreciate searching for a movie on my phone using Google and seeing at the top all of the legal places I can easily get content. Especially if one of those links are a service I already subscribe to.
I often search for articles/books about X, or reviews about Y. The top results for those things is a mix of SEO spam, Amazon links etc. which I all try to avoid.
I use search for information, but I often have to dig quite deep to find something worth clicking on or reading. And that's true for Google and DDG (which I mostly use).
When it's raw, basic knowledge, then I'm using !wiki or !mdn etc. in DDG to search those sites directly. Note: Wikipedia and Mozilla Developer Network are two of my favorite sites.
But when it's something more subtle and specialized that I'm not very familiar with then often my only hope of finding something useful is to search via aggregators and forums like HN, Reddit etc. because then I can gauge the quality of the links via the discussion around it and the people who post them. Or in some cases I know about a specialist or journalist and can use their name to filter out spam.
Discovering these kind of things via search is really hard, especially if their authors are not known. It's the spammers and low effort creators that get rewarded the most, partly because of search engines, partly because of visitors who are content with that kind of quality.
When you’re interested by a new subject, how do you find interesting information on the Web amidst all the ad-filled websites that try to sell you stuff?
For example, say you want to improve the Wikipedia article "Pickaxe". Excluding everything related to the tool in Minecraft and other games, all I get on Google are a bunch of websites selling pickaxes, some dictionnary entries, some companies named [a variation of] "Pickaxe". There must be a couple non-commercial websites talking about pickaxes but none of them appear in the first 5 pages of Google results.
Do a search for just about any topic (like "kite sailing" or "Star Wars") and tell me how many pages until you get to a site that wasn't created by a corporation.
Exactly! If a site gives me useful info and leads me to more, the site is much more likely to be the FIRST place I look for similar stuff next time. Otherwise they go on a mental blacklist and I never click on the links to that site in the first place.
Am I the only one who just skips the search engines and go straight to the source? If I want factual information, I just go to Wikipedia and use their search. If I want to shop I'll go to respected online stores and again use their inbuilt search feature.
Obviously I've just built up a list of good sites in my head which I trust... Google search is good for discoverability if you're new to the web I guess? Although in the old days that's what web directories where good for:
Same here. In fact, if I'm looking for information on a specific subject I will most often go straight to Wikipedia as they have an article on what I'm looking for in 99% of the cases. Especially if I'm looking for just a general overview of a subject, even technical ones. If the subject is more general, or loosely defined (sentence, error message etc.) I use Google.
I bet there are types of searches for which excluding popular sites works well -- for example, trying to find less popular stuff, which is something that popular websites don't do that good of a job of covering. "Indie" topics, if you will. Would you try to discuss an indie movie on a website chock full of discussions about the latest blockbuster? Then when you search, don't you want to look at less popular movie websites to find the good discussion about your indie movie?
I find myself quite regularly searching for factual information related to gadgets / devices / machines etc. that I want to find out about. For example; 'Is car AAA easier to find spares for than car BBB?', 'is camera AAA better constructed than camera BBB?', 'what are the things to look out for when buying a second hand CCC?
Increasingly, I find that, no matter how I couch the search terms, I end up getting given pages of results which are sites, trying to sell me the thing I referenced in the search. I'm lucky if I find the relevant info in the first page of results. Often it'll be on some discussion forum which crops up way down the list.
I wish there was some way to tell a search engine "I'm not interested in sites selling the thing I'm asking about. I just want information" so that the actual nuggets of genuine info would receive a higher priority.
People may be looking up details about these sites.
Also, not for these specifically, but if someone tells me about a website I haven't heard of, and not sure if safe / SFW etc I'll usually checkout it's Wikipedia page first.
Those are two examples where I might not do it because the built-in search on reddit and HN are worse at finding things than searching the same site through Google. For wikipedia search though, no reason to put that through Google.
When I search for information, I want to get not 14,900,000 links found on the Internet pages, among which, probably, there is information that I need.
I need an answer.
Clear, understandable and structured. It would be great if it also fits into the context of my previous search and matched my needs based on my previous actions.
It's very simple! If I go to a search engine and type “Mask” - before that I did not look for the address of the nearest one (which excludes the possibility of coronavirus), I am not fond of cosmetics and there are no appointments in my calendar for the next three hours (and indeed it’s the evening) ... Hence I am looking for a movie with Jim Carey.
The situation I described is very primitive - but I think it shows where I'm going.
We need to (1) avoid providing information in the form of a large number of links and (2) make tools friends with each other at the system level, not interfaces.
This is interesting. I don’t do this anymore, but maybe I should.
Usually I just trust that when I need something I’ll be able to find it. But nowadays Google (and searching in general) is so bad that maybe I should not trust that I’ll be able to find it again when I need it. Maybe today it’s more worth while to build a library of interesting stuff, than it was a couple of years ago.
I search for something and get a wikipedia page, a website for a book and the FDA's website above the results which actually interest me. Infact, they are in a larger font than the rest.
Are these sponsored links or something? I'm not sure I dig it.
Generally, when I search for a movie or a book on a search engine, I'm not trying to buy, pirate, or read the wikipedia article about it (or I would have just searched wikipedia.)
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