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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

Yes, Google is basically just a better X searching tool than X provides, where X is most every web site on earth.

I didn't want to go to far on an off-topic tangent, but basically what I was getting at was that I increasingly seem to be interested in a very limited number of sites -- that is, mostly, sites that I already know of and recognize.

I use Reddit search more when I'm doing exploratory searching hoping to land on a site I've never been before, because it serves me already vetted/reviewed sites. In this way, Google is no longer a tool for me to do search, where I'm not sure where I'll end up, it's now a tool to get me where I know I want to go (which happens to be some wikipedia page most of the times).

It is an interesting point. Google has become as much a substitute for the address bar as a way to find new things.

(If you don't have bookmarks or don't keep a browsing history / don't know how to use URL autocompletion).

I use autocomplete for commonly-visited sites, but Google plus vague memories of basic search terms have almost completely supplanted my use of bookmarks these days.

Especially since you can't bookmark everything, not knowing what you're going to want to refer to in the future.

Or rather you can bookmark everything, but the resulting list is nearly useless. I used to have a massive collection of bookmarks that I never referred to because it was far too large to actually use. Plus half the links had gone stale.

I'd like to suggest adopting something akin to the Dewey decimal system for your bookmarks. You don't have to create folders and subfolders but just prepend the number to the bookmark title. That way they get ordered in an alphabetic list.

In my experience, sorting by domain is usually enough.

Web History can get you around the vagueness part. It has more that once helped me recall something along the lines of "What was that search result 3 items down from last week.."

https://history.google.com/history/

I know quite a few people have this turned off due to some perceived "creepy" factor, but personally I cannot recommend it enough.

Interesting you would mention Reddit search because I find the opposite, that Reddit's search functionality is lacking and Google will often find it easier (could definitely be bias though).

> I use Reddit search more when I'm doing exploratory searching hoping to land on a site I've never been before, because it serves me already vetted/reviewed sites.

In a somewhat similar way, I get a lot of good mileage out of hnsearch when investigating different technologies that I am new to.

Not at all. If you're filtering based on multiple categories, a search that understands them, even barebones, is better than a brilliant generic-text-search.

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