
Ask HN: What is the worst thing about Google search? - firatcan
Hey everyone,<p>I hate google search when I am using it for learning a subject. It is hard to find relevant and time worthy resources, because there are a lot of fluff&#x2F;SEO content out there.<p>I have to open dozens of tabs and check them to find 1 great content. Such a waste of time.<p>What&#x27;s yours?
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CM30
The fact the search engine seems to think it knows what you want better than
you do. The amount of times I'll enter a query and get results which have
nothing to do with said query is astounding, especially when the result
crosses out an important word and says it matches one of the others instead.

Or when I enter a phrase and they think it's a typo despite not actually being
one, giving me a whole bunch of irrelevant results related to the 'corrected'
term in the process.

~~~
zzo38computer
I agree; that is one of the problems.

I don't know which problem is "worse", but that is certainly one of them.
Queries don't work properly, due to that.

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DanBC
Google is pretty good. Here are the things I find frustrating:

1) It tries to guess what I mean, and it's hard to make it change its mind. I
was searching for a specific thing and Google decided I was looking for
clothing brand in this colour. In the past adding or removing words, using the
+ (or "") or - operators would help, but I couldn't find the right combination
this time.

2) Sometimes I want to search for results from a different country in a
different language and I don't know how to do this. Google seems to really
want to only push English language results to me. I don't know if /ncr is
still a thing.

3) There's a bunch of heavily SEO'd content that's sort of okay but not great,
and a bunch of content that's great but hidden.

4) Google really wants you to use natural language queries. So when you're
fault-finding a problem you type a question into the search box. This will
return many people asking that same question, but often they will not have got
an answer. I don't need to be linked to a closed, with no answers, Stack
exchange question, or a forum when OP says "never mind, fixed it" with no more
details.

5) Google has decided to de-prioritise certain types of link. If you search
for torrents Google has chosen to put other stuff in the first few pages. I
think I'd prefer it if they just said "nope, we don't do those links" than
what they do at the moment. Try searching for pirate versions of Pozner and
Dodd's _Cross-Examination Science and Techniques_ and you get a lot of links,
but they're all terrible. They all lead to malware infested sites, or sites
that are part of a weird complicated network that don't provide any content,
but cause you to spend some time finding that out.

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helph67
It's lack of PRIVACY! Here are some good alternatives IMHO.
[https://www.ecosia.org/](https://www.ecosia.org/)
[https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/) (uses Google but
respects privacy) [https://www.qwant.com/](https://www.qwant.com/)
[https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/)

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downshun
You can't give feedback about the search results.

You can't opt out of advertisement results.

They link you to their amp pages, again, with no choice.

You get news and trending results when you were looking for something more
factual.

You can't give feedback about the search results.

Search results are at the whim of SEO and not usefulness.

Sometimes Clickbait.

Search operators are much less useful than they were before.

Etc..

~~~
firatcan
SEO thing frustrates me, there are too many SEO optimized bullshit content out
there. I am so unhappy that I have to waste a lot of time to dodge from them
while I am trying to learn something. Maybe human and machine partnership can
create better solution.

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alexmingoia
The interface. I switched to DDG because Google results are large boxes with
pictures that are taxing to scan and take a lot of screen space on mobile.

For learning I don’t go to a general search engine. I search Wikipedia first.
If I’m trying to find a code library I search GitHub first, etc.

~~~
firatcan
DDG have great privacy rules but not so great results on search :( I have
always end up with more irrelevant results while I am using ddg

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throwaheyy
That it’s turned from a search engine into a shopping portal and there are
certain things you simply can’t search for because Google assumes you must be
going shopping.

~~~
10kresistor
Or because they're censoring search results for one reason or another.

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10kresistor
9,999,999 results in .0000009 seconds.

Result 1: not even close

Result 2: that's the opposite of what I asked

Result 3: not even close

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Gustomaximus
The most annoying 'easy' fix is I'd like an easy way to stop domains showing.
I used some extension in the past but it doesn't work now. Would be great if
Google had a drop down next to results saying 'dont show this domain' for
future searches. Probably useful data for their algorithm too.

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taprun
Mediocre sites aided by purchased links are returned instead of great sites
with excellent content.

~~~
firatcan
Yep, my initial problem was this. For instance, I was trying to learn product
market fit, but the results I found on google was terrible.

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zzo38computer
Many of these complaints listed here are valid, but another one is that it
executes JavaScript code on the web page to find the text, and I don't want it
to do that.

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asfarley
The sense that I’m being shielded from dangerous ideas.

~~~
firatcan
What ahaha, do you mean they do sensorship?

