Google search parameters in 2012 | Hacker News Reader

Google search parameters in 2012

rankpanel.com

42 pointsAPuschilov18 comments

Always a good idea to truncate one's search queries when sharing with others down to a simple "/search?q="

Example: https://google.com/search?q=google

The most important parameter of all is missing i.e. ncr (no country redirect), which, ironically stopped working for me in the last few days.

Can someone confirm that the following query gives non personlized search results?: http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu&ncr=1&pws=0

btw, this thing has been my #1 complaint with google for years. How hard is to make a completly 'neutral' non personalized version of Google available at a specific adress or with a checkbox in your google account.

It's strange how often I see this complaint about wanting a non-personalized version of Google.

On google.com, there is a toggle switch allowing you to turn off personal results on a particular search (it's been there since the launch of SPYW).

And if you're looking for a more permanent setting, there's one available in the Google search preferences (available through the gear on the search results page or at https://www.google.com/preferences) which allows you to set it to "Do not use personal results".

Google still does a horrible job at respecting your browser language. Someone, with very questionable logic, thinks that UI language should be directly related to the physical location of the browser.

Even when explicitly specifying English, it still doesn't work. For example, the alt text for Google logos will appear in the "geo-language", regardless of UI setting.

Other Google sites, such as blogspot, switch to the geo-language without any apparent way to override.

Sometimes, Chrome even kicks in and asks if you'd like to translate the content into the correct language.

This is moronic.

> How hard is to make […]

Since you are on HN, I assume you either are an engineer of some sort or something close to that and you are working on some product, so I expect you to know that the answer to questions that begin like that is very, very often “more than you expected”.

(I would like the option of a “neutral” Google Search too)

I guess any change to something so big as google search is not simple per se. But my problem is that I think this is their business decision and not a technical problem that needs to be solved as I remember a thread here mentioning that even engineers at Google have a problem with this (that is, personalized seach results)

Given that it worked that way until recently, I'm sort of inclined to say "Already implemented but UI missing."

I can't read the content on my small Android screen, zooming in hides the blog content.

http://www.imgur.com/tnlK0.jpg

Enterprise Quality responsive web design

thanks for this :(

Are there any add-ons out there which allow you to remove specific parameters from the URL before requesting it? This would be very useful for me, as I have a slight (probably OCD-related) problem with the parameters added while browsing YouTube. Before I start viewing a video, I always remove "&feature=related" and similar ones appearing, causing a reload. I would prefer not requesting with those parameters in the first place.

You can also make a custom setting in Chrome to send only the parameters to Google that you want. In the Settings panel, click on Manage Search Engines. Make a "new" search engine but make the query go to Google (or YouTube, or whatever) with only the parameters you want. You can start with the url for Google and prune down the input encoding or the sourceid or whatever you want, or just make the path be "/search?q=%s" if you want to go really minimal.

that's a great solution. it would be also quite great if you would tell us what these (to us) unknown parameters mean :)

Yes, you can find a bunch of Greasemonkey scripts for Google and Youtube doing exactly this. An alternative might be NoCrap, which sounds like a useful thing (I have to admit that I haven't used it though) http://www.ghacks.net/2012/01/17/nocrap-removes-annoyances-f...

It irritates me that all this stuff is sent in the URL. Personally, I would put the query (and query-related) things in the URL, then use POST parameters for the stuff that the user needn't see.

Well that would break back and forward history navigation as browsers require you te explicitly resend POST parameters.

Also the possibility to bookmark and to send a link to somebody else.

Also after all, you want to GET the search result, not POST anything.

What's the harm of sending it in the URL? That it looks a little uglier? Using POST instead of GET defeats bookmarking or linking ability.

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