The growing irrelevance of Google Search | Hacker News Reader

The growing irrelevance of Google Search

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45 pointspdeva151 comments

So... instead of using a tool that will search virtually every source of information on the internet for you to bring you the most relevant results, you are blogging about how you limit your search breadth to single places that you happen to participate in...

...yawn

Exactly. He should have appended "...to me" to the end of his title.

You could do that to pretty much every opinion piece posted and upvoted on HN. Many posters here have obvious blinders on, posts about what someone is doing are presented as 'this is what everyone is doing' or 'this is what everyone will do' because if this person is doing it, everyone must be.

It's just so obvious.

Why not cut out the middle man? I don't search wikipedia, I just immediately land on the article I need. I have wikipedia built into my browser's address bar so why bother?

Using browsers without customizable search (tablets) is painful.

Same thing with other silos.

The author has a major point, we new need a new type of search engine. The most useful searches come from structured data, not web pages. It should return answers, not blue links. If you want to try that new search engine, I'm building it. Sign up at http://toinfinit.com/

So are Google, Apple, Microsoft and Wolfram Labs.

Seriously. Google searches these sites better than each site's own native search. And Google search is readily available in my Chrome browser bar on my laptop and phone, why would I take the added step of going to each site for their own inferior search?

Here's a rule... if you want to title your blog with something sweeping like "The growing irrelevance of X," you need to provide real, cited data to substantiate that claim. Just because you use Google less, doesn't mean there's a trend of doing so.

Google searches these sites better than each site's own native search.

This is what I mentioned in Challenging Google’s Search Engine: http://blog.databigbang.com/letters-from-the-future-challeng...

" When each site understands its own data better than Google, its internal search results will surpass Google’s. Google will no doubt continue to provide better global results, but the two-tiered search would decentralize efforts to improve algorithms. It is important to note that this solution does not need to be distributed: sites can share their local indexes and ranking algorithms with the routing search engine."

Specialized search is what it is, specialized. Google actually supports that, but it does involve a slight effort.

For example:

How was the finale of Breaking Bad?

Twitter:https://twitter.com/search?q=How%20was%20the%20finale%20of%2...

Google:https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Are+people+ab...

Are people able to finally login to GTA Online?

Twitter( had to shorten the string => more effort ): https://twitter.com/search?q=login%20GTA%20Online&src=typd&f...

Google: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Are+people+ab...

Google seems to be doing just fine IMO.

I do think that Google becomes paradoxically less useful as it gets more effective, but not because other websites are displacing it. I'll use a personal anecdote to explain what I mean, though I acknowledge that not everyone shares my situation.

In college, I used Google for 90% of my assigned research papers. I would rattle off questions, fetch some quotes and start synthesizing them into my writing. The other 10% of the time, I had professors who required book sources and sometimes ask me to bring the books to class.

Retrieving book sources always seemed like a pain in the ass. It required the labor of traveling to the campus library, finding a call #, etc. But a certain perk went along with all that labor: I was much more strategic and deliberate in my research. When you don't have an instant answer machine at your finger tips, you have to plot your course more carefully.

Interestingly, in my case, I spent about the same amount of time doing library research as I did using Google, even though Google should have been much faster in theory.

I was very impulsive and non-strategic in how I used Google to gather information. This is my shortcoming, of course, but I think Google enables it - more so as it becomes faster and more effective in returning information.

Back in 1994, I was planning a bike trip down the US west coast, Washington State to Mexico. I wanted to know sunrise and sunset times. At the time, the town library was across the street. So, I walked over, asked the nice lady at the desk to suggest a reference, and pumped in the nickels to xerox the pages I needed. Nowadays, I wouldn't even have to get up from my desk.

These days, if I were doing serious library research, I would bring along a computer or tablet. I would let Google take me as far into the subject as possible, so that I would know where to begin when looking for dead tree resources. I expect my main problems would be along the lines of, Google says this book is relevant, does the library have it? Or similarly relevant books?

For what it's worth, I'm desperately trying to switch to Duck Duck Go, and so annoyingly often I have to go back to google. In the end, that tells me google is still the most relevant search than the next best non creepy alternative.

That used to be true for me & DDG, but it's happening less & less. In fact, a couple of days ago, I found a situation where Google's search results were pretty much useless, while DDG got me what I wanted. I was looking for lyrics to a song. There was some site claiming to be a lyrics search engine that appeared to have SEO'd their way to the top of Google, so a Google search for lyrics got me to ... another search engine. But DDG got me the lyrics.

Also, we should note that DDG's "!g" syntax means you never have to deal with Google's search box.

Sure, there must be some situations where DDG wins.

But look at what you have said; in the last couple of days you have only one example of google failing you. Presumably for the rest of that time google was perfectly fine or better. Only once in that time did you have a better result from DDG.

Some would call that damning with faint praise. With that ratio, the only sane conclusion is to use google.

Currently DDG is my default search. But most of the time I do the DDG search, give up and repeat with google. As I say, Im trying but its not productive for me.

I was in the same boat. I spent a good portion of last year trying to use DDG as my default. It never panned out. Google was just more relevant. 99% of what I use Google for is programming related (solving problems, bringing up reference material etc) and DDGs results never seemed as good.

I've been using DDG for some time as my default search engine - everywhere and for everything. Currently on those rare times that I need s Googly response, I'll append with !sp. I'll take a minor inconvenience of three addional characters (or two, if you're happier with !g) and a space to support a company that is looking out for its user's backs over one that is becoming less user centric each year.

Breaking! Blogger claims search is dead because he isn't using it.

But isn't it true for a certain segment of the population. People are searching on Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, etc... These social search results have more credibility and relevance to me than vanilla results on search engines. If I use FB connect Bing does a good job of displaying results from my friends. We're still a farcry away from a unified search engine of all this data because rightfully each of these technologies want to own and monetize this data.

True, I guess in my case I don't care to search in a social context.

I just never found twitter results any more relevant than google.

I think Google Search is quite relevant, because it aggregates information from all of these sources. You don't have to think about which site would give you the best search results for a given query; Google does that for you.

A huge one that was omitted, questions of the class: how much does this thing cost? Is this thing any good? What's the best X I can buy?

Amazon.

I don't agree.

While yes, very often, I will land on the same few websites when searching for something (wikipedia, stack overflow, google+/google maps reviews, youtube videos), I still use google to actually get there.

Google still has, after all, a better search results ranking than wikipedia, twitter or stack overflow.

Agreed. The blog author misses out on a very essential part of Google Search, if he wants the best Twitter result, he'll only have to include 'Twitter' in the Google search. An added bonus is of course that the top non-Twitter results will be right there, maybe even some information about BS claims on Twitter.

How odd such a pointless and short blog post has made it this far up on HN.

The OP is stating a truism that I agree with (true with all truisms). Google is your default search engine for any query where (you believe) Google offers the highest probability of delivering the intended content/ answer.

So any product, in any vertical, that can respond to a query with greater utility than google - and condition it's userbase that that is the case - has the potential to supplant google for those queries. Great example is the drift of search traffic for flight travel on google to direct traffic to sites like kayak and expedia. (another example is the shift of people search).

The challenge of competing against kayak-like companies that offer great products in specific verticals, will only grow. So if you believe search traffic will not naturally decline over time you are effectively arguing that google will be able to outperform the pace at which new products will be built that have kayak (flight search) / linkedin (people search) / coverhound (auto insurance search) - like potential.

And I think Eric Schmidt would agree. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeIIpLqsOe4

Travel search is one vertical in which Google has a serious interest. In 2011, they acquired ITA Software,† which developed QPX, a widely used, Lisp-based airfare search and pricing system. They have since rolled out Google Flights, which competes rather directly with Kayak and Expedia.

†http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software

Agreed. I think that is the point the OP is making. As sites like Kayak grow in popularity, the usefulness of a discovery tool (search), diminishes.

I do google search to find SO and wiki links and don't understand what this fellow is talking about.

Likewise. I will often use the site: operator in Google searches if I think it will lead to more interesting results, although a lot of the time, those results will pop up high in the SERP even without the qualifier.

Wikipedia generally takes care of itself. However, I find the qualifier is sometimes useful for StackOverflow and HN. E.g., if it's programming, then SO. If it's a more general industry or platform question, then archived HN discussions will likely be interesting and lead to other links.

However, I do use Twitter search from time to time. Due to its real time nature, Twitter search gives you a different view. It's useful for watching breaking news, even though the short URLs will sometimes annoyingly lead to the same articles posted over and over.

Agree, for me is easier to quickly find answers going directly to chrome's url/search bar, type my query and find the answer either in SO or Wikipedia. Even though SO and Wikipedia's search engine are good, they certainly aren't better than Google's, and yes, they're great information resources but they are not the whole Internet, maybe 15-20% of the time I find answers somewhere else.

This needs to be analyzed from a revenue viewpoint. How much money does someone make when I search for how good the finale of breaking bad vs when I search for car insurance or home mortgage rates. Both searches are likely to some revenue but it's hundredths of a penny vs thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the customer.

Is google becoming less likely source for some searches? Maybe

Can I buy car insurance or get a mortgage on Amazon? Not yet.

The day I can go direct to Amazon for these items is a scary day for google.

The OP's argument is a bit weak. Really, you would search for opinions (e.g. finale of Breaking Bad) by looking throughout Twitter? That's the OP's idea of efficient consumption of information?

Twitter is great for what's happening right now. In any case, when I want to know that kind of thing with some immediacy. it's good enough to search for "Breaking bad finale" and Google would've gotten you some of the latest reviews from half-decent publications, and those reviews and their comment sections would make for better reading than tweet streams.

I do, however, agree with the OP that the knowledge silos are getting much better. But when I have a slightly obscure technical question, I never go straight to Stackoverflow...I use Google, and 80% of the time it takes me there. But for the harder problems in which my exact error message may have been discussed in a technical forum, Google is great for sussing it out. But as the silos get better, I wonder how that hurts Google's bottom line? By using Google as a way to get to StackOverflow, I'm consuming Google resources but not clicking on any adds. There's only so much use they can get out of my usage data...

While I may not discount the search for "opinions" has passed Google by I think the search for information with Google is still quite relevant. Google does a pretty good job with indexing SO, Yelp, and Wikipedia that nearly always my top 3 results are a link to one of those site for a question that I would generally find on those sites.

Anecdotally, this seems true only for some iPhone users. For Android users (myself included) it's still supremely convenient to slide up and speak or tap my search. I end up on StackOverflow a lot too, but Google gets me there.

I'd summarize this as 'Some guy prefers to find answers on twitter'.

I, on the other hand, personally never use twitter. So I guess that evens things out for Google. Larry can sleep easy now.

Stackoverflow, Twitter, etc. may have all the information but as the writer says the results from long tail search results which are most accurate are still from Google.

Google is still useful in searching if what you need is not just in a 1-2 word search. It's more the ethics of the search company which I think is the problem.

I personally started using Duck Duck Go because of all the targeted ads which Google seems to bombard me with.

I find myself using reddit more for its search function rather than for general browsing. If I have a certain question I need answered or need advice about really anything, it's very likely that 5 other people already asked the same question before. Plus, it appears to be a much more effective way to cut out the junk results from Google and give more honest and straightforward answers.

I tried to delete my YouTube account today as a test. I failed because it seems the only way now is to delete all your accounts on Google, including Gmail and Google Docs. Google basically wants to take over my identity and manage it. "You can check out but you can never leave at Hotel Google" is what I fear. What if I did delete everything? Would that even work? Don't know.

Google is moving to one account for all of Google, like it should have been in the first place. Of course deleting your YouTube account would delete everything else.

That's b.s. There are YouTube videos I watch recreationally that I don't necessarily want to attach to my public identity.

It's certainly not a great solution, but I practice 'clean room' browsing, by using one browser where I log in to services like GMail, and one browser for anonymous stuff.

Too late.

There are YouTube videos I watch recreationally that I don't necessarily want to attach to my public identity.

Wait until what you viewed is broadcast http://uk.news.yahoo.com/google-users-stars-online-ads-14411... all over Google, and maybe the web via Adsense ads.

What happened to "Don't be evil?" I turned that off but the problem is you're never sure if you've actually handled something correctly because they make it so darn difficult.

If you liked this article you might like Challenging Google’s Search Engine: http://blog.databigbang.com/letters-from-the-future-challeng...

My recent search tendencies are very similar to the OP but for an entirely different reason: Google results have gotten really bad for me. I almost never find something I'm looking for on first try. I often do with StackOverflow and Yelp, though.

The flipside of his argument is, of course, is it really a good idea to rely on silos like Twitter, Yelp, StackOverflow, and Wikipedia for all our knowledge resources? Those then represent single points of failure, which can be taken down by an errant backhoe or intercepted (and surreptitiously altered?) by the NSA. Google, on the other hand, will aggregate more sources of information than just those, and it's unlikely they can be taken out by a backhoe. (The NSA is still a problem, at least for interception, but perhaps not for alteration...)

Seems like no one really agrees with this. So that's a relief to me.

"If I don't use it it must be irrelevant."

> my group of friends are more interesting than yours

The growing centralization of information.

I consciously try not to use Google but when I do it's with ad blockers. For products is Amazon directly--they are usually #1 anyway after the many ads Google puts on top. Ironically Google is training people to go directly to the top sites by putting them on top for virtually anything.

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