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Comment by vasco | Hacker News Reader

Nowadays you should google using what in 2005 would be considered "the wrong way to search". Back then it was all about keywords, quotes and so on. For example if you wanted to know if dogs could eat apples you'd search:

> dog apple dangerous

Today you should search:

> can dogs eat apples

And you get way better results with the second form. I've noticed that people who are stuck thinking that the right way to google is still the former overlap a lot with the crowd that keeps complaining google is worse now than it was before.

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I’d argue that it’s not a “better way”, but rather a regression: I assume Google genuinely wants to understand my query, and I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t still be obvious to Google what kind of results it should return.

Otherwise, it there truly is a “right way of asking Google questions”, why doesn’t Google release and promote a guide about it so people can be more successful in their search?

Okay, so answer me this... I'm trying to find out about the extra controls in the old space suits. I believe they used a chin switch or chin toggle (resistive). If I google "did astronauts control things with their chin" I see: 'It's All Different for Women in Space | Marie Claire' and 'Pillsbury Space Food Sticks were sweet Slim Jims in space' as the first 2 answers... nothing about switches. If I google 'space suit chin switch' I get links to resistivity toggle switches.

heck I was putting in exact model numbers today like MS3015S20-27SZ and google was returning me OTHER models such as MS3015S20-27PZ which is the male or female version of a part (PZ vs SZ), or changing the20-27 to a 29-4 which are all completely different parts. This is with verbatim on.

I could very well be biased, but the first example still seems more useful than the second.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dog%20apple%20dangerou...

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=can%20dogs%20eat%20app...

Also worth comparing (seems to focus more on diabetes than cyanoglycosides. Diabetes is the bigger chronic problem, and cyanoglycosides are the bigger acute problem, so which is a bigger danger largely depends on how disciplined the owner is.):

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+dangerous+about+feed...

Another thing for us on HN to note. This is how most people ask questions. It is not just that the other way is wrong - it is also less common.

Ya of course, but my natural inclination is not to ask a question to a web page

Right - I think this is part of the "scaling" of the internet. Those of us (relatively small set of earlier heavy internet users) are forced to change as the product is built for the wider audience.

I'm in the awkward middle area I think where I'm almost a digital native, and what you said maps perfectly to my experience. In middle school and high school I got pretty good at the first type of search you mentioned. I was young enough that I was almost learning how to "speak" google and it came easily, I was fluent. Throughout the end of high school and into college I had more and more issues finding what I wanted and one day after I had failed to search several times I thought to myself "Fuck it. I'm just going to type in exactly what I want in plain English, as if I was a moron, and see what happens." And it worked, and that day a lightbulb went off in my head.

I think this also indicates why Google seems to have gotten worse at programming questions.

If “you’re doing it wrong” didn’t fly with Apple. It doesn’t fly with Google.

I hate it as much as any other geek, but it did pretty much fly with apple. Even when it was as bad as "You're holding your phone wrong" bad.

I've noticed the same, and it's an incredibly hard habit to break!

"you're thinking about it wrong" isn't really that great a defense of Google, you know? I'm not being flippant. The two examples you gave are different searches, with different goals.

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