Originally published at: Google is dead. Long live Google + "site:reddit.com" | Boing Boing
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I think I would rather use site:bbs.boingboing.net - the last thing I want is information and opinions from reddit users…
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If you’re really in the know, you’ll use +“site:ask.metafilter.com” instead.
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If your search engine is DuckDuckGo, you can just add ‘!r’ to your search. At least I think that’s a default setting and not something I added to the configuration.
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I definitely get the complaint that several categories in particular google mostly gives affiliate linking content farms with very dubious content. Product reviews are one. And sometimes what I really want to know is “what are reddit users saying about this.” But generally that’s not the same thing as a review. When I want a product review I look for reasonably well known review sites. They still might be SEOed and affiliate linked ad fests, but they have some credibility to give a thorough and general review of something. Reddit is good if you want 10 random peoples opinion on whether one specific feature is actually worth buying product X over product Y.
Also, there is more to the world and the internet than product reviews and consumerism. But I guess that can be a rant for another day.
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I second this! make duckduckgo your default search engine on your search bar (for the foreseeable) and learn of your favorite "bang"s. Just as Dr lastchance sagaciously indicates: “!r wibble” will search reddit for wibble. “!b” will search bing “!w” wikipedia, (though it “Is dead”) “!g” to get google… etc. there are many others, including “!boingboing” to discover all things moíst
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Likewise just adding “forum” to your search can be pretty useful.
You tend end up around enthusiast, who don’t often have the most realistic expectations about things. But they at least actual have knowledge that can be useful.
It’s hardly only things like reviews.
Search for a recipe and you’ll get SEOed to high hell food blogs, and trash from ad laden content mills.
Search for tech support info on how to fix something on your computer. Content mills and listacles.
Try to find the manual or a particular menu setting on your TV? 10 pages of retailer’s TV categories, ads for TVs and some copy pasted instructions from a 10 year old different model with the word Samsung pasted into it every other line.
I even searched the title of a book earlier today. Ads, retail sales pages, SEO content mills and a bit down there a Wikipedia page for the most recent film adaptation.
I mean just the fact that they have to put an info box at the top so quick reference information appears at all. And announce changes or exceptions to the algorithm to make sure things like accurate COVID info comes first.
Internet search is pretty non functional for finding anything you’re looking for besides an Amazon sales page.
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I get the feeling that the author means “the web” when they say google. I also have a hard time wrapping my head around them saying google is dead, and then having the same author recommending using better search terms in google, i.e ‘“search term” site:reddit.com’.
It has always been the case that broad search parameters will give you less than optimal results, always.
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"Peter Thiel" site:umbraxenu.no-ip.biz
Hm. Not bad.
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Yeah I have started doing this recently for certain subjects.
Google also definitely just sometimes flat out fails to return certain relevant and useful search results that can be found using the same search terms on millionshort.com
It seems unlikely that Google’s tech is incapable of finding these results, so it’s more likely that some algorithm is deciding that you shouldn’t see them.
It looks like Google is increasingly tailored towards the assumption that people only want a handful of most relevant results, making it increasingly less useful as a serious research tool for people who might be looking for every piece of information available on a subject.
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Bring back good boolean search engines!
Honestly, I never have a problem with searching on Google, so I don’t know what this guy is going on about. But I also prefer to search using Duck Duck because Google is an evil empire these days. Has nothing to do with the quality of the results.
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-site:pinterest.com is also really handy for Duck Duck Go. Pinterest is a plague in search results, and should be excluded from search engines by default.
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While i do at times have to specify search results to add Reddit, i have found the experience to be fairly uneven. Maybe half of the time i get useful information… might be lower for other specific topics i’m interested in, but it will still give me enough vague clues where i can parse my next decision.
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Sorry, but I can’t get behind saying long live “Google+” anything.
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I abandoned Google completely about a decade ago when DuckDuckGo came out as an anti-tracking search engine, and I have been far more pleased than disappointed. DDG generally gives better results, as they don’t seem to suffer from as many SEO attacks as Google.
In addition to using DDG, I think it’s important to do a lot of script blocking; but most importantly specifically blocking google-analytics.js. Why is google-analytics so bad? Because they track every click that leads to the products and sites you want, recording your entire path from discovery to purchase. They then sell the search terms that lead to your path. If you search Google for “android tablet” and then spend an hour on android-tablet-reviews[.]com and then go to joes-tablets[.]com and click “buy this WOW-2K tablet”, they’re going to sell that info to SEOs who poison the comment section of android-tablet-reviews[.]com with fake reviews, rendering it worthless.
And every damn fool idiot webmaster still hangs google-analytics off their page, because “Free stats!” Hell, I even see it attached to official US Gov’t sites all the time. Just stop already!!!
There are hundreds of other analytics sites out there doing similar things, but on a much smaller scale. They’re worthy of blocking, but not nearly as harmful to the entire web as Google.
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The main technique I use is
Allintext: search term here
Sooooooo much better results than whatever algorithmic keyword crap Google puts out thee that is clearly gamed by SEO spammers.
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Adding “forum” to the end of a search is helpful too. Google has seemingly deprioritized any sort of user-contributed discussion forums in favor of monolithic web sites. This applies not only to Reddit or Metafilter, but any number of smaller message boards.
The first time this became clear to me was several years back when a type of clothing I’ve worn for years became discontinued. A search for that clothing by itself, to this day, yields any number of web sites showing it for sale but out of stock, as if it’s still available. Searching for the name of the clothing and adding the keyword forum brings up any number of message boards where actual humans discuss it being out of stock and what replacements are available or what strategies you can use to get that clothing used.
I understand that there’s lots of garbage out there Google needs to filter, but it’s truly frustrating how inhuman Google’s search results are these days. By trying to filter out the garbage, they’re taking the wheat with it… and leaving the chaff.
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I have long weened myself off Reddit as the place turned more and more toxic. I only hop into specific technical subreddits if I need to know the status of something like windows 11 or such.
The rest I give a pass to.
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