
Ask HN: Is Google is broken for discovery? - xfour
My own thoughts based on a recent series of queries below.<p>TLDR I think it is most definitely.<p>Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to afford buying a home.<p>An empty home needs a lot of furniture to fill it. I&#x27;ve graduated from Ikea furniture I suppose, or more correctly I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d be able to make a successful pitch to the wife that this is the correct place to shop for furniture.<p>So, off I go to Google to try and see what the landscape is for furniture. The usual suspects all show up. Cranes and Bottles, Possibly Barn, Mercys, Blossomdales. And that was it. I scroll down, different variants of pages for these, ads... again more duplicate pages of brands I already know, more ads, so on and so forth. The &quot;next page&quot; is replaced by a &quot;see more&quot;, and when I tap it just more of the same.<p>I literally couldn&#x27;t find anything organic other than major brands, who not coincidentally were likely paying for adwords as well.<p>This isn&#x27;t what I want to see in a search engine, I doubt it is for anyone else. I could have just typed in those domains, I know them all already.<p>I feel like at this point, it&#x27;s time for a back to square one search results engine. Monopolies eventually kill off all brand goodwill and it looks like we&#x27;ve hit the tipping point.
======
dudeinsf
I generally do a google search now and tag 'reddit' at the end, to find useful
conversations around the topic I'm interested in. It's been working great so
far.

~~~
jac08h
also, you can use site:reddit.com to get results only from reddit domain

~~~
xfour
Ha, exactly what I did in the end. I thought I was clever.

But if this is the case then what value is google providing other than a good
search interface on subreddits?

------
ap46
That's the whole point inevitably, if it was good we won't stay on a
page/multiple result pages for long. Also the rationale behind removing direct
image links, so as to keep you on a JS executing page.

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the
solution.” — Clay Shirky [https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-
prin/](https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/)

------
lettergram
I wrote about this before:

[https://austingwalters.com/is-search-solved/](https://austingwalters.com/is-
search-solved/)

Basically, Google doesn't have an incentivize to ever provide some unique
results to you. They solve for the "general" use case, and the more you click
through the better for them (higher likelihood you'll click an ad).

I'm actually working on my own kind of search, it's the basis for a few of my
websites.

------
ianamartin
local furniture stores near me

turns up a good number of stores that are, in fact, near me. Brick and mortar,
local, boutique places. Places I've never heard of. Yeah, the ads are for the
usual suspects. But not only were there a lot of places that seem at least
somewhat interesting on their own, there were a lot of articles from local
news sources about furniture shopping in Dallas, TX. Which is also really
convenient because that's where I live. Articles about the benefits of going
local over big brands (internet driven or otherwise), where, when, and how to
find good bargains locally, which shops are better for what categories of
furniture. Etc.

I mean, Google certainly has some problems, but I don't think this is one of
them.

~~~
xfour
Could be location helping. Not a lot of craft furniture stores in the Southern
Part of Silicon Valley. Yet another side effect of buildings being worth 1k a
sqft

------
gonyea
Home furnishings are a bit special. The market is flooded with cheap Chinese
goods. There’s no way to tell what’s good, and there are way too many
choices/knockoffs. Plus it’s too heavy to return if you don’t like it. You
really have to see it in person to have the confidence that it’s right.

This is also true for cabinets, flooring, lighting, etc.

~~~
xfour
I agree with you that’s its probably the worst case. But let’s explore, I also
need a new TV, well not need but it’s been around 10 years figure I want to
see what’s up in the TV market. This time there was one new review site I was
happy to see called rtings that I hadn’t heard about. But between thats was 50
versions of better buy and the like.

Perhaps it’s false nostalgia but I feel like search results used to have some
variety.

~~~
Skrillex
I was about to say that headphones were in the same place as furniture, where
any ratings cannot be trusted, and the only way to guarantee a quality product
was trial and error. Maybe the problem space is larger than I realized but I
just do not buy enough stuff to notice.

------
wingerlang
When I want to discover new stuff, I just keep excluding things I don't want.
For furniture, just add "chair -ikea -x -y -z" until you no longer see results
from them.

~~~
onemoresoop
I wish I could permanently ban results from websites that game (or pay for)
their rank and whose content I am not interested in(generally the big guys
like web.md, etc..) I think at some point google had an x for each result and
you could remove it from the search. They didn't keep it. Does anyone know of
any plug-in or script to do that? I know i could do -web.md but there are way
to many sites that occupy the first pages of results I want removed

~~~
nscalf
I don't know a plugin, but this seems like a good idea. Maybe I'll try to
circle back around this weekend and build out something.

~~~
onemoresoop
Also can you think about shareable blacklists similar to how AdBlock works?
And easy enable and disable. I'm thinking that if I don't get any good search
results I could compare with a search without blacklisting. Thanks

------
soared
You can't expect a tool to work when you don't know how to use it.

You're blaming google because you're using the tool wrong. If you're searching
for furniture, type in 'furniture'. If you're searching for different
furniture brands type in 'different furniture brands'. If you want to discover
furniture brands type in "discover furniture brands".

------
banku_brougham
I suspect the difference in experience relates to the idea that a recent
homebuyer is valuable marketing product. OP is probably getting flooded
because of financial circumstances.

I agree that discovery is broken. I too cannot find a brand or organic non-
toxic children’s furniture except by very roundabout searching through
similarities on Amazon, etc.

~~~
xfour
Totally. This was another thing that bugged me to no end trying to separate
the wheat from the chaff so to speak. I went with JontyCraft which I
originally found on amazon and then cross referenced myself. Seems like they
are US based and when they arrived the chair was extremely solid no toddler is
going to break it I think adults if they could fit it could sit fine it’s so
well made.

------
qubax
Google has changed it's search to favor corporate interests. It doesn't
reflect the real internet anymore.

Search for movies, you get a list of newspaper reviews instead of the forums
or independent reviews. Everything, even recipes, gets links to newspapers.
It's so useless now.

What I do is "-news" or add "forum, reddit, etc" in my searches. Or I just
simply jump to page 5 of the search result. Or I started to use duckduckgo
more.

The same thing with youtube. If an event happens, I used to just search for
the event and I'd get the most revelant/most viewed links. Now, it's pages of
CNN, MSNBC, WashingtonPost, NYTimes, etc links.

It seems like google just wants to be a glorified newstand. I can't believe
how horrible it has gotten. It takes effort to get what you want now.

~~~
tyingq
I suspect it's a side effect of their anti spam efforts. Just making sure big
brands fill the top-n slots kills a lot of spam. At the expense, of course, of
most of the good stuff.

------
Jack000
Google's major problem is that it's in an adversarial relationship with the
SEO industry. For any given keyword there is a lot of money to be made by
being in the top 3 results, which means the top results tend to be dominated
by businesses with the resources to mount a focused and persistent SEO
campaign. This leads the results to become saturated with content marketing
rather than "organic" content.

------
adamfaliq
Recently I went to Berlin for a startup bootcamp and met the CEO of Mablo[0].
Their aim is to solve this problem, so that people can find products that fit
their exact needs. The point is the problem that you described above is real,
everyone else also faced it and there is a company that is trying to solve it.

I agree with the other comment. It is not that search engines are broken. But
having ads does not incentivize any search engine to make products
discoverable.

[0] [https://mablo.net](https://mablo.net)

------
cbkeller
33 out of the 36 results on the first page of a google shopping search for
"furniture" are all from Living Spaces for me, with a pretty homogeneous
aesthetic

~~~
xfour
Right? How is that useful to anyone?

------
iamgopal
Google has a problem that they are not content generator, and their every
attempt to create community around content generation failed, knol, google+,
google answer, blogspot etc. Their reliance on other people to create relevant
content could not solve the problem no matter how efficient their algorithm
is. I wish they give one more go at content creation with much more
distributed control and privacy awareness.

------
tedwarner
when I search Google for "furniture" one of the first results is the
craigslist furniture section for my city, much of which is free.

------
sabalaba
Google doesn’t provide a great mechanism for discovery or human curated
content. That’s why many use Pinterest and Instagram for discovery.

~~~
xfour
Pinterest at least for me is the worst browsing experience ever. Sucks you in
with thumbnails that you can’t enlarge and regwalls and annoyance I personally
avoid it like the plague

------
jpindar
When I search for furniture I get a huge variety of different stores and
brands, many of which I've never heard of before. Have you tried searching
from a private browser window?

------
rajacombinator
Search is not about discovery. It’s about already knowing what you want. (Or
it should be, Google’s steps away from this are what irritates everyone.) Try
Pinterest.

------
vertline3
I do seem to get many bad links, but I think it may be Search Engine
Optimization? Or possibly it seems Google takes me to more social media links
than in the past.

------
zzo38computer
It is in fact common that what I look for will not be found easily in any
search engine.

------
jillav
Did you try other search engines too ?

~~~
xfour
What other search engines would you recommend?

------
yourabanana
I feel like Pinterest is a better platform for these type of queries.

------
buboard
if you 're doing image search and not interested in stock photo sites, try
bing or yandex

