Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it(ixns.github.io)
ixns.github.io
Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it
https://ixns.github.io//lifehacks/computers/internet/2022/05/17/avoid-google-bloatware.html
428 comments
This is nitpicky but the tire changing page doesn't actually fit your rational for choosing .edu pages
>Professors are paid generous salaries to share knowledge with the paying customers of the University (students). So, let’s find some paid unpaid University knowledge on how to change a tire by using our new trick!
But the bottom of the page says
>Prepared by: [students] For Dr. Bruce Magee's English 303 (Technical Writing) Class, Winter 1997-1998.
The professor is actually an English professor and the page was written by students as an assignment. I looked into this because I was wondering, "what would a professor be teaching that he's writing notes on tire changing?". There's probably some professor out there that does that in an academic context, but there's probably a lot of things that no professor actually gets paid to write about. Maybe they would write about something miscellaneous like that anyway and put it online, but they would be doing so out of the culture of web savvy professors having personal pages where they upload stuff they think is helpful.
>Professors are paid generous salaries to share knowledge with the paying customers of the University (students). So, let’s find some paid unpaid University knowledge on how to change a tire by using our new trick!
But the bottom of the page says
>Prepared by: [students] For Dr. Bruce Magee's English 303 (Technical Writing) Class, Winter 1997-1998.
The professor is actually an English professor and the page was written by students as an assignment. I looked into this because I was wondering, "what would a professor be teaching that he's writing notes on tire changing?". There's probably some professor out there that does that in an academic context, but there's probably a lot of things that no professor actually gets paid to write about. Maybe they would write about something miscellaneous like that anyway and put it online, but they would be doing so out of the culture of web savvy professors having personal pages where they upload stuff they think is helpful.
It's not a Google problem, it's a web problem.
Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website.
This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content.
These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewhat) unbiased information.
Google is a fuzzy-search address bar at this point for me.
Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website.
This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content.
These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewhat) unbiased information.
Google is a fuzzy-search address bar at this point for me.
I switched to using kagi.com a while ago, and I've never looked back. I've tried to use duckduckgo before but just ended up using '!g' most of the time.
Kagi is in a whole other league. It's on par with, if not better than google search. I highly recommend it. When they introduce the paid tier I'm sure as hell going to subscribe to it. At this point I would trade my Netflix subscription for it.
Kagi is in a whole other league. It's on par with, if not better than google search. I highly recommend it. When they introduce the paid tier I'm sure as hell going to subscribe to it. At this point I would trade my Netflix subscription for it.
"Nothing wrong with that, making money is noble"
this right here is why you never make any progress and never fix anything and you never understand why everything sucks, you keep rewarding perverse incentives and greed and then try to work around it as if greed were not the central problem.
making money is not noble, making money does not represent increasing value, it only represents cornering tokens of others' labor time, which you have just observed takes the form of profiteers intentionally seeking ways to waste your time.
improving the world is noble, and whether you make money or not, you get to live in a better world.
linus was awarded a salary because people were EMBARRASSED that they were profiting so much off his free work.
you all should be a lot more ashamed.
this right here is why you never make any progress and never fix anything and you never understand why everything sucks, you keep rewarding perverse incentives and greed and then try to work around it as if greed were not the central problem.
making money is not noble, making money does not represent increasing value, it only represents cornering tokens of others' labor time, which you have just observed takes the form of profiteers intentionally seeking ways to waste your time.
improving the world is noble, and whether you make money or not, you get to live in a better world.
linus was awarded a salary because people were EMBARRASSED that they were profiting so much off his free work.
you all should be a lot more ashamed.
> If you simply google: how to fix a flat tire
My first result ...
How to fix a flat tyre - in simple steps with video - RAC https://www.rac.co.uk › drive › advice › repair-a-flat-tyre
An excellent first result thank you google.
My first result ...
How to fix a flat tyre - in simple steps with video - RAC https://www.rac.co.uk › drive › advice › repair-a-flat-tyre
An excellent first result thank you google.
I recently found https://commoncrawl.org/ and started working on my own personal search engine. I'm surprised how easy it is to actually get decent results with just metadata that show up nowhere in Google/DDG.
It's the aggregate result of the sort of hiring they do in there. Take for example they rejected the guy who created homebrew because he couldn't invert a binary tree to the satisfaction of some jobsworth in there (1). It's jumped the shark and gone full on corporate bs, not because of any changes to what they do, but as a result of who's making the decisions in there these days.
(1) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985775
(1) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985775
I feel like Google could filter out a lot of SEO spam by simply ignoring or downranking heavy sites. Everything that loads more than "n MB" is probably bloated and made to trick you into buying something or generating traffic without providing value.
Another method could be to analyze how many external requests a page makes and put that into the calculation.
Of course, there are exceptions, but I think this might help.
Another method could be to analyze how many external requests a page makes and put that into the calculation.
Of course, there are exceptions, but I think this might help.
Counter example:
"what is an iris" when wondering about anatomy brings up Wikipedia as the first link. Perfect.
With the .edu trick the first link is about the flower, and there's nothing about the human eye anywhere on the first page of results.
"what is an iris" when wondering about anatomy brings up Wikipedia as the first link. Perfect.
With the .edu trick the first link is about the flower, and there's nothing about the human eye anywhere on the first page of results.
Hey, I just came from the company that hosts that dealer website!
The amount of money that dealerships pour into SEO and advertising is unreal. They also chase every single thing that Google says with complete abandon. (Remember AMP? ya, that was something we chased because dealers asked us to and then forgot about 12 months later.)
I realize this is about Google but I think there will always be a struggle until everyone can boycott playing the game and I just don't see that happening.
The amount of money that dealerships pour into SEO and advertising is unreal. They also chase every single thing that Google says with complete abandon. (Remember AMP? ya, that was something we chased because dealers asked us to and then forgot about 12 months later.)
I realize this is about Google but I think there will always be a struggle until everyone can boycott playing the game and I just don't see that happening.
Just add “Reddit” to the search string
Reddit is what the internet used to be back when it was useful.
Reddit is what the internet used to be back when it was useful.
`site:` is great.
As an aside, anyone knows if you can still find "who links to?". I used to do this to hear how people feel about my site/app. I would do something like `link:foo.bar.com` I don't remember if it was link: or linkto: but it seems it no longer is supported? :(
As an aside, anyone knows if you can still find "who links to?". I used to do this to hear how people feel about my site/app. I would do something like `link:foo.bar.com` I don't remember if it was link: or linkto: but it seems it no longer is supported? :(
I think it's more about training your google algorithm, i searched the same things they searched and my results are answers to the question.
how to change a tire, nets videos of tire changing and the first 5 results are all different sites explaining how to do it.
how are pearls made, gives me an inline box answering the question.
half the things I search it offers me a "did you mean (my search) reddit" which I usually did...
google isn't great, but it's still the best by far (I like the algorithm that knows what i search and assists me with it), i'm not sure what this person has done to theirs...
how to change a tire, nets videos of tire changing and the first 5 results are all different sites explaining how to do it.
how are pearls made, gives me an inline box answering the question.
half the things I search it offers me a "did you mean (my search) reddit" which I usually did...
google isn't great, but it's still the best by far (I like the algorithm that knows what i search and assists me with it), i'm not sure what this person has done to theirs...
The reason that cookies are not a browser setting is NOT because of a technical limitation. Besides, if it was a browser setting, I would hope most people would have default "no, you can't store cookies except for the functional ones" and not "yes, store a thousand tracking cookies".
It is because of a power issue.
It would have to be a protocol change. Google owns the largest browser. Google doesn't want it to be a browser setting. End of story. Unless you gather political power to force google and others to have this, it will not change.
It is because of a power issue.
It would have to be a protocol change. Google owns the largest browser. Google doesn't want it to be a browser setting. End of story. Unless you gather political power to force google and others to have this, it will not change.
There's a Firefox add-on that allows you to block specific sites from Google's search results... not every practical for the whole Internet but it is for the worst offenders. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublacklist/)
> If you simply google: how to fix a flat tire the first website in the search results is this piece of bloatware, MillerAutoPlaza:
I attempted to reproduce the experiment and I got a full page of useful results, all of them videos or numbered lists of the steps as in
> Step One: Find the Puncture. Once you're in a safe place, hop out of the car, and find the flat tire. ...
etc.
Maybe Google read HN and fixed that query but how to replace flat tires yields similar results.
Maybe it's because I'm not logged in into Google and they are less aggressive on showing me ads?
Maybe it's because I'm not from an English language country and they know from my IP address. Let's try with come cambiare una gomma bucata. Other useful numbered lists and videos.
I'm not always happy with Google's results but there seems to be something wrong in the experiment here.
I attempted to reproduce the experiment and I got a full page of useful results, all of them videos or numbered lists of the steps as in
> Step One: Find the Puncture. Once you're in a safe place, hop out of the car, and find the flat tire. ...
etc.
Maybe Google read HN and fixed that query but how to replace flat tires yields similar results.
Maybe it's because I'm not logged in into Google and they are less aggressive on showing me ads?
Maybe it's because I'm not from an English language country and they know from my IP address. Let's try with come cambiare una gomma bucata. Other useful numbered lists and videos.
I'm not always happy with Google's results but there seems to be something wrong in the experiment here.
In this specific case, it's a great example of how Google's attempts to keep people on Google has made search worse.
It's showing this result as a featured snippet because it's easy to distil into steps, and Google is hoping you'll just read the result and not leave Google.
The real 'no.1 result' is this much better article from a trusted UK-based motoring organization: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/car-maintenance/how-to-ch...
Of course, Google's attempts to stop you leaving, and hoover up as much of the ad market as possible, also drives publishers to ever more desperate things to make money.
It's showing this result as a featured snippet because it's easy to distil into steps, and Google is hoping you'll just read the result and not leave Google.
The real 'no.1 result' is this much better article from a trusted UK-based motoring organization: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/car-maintenance/how-to-ch...
Of course, Google's attempts to stop you leaving, and hoover up as much of the ad market as possible, also drives publishers to ever more desperate things to make money.
lol @ musk thinking cookie settings should be in the browser. Does he not know that they used to be until a certain advertising company took it out of their browser, and Mozilla then followed?
Or just use DuckDuckGo instead of google.
Seems like a long way to go to you know, not just switch search engines. Google's had a nice run so did yahoo, hotbot, excite, alta vista... the question isn't how to fix Google. The question is...
what's next?
what's next?
... or use Firefox (Tor Browser after disabling tor) + uBlock Origin, and avoid all the unwanted crap most websites throw at you today. And train yourself not to automatically search for everything on Google. Instead use IMDB, Wikipedia, Stackoverflow / Stackexchange, Reddit etc. etc. by adding their search to your browser ( https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-sea... ).
I get none of the same results as my top hit?
Ok. I bit the bullet and typed exactly those words: "how to fix a flat tire".
This is what I got in return:
Row 1: 2 buttons marked "on a bike" and "scooter"
Row 2: single scrollable row of images of tire fixing kits with the prices.
Row 3: step by step recipe on how to fix flat on a car (7 steps long) followed by the link to the corresponding article and small image on the right side.
To me it looks straight to the point and one can't bitch about single row of ads of a relevant products.
This is what I got in return:
Row 1: 2 buttons marked "on a bike" and "scooter"
Row 2: single scrollable row of images of tire fixing kits with the prices.
Row 3: step by step recipe on how to fix flat on a car (7 steps long) followed by the link to the corresponding article and small image on the right side.
To me it looks straight to the point and one can't bitch about single row of ads of a relevant products.
I've given up on google for search and I'm not going back. I've been beta-testing kagi search [1] for the last couple of months and it does 95% of what I need - accurate and low-distraction and it doesn't try to sell me stuff or sell me to anyone. They're about to go into public beta and announce their pricing, and I'm pretty sure I'm in.
[1] kagi.com
[1] kagi.com
How come nobody is doing social search yet? Why can't I up and down vote results and maybe even comment on them or something? I don't want to ever see some of these recipe sites that show up again... I can't imagine I would if people were helping curate. Seems like an "easy" solution to SEO crapola?
I was trying to find pre-made hand railing mounting plates, I thought to try and use google shopping because I didn't have an existing part number.
I enter my search term hit enter, for a split second I can see the exact products I want to browse but those results are quickly swapped out for a bunch of unrelated products.
I enter my search term hit enter, for a split second I can see the exact products I want to browse but those results are quickly swapped out for a bunch of unrelated products.
Err, what?
.edu is a TLD for US based educational bodies. So the reason you don't see a cookie banner is because the majority (AFAIK) of US states don't mandate a cookie banner, unlike EU and UK based sites (like the Natural History Museum, based in the UK). Does this mean the Natural History Museum is a less authoritative resource than anywhere else? I'd say the opposite, actually.
And for the "change a tire" example using a .edu TLD. That's a fantastic example of how to find search results that are almost completely useless for anyone outside the US. What's a "tire", anyway? Oh, you mean "tyre". What's a "flashlight". OK, you mean a "torch".
In summary: there's a world outside the US. It's lovely out here.
.edu is a TLD for US based educational bodies. So the reason you don't see a cookie banner is because the majority (AFAIK) of US states don't mandate a cookie banner, unlike EU and UK based sites (like the Natural History Museum, based in the UK). Does this mean the Natural History Museum is a less authoritative resource than anywhere else? I'd say the opposite, actually.
And for the "change a tire" example using a .edu TLD. That's a fantastic example of how to find search results that are almost completely useless for anyone outside the US. What's a "tire", anyway? Oh, you mean "tyre". What's a "flashlight". OK, you mean a "torch".
In summary: there's a world outside the US. It's lovely out here.
Excuse the shameless self-promotion, but contrast the results for the same searches:
https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=how+to+fix+a+flat+tire
https://bikerepairvideos.com/fix-flat-tire/
https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=how+are+pearls+made%3F
https://www.gemrockauctions.com/learn/did-you-know/how-are-p...
https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=how+to+fix+a+flat+tire
https://bikerepairvideos.com/fix-flat-tire/
https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=how+are+pearls+made%3F
https://www.gemrockauctions.com/learn/did-you-know/how-are-p...
It's a little sad we have to '.edu' filter searches just to not be directed to SEO sites at this point. Kagi's and You.com's searches are really smooth and painless from this perspective. You.com also has built in site filtering which helps a ton.
Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value and I can’t believe it has come to this. Imagine if every time you ran `ls` in a shell with a glob pattern, it just decided to sort of “add in” a few other files loosely based on your query (or heck, files that aren’t based on it at all)? Oh, now imagine if `rm` did that.
Sadly this happens with lots of search tools now. Why the heck is the default state on a new Mac to funnel what you type to everything, e.g. I searched for “Chrome” and hit Return and the FIRST thing it did was throw me into the App Store and call up some not-even-a-web-browser scam app with Chrome in its name, instead of selecting the Chrome already installed on my computer and opening it? More and more it seems that you have to turn off all kinds of poor defaults to put tools into a useful state, or there is simply no way to get them there at all.