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Comment by nhebb | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak for others, but my disappointment is with the margin of improvement. I know that results often sucked back in 2001, but with 10 years of progress I would hope to get better results. In the case of "buy domain name" (http://www.google.com/search?q=buy+domain+name), 4 of the top 6 results I get are How To articles, not sources to buy domains.

Google is trying to solve a hard problem, and I appreciate that. I just don't have the patience I did 10 years ago to click through all the results to find a legitimate site. If I get a set of results that look like spam, I try to refine the terms, but often just give up.

I know that Google tries to solve this problem algorithmically, but I can't help but think that mixing in a human review would immensely improve results. And by human, I mean a Google employee, not a sure-to-be-gamed community review.

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I think the issue here is that for you the correct results set would be reputable domain name providers, whereas for many other people, the howto articles are in fact what they're looking for.

Without having personal search switched on, they need to hedge their bets. (note: not having tried it I don't know how effective the personalized search is) In general these populist algorithms may tend to skew the results against techies, or those who 'know what they want', in favour of overall increase in perceived quality.

As far as I know there is a human component, and there is definitely significant weight these days towards CTR as determining quality. These would likely just reinforce the populist ranking factors.

One of the underlooked aspects of Google is the sidebar - using the 'fewer shopping sites' and time-based queries can be a huge help to relevance. I've for years used search modifiers (+, .., - etc.) in my initial queries with an expectation of what Google might expect. A search like "Buy Domain Names" still retains a lot of semantic ambiguity that their algorithm has to wrestle with. You have the tools to fix that yourself.

As such I tend to agree with Matt on this. We've just forgotten how bad it was.

for many other people, the howto articles are in fact what they're looking for.

That's a fair point, but one of the top 6 when I searched was from fourhourworkweek.com, so a whole other level of bias set in on my part. :)

We've just forgotten how bad it was

I still remember wanting to go to hotbot.com and accidentally typing hotbox.com. In a room full of people. So, some of my memories of early engine use are actually quite vivid.

Try misspelling a few other well known domains. That tactic is still in full force. I.e. http://goggle.com/ (hint: this is not google, so fill it in at your own risk).

I think most people searching for "buy domain name" (and not something more specific like "where to buy domain name" or "domain registrars") are probably looking for introductory info on how to go about purchasing their first domain.

In that context, these results could actually be considered better for most people.

From my results with that search, only 2 of the top 6 are How To articles, and they are the last two of the six.

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