
Ask HN: Is there room for a new ‘curated’ search engine? - keiferski
Google results seem to be getting progressively worse, and even if they aren’t, there are too many relevant websites to accurately display on a single search results page. It seems to me that a return to the original Yahoo model might actually have a place in 2019.
======
RickS
Is part of what makes google less useful their attempt to "curate"? It's worth
thinking about what constitutes curation.

I would say that adapting results towards expected customer preferences (eg
giving pet owners and programmers different results for "getting started with
python") is curation.

Perhaps more controversially, so too is the pruning of results at all – if
most of what I'm searching for is spam/malware, then so be it.

Search engines are already very curated, IMO. There's room to differentiate by
choosing _NOT_ to curate. I would be curious to use a search engine that used
nothing but PageRank circa ~2006.

Pedantically, any algorithm/ranking/weighting system is unavoidably curatory
by design.

But to answer what I think you mean, yes, I think there's room for opinionated
search engines for many values of "opinionated". Another way to think of these
might be "contexts" that you apply overtop of a search engine, and perform
many searches within that context.

For example, when I'm searching for front end things, I wish google were smart
enough to time-scope my searches dynamically using knowledge I don't have. I
search for Mongoose operations and get top results from 2011 saying X doesn't
exist, but it was added in 2016. I would like to see only results from when
the thing I wanted existed. But only ever searching the last two years _all
the time_ costs results that would be helpful in other times.

When searching for device repair instructions, I wish the engine were able to
adopt my estimations about sites that aggregate forum replies or repair
instructions in automated ways to gather clicks, and either banish them or
loudly mark them.

I'm not sure how to do this with major traction, or without being eaten by
google, but "ecosystem of many opinionated and accurate search contexts" feels
like it would add value to the world.

------
shakna
Curation is unlikely to be helpful when it comes to a search engine of any
decent size, in my opinion.

However, I agree Google's results are getting worse, but I think that is more
a result of the way they weight results, and personalize them.

Covering personalization - I've yet to see it work effectively for a large
audience. It does drive certain markets, but by whales rather than everyone.
So most people get things badly, and a few are driven towards a certain
goalpoint, in Google's case adverts, where they tend to make clicks or
purchases of the intended partners.

On weighting results - Google seems to have stopped weighting results for
relevance a long time ago. They seem to prioritise things differently now.
Exactly how I'm not sure, but it does seem to include Recent Events, using
technology Google has a vested interest in, and Partners, and all those get
addressed before relevancy.

If you can solve the relevancy problem (which is huge, from above, Recent does
not always mean Relevant, but it can), then you can certainly attract the
technological crowd.

Google seems to have aimed their search engine at popular events, news and
social media.

Where would you aim your search engine?

------
ian0
For sure. I think there is both demand and it's possible to scale it. We have
examples of amazingly successful group curation at scale with wikipedia,
stackoverflow etc. We also have forum platforms that successfully curate
information, Reddit, HN etc (which many people use to find better
recommendations than Google).

However, the value in curation is only on a particular subset of queries.
Those where you want to discover information and have some introductory terms
to go on ("Motorbike Safety", "Analytics SAAS", "Buying a Fridge" etc). What
youre looking for is an expert in a niche area to point you in the right
direction. Curation is very beneficial here.

The second type of query, where you are looking for a specific piece of
information (specific business, specific book review, weird fact) etc Google
already does fine on. And curation wont help (nor will it scale on such
precise info).

------
sebst
Some thoughts:

\- If there are too many relevant websites to display on one page, search vs.
manual directory does not really make a difference.

\- The curated model was long kept up by DMOZ, which had an army of volunteer
editors but eventually shut down. Some editors took over and built curlie.org,
but there is no innovation since DMOZ (which itself had no innovation)

\- Curation is a big topic nowadays. Pinterest for example is based on that
idea. However, things might be a bit more decentralised these days. I am just
thinking about the awsome-* lists on GitHub.

\- Manual directories may fail build a "searchable" taxonomy. I am searching
maybe for a technical support company specialised in that product, located in
this city, offering low rates. This is an easy example, but there are tougher
ones. General purpose information retrieval (like Google does) might be a
better fit for such problems than prebuilt taxonomies.

\- Based on the last two points, curation might be more successful in small
topics rather than in a Yahoo-like all-topics setting.

~~~
Something1234
Pinterest is a completely parasitic website that doesn't provide backlinks to
content, and hides results from google search. No attribution and no original
content. That is completely disgusting to me. There is no way to get to the
original post. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if they were hotlinking too.

------
stevenicr
I think there is room for 30 - 50 curated niche search engines - done similar
but different then the old dmoz and yahoo.

In so many ways google is failing many niches that it once served well. I have
been doodling ideas on how to do some of those niches better, like adult.

------
new_guy
I'd say so. Google is a joke, it doesn't give relevant results anymore and
limits itself solely to 'pop culture' results. There needs to be 'contextual
search', i.e look at your previous queries and factor that into your current
search.

~~~
elamje
I don't work at Google, but considering the amount of research scientists on
the search team and the troves of data they have on users, I think they
already use contextual data quite heavily.

Anecdotally, if you type a google search for something along the lines of
spring break in Florida, then search Google Flights, it auto-populates the
dates of Spring Break into the search.

~~~
dahdum
I see this behavior constantly in autocomplete.

Search for [flights to london], then start typing [things to do] and the first
suggestion will be [things to do in london].

------
exlurker
I really want one for personal webpages/projects only. Oh, and forums.

------
elamje
This might be close to what you are looking for. Human Curated is their goal -
[https://find.xyz/about](https://find.xyz/about)

------
codegeek
Curated and Niche. Google is still great for general searches in my opinion
but when I need a drill down level of search that can only happen with
curation, we have a gap there.

------
AnimalMuppet
The problem is that there is no way that curated can scale (at least, I don't
see one). As the web has grown, curated becomes less and less possible.

------
screye
My go-to tends to be site:reddit.com as a filter for most search queries.

Works pretty well in most cases.

------
maddyindia
I'm planning to create one , perhaps more of an "information engine" rather .

