Hacker News Reader

Likewise matching DCP-L2550DW to pages with DCP-L2550BW or something similar. It is so obviously specific a no results answer is better than a misleading one.

I think this is due to people more often than not finding the top page useful regardless which just reinforces the link.

But it's super annoying to find you've just waited for a 300mb download of the wrong driver.

I think this is a lot more defensible. Eg (real example) if I search for 74HCT350, I would probably be okay, if not actively happy, to get results for 74ACT350 (a socket-equivalent chip in a somewhat faster logic family). It's much less defensible if "DCP-L2550DW" is quoted, since that's a clear indication that you want the exact string, but it's still better than outright ignoring half your query the way google does.

I agree very strongly with this. I don't understand why people complain about having to read the search results.

In so many cases slightly different product numbers are equivalent and differ in things like the market they are for, or the color, or something else you may or may not care about.

It seems to me that hiding these results required both Google to do mind reading and to decode spec sheets to see if they match what you had in mind.. all from a single string of semi-random characters.

Even worse: "<model number> manual". I don't google that because I like reading manuals in general.

You can try putting double-quotes around the model number. This is Google’s syntax for exact matches. For a good example, try searching for NYC both with and without quotes around it. Without quotes, you will get a much larger set of results where Google is trying to figure out what you mean when you say NYC… including results for New York City.

This doesn’t always work exactly but in general if you are looking for exact matches for certain terms, put those terms in quotes.

Double quotes keep getting less and less effective -- Google is progressively ignoring them more often when similar results are available. Worse, I've seen Google tell me that a term in double quotes simply doesn't exist on the web, when other engines will return many thousands of results. I seriously doubt that the competition has a bigger index!

This is what finally put me on using DDG.

So DDG aka (bing / yandex) is better for double quotes.. maybe, but it could also be just an illusion, try same queries there and see.

I have, that's actually why I switched. I was getting better results with DDG.

I think what I've noticed with technical searches is that Google tries too hard to "predict" what I am looking for. It always ends up showing me irrelevant (but surely highly ranked) fluff related to prior searches. The thing is, I don't need to see something related to my prior searches. I need to see what I am looking for TODAY. For me the "personalization" is often actively harmful.

If you put the word "margins" in quotes in your query, all of your results will contain that word. Similarly, you can force words not to appear by prefixing them with a "-".

> The only solution I can see is for a search engine to support both styles of communication.

Isn't this exactly what you're asking for? Non-technical users can be imprecise and let Google figure it out, while technical or power users can get more precise results with the various search operators?

I'm aware of quotes, but I have two issues:

1. It's tiring to type quotes around every word every time.

2. It takes you to the other extreme. Just because I'm being more precise than Google thinks I am doesn't mean if I have 8 words in my query that all of them are mandatory. There is potential for a useful middle ground that quotes don't get me to.

Quotes are one of many operators google has for search (1). You can build very powerful search arguments with a handful of easy to use operators. Sometimes taking the time to type in the proper operators can save you much more time by bringing you to the content you are looking for faster.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

Please quit helping. The thing is, until like 4 years ago, Google worked just fine without any operators. Then they improved it to the point you can't find anything specific any more.

Edit: Actually you could help. Show me where I set "Verbatim" as a permanent option :)

If you put the word "margins" in quotes in your query, all of your results will contain that word.

This seemed to be true at one time, but I noticed last night that it doesn't always work.

These days it seems to put include results without the word, then provide a tiny link below each deficient result with a link to "must include" the missing word in a new search.

That used to be the previous behavior, but now it's inconsistent.

All that link appears to do is add the quotation marks around that keyword.

Do you have an example where adding quotes doesn't work? As far as I can tell, it always works for me (yeah, we may be getting different personalized results, but still...)

It’s kind of hard to share links because google personalizes results against our wishes. But a search for ‘"monkeys" burritos san diego “fries”’[0] returns a first link [1] that doesn’t include ‘monkeys.’

There are also other results [2] that include ‘monkey’ not what I asked for.

It’s infuriating. I just want to grep the internet. Is that too much to ask?

[0] https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&ei=P1oH...

[1] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/481463016388903842/

[2] https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g55543-d4580159-...

In your first example, >90% of the text on the page is in the "More Like This" section which is heavily personalized by Pinterest. So I'm seeing different content than you are, and Googlebot saw different content than either of us. Given the complete randomness of the content in there, I wouldn't be surprised at all if "monkeys" appeared on the version that was indexed.

In your second example, the word "monkeys" does appear on the page, in the "Show reviews that mention" section.

More importantly, did you have a result in mind for this query that isn't showing up? It seems somewhat nonsensical.

As loathe as I am to invoke Inception, having an advertising platform index advertisements and then sell my traffic to advertisers feels like a recursive death I don't want to die.

Thanks for the reply. I’m on mobile and searched on mobile and I don’t see “show reviews that mention.” I do see “read reviews that mention” but that includes stuff but not monkeys [0].

The Pinterest page perhaps has monkeys at some point, but doesn’t now.

This isn’t a real search, I just added something whimsical (and I miss San Diego burritos). This is behavior I remember but don’t typically track so it’s hard to remember on command.

Note you can use search tools | verbatim and it will return pages will all terms. The Pinterest page is still there, but the trip advisor page is missing [1].

[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/Xlp8lsk [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22monkeys%22+burritos+san+d...

That used to be the case, and it was fine, but they started breaking those operators a few years back (maybe when they tried to make “+” search for Google+ pages, but I’m not sure).

The only solution I can see is for a search engine to support both styles of communication.

It would be great if Google had some kind of, let’s call it “Code Search” feature that searched all open source repositories.

> They may not even be capable of it.

Come on now...