Google Drops Discussions Search Filter and Others | Hacker News Reader

Google Drops Discussions Search Filter and Others

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81 pointstszyn82 comments

The promise was that, as search engines get better, there would be no need for bookmarking and downloading, since all the content in the world is only one sloppy search query away.

Somehow, I seem to have ignored this stubbornly and instead bookmarked pages, downloaded videos and copied strings (!) out of the web for years.

Not that it did me much good, I now have thousands of inconsistently sorted bookmarks and a bunch of directories filled with assorted data.

What this article tells me (again), is that because you can't trust search engines to behave in a predictable manner, you can't even be sure you'll be able to find the stuff that you know is online.

You can't really trust bookmarks either. Most of my bookmarks are dead either because the site is now gone or because some blog author decided to change their path format and didn't bother setup 301 redirects.

Microsoft's help pages are the worst for this. "Oooh, confusing .NET problem I'll google a response - Hey, a nice forum-post explaining that MS has a document telling me how to handle this issue click NOOOOOOOOOOOOO".

Whenever I have a C# problem and google it, I always skip the MSFT documentation and go straight to any possible Stackoverflow or discussion page.

Same here, it's not even worth going on their site.

There used to be a whole slew of helpful msdn (technet?) blog posts which now not only redirect but also require logging in with an MS account to read them.

It's really unhelpful.

edit: Actually I just checked and it looks like they've eased up on the need for logging in, I guess they saw too much of a backlash. (Or just flip flopped their own decision again.)

I started saving/clipping entire articles for this purpose. Evernote has a 'clipper' functionality which works fairly well, or you can print to PDF.

I tried Evernote. I can archive information pages into notebooks as groups and find by tags. But it cannot save dynamic product/service information with updates, and it's not self-organized. So like other online bookmarks, it's not popularly used.

That's what the Internet Archive is for :)

And there's an interesting idea for a browser extension.

If the page the user is looking for no longer exists, check the internet archive and present that instead.

I use this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pag... It's not automatic, but I guess it wouldn't be hard.

I pay pinboard.in to host cached copies of everything I bookmark.

This is exactly right and the sole reason I use Evernote for its full page clipping abilities.

For keeping local copies, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-archi... is a good add-on that improves Firefox's save functionality. I use it very frequently: ctrl-s, Enter, and I get an .mht of the page I'm reading.

For remote copies, https://archive.org/ can be instructed to keep a copy of a page, e.g.

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://news.ycombinator.com/ to check for copies

https://web.archive.org/save/https://news.ycombinator.com/ to record a copy

These bookmarklets can be used to go from your current page to /web/ or /save/:

  javascript:(function(){window.open('https://web.archive.org/web/*/'+(''+window.location));})();

  javascript:(function(){window.open('https://web.archive.org/save/'+(''+window.location));})();

Unfortunately, this won't work on sites that robots.txt-block Internet Archive, and existing archives may be made inaccessible by a future robots.txt block.

http://archive.is/ is another useful site that executes all of the JavaScript and captures the post-JS-execution DOM.

Thank you for your information. I'm looking for tools to save my useful information like other people do. I have two problems with this type of archival tool besides the robots.txt issue:

1. The static snapshot can only give us an idea of what it looked like because it's not functioning, not updating. Better than nothing, but we may have no clue what we want to find other than a few keywords. If you need to search the entire context of the archival, everybody needs to install a mini search engine.

2. If it becomes popular like Google, so many people are going to use it, it will create so much data duplication on everybody's pc, which is helpful but not an efficient solution.

Do you like to have a self-organized personal private web on top of the public web via a few clicks? http://bit.ly/1c2DzN6

I've found that copying recipes off of webpages is the most important one - you'll never find the same recipe twice.

That is quite interesting.

Any idea why?

Several reasons. There is a seemingly unlimited variation of each basic recipe name (often the same exact recipe named multiple ways; or slightly different recipes named the same). There are thousands of recipe sites and blogs, and ten million unique recipes. The popularity of recipes and recipe sites can change rapidly, and often does; due to seasonality, food trends, seo, competition - so that recipe you found at result #4 on Google, isn't likely to be there a year from now.

Online recipes is herding cats.

Are you sure it's because of the website change instead of the search engine dynamics? The search engine results are not organized, therefore it's unpredictable where a particular results may show up. If the website changes it's keyword combination in tags on the page, it may also disappear from our search results using the same keywords as before.

So we should save it in categories instead of using keywords only. Try the following link and search for "recipe" than click "more similar links..." may give you some idea of how to save an organize your useful information into your private web. (This site is in early beta, there are not much data available yet.)

http://usweb.bingobo.com/usweb/welcome.jsp

I typically use google images to search for recipes, I very rarely have issues relocating a recipe.

Similarly, I found a page a few days ago about fixing the rMBP trackpad in Windows 8, and now that I have Windows 8, I just can't find it again! Really wish I'd bookmarked it.

In Firefox, you can roll back through your history for several days of links, and search the link text. Does your browser keep a history?

I built my own little tag + bookmark browser extension with the dropbox API (my app is not public). It works for me. Just gotta get better at tagging. Basic browser bookmarks are not good enough.

You have described exactly what I use instapaper for.

It is a crying shame that the instapaper search is nearly useless, but it means I can usually cut down my search set to my own 500 saved pages vs the entire web.

>The promise was that, as search engines get better, there would be no need for bookmarking and downloading, since all the content in the world is only one sloppy search query away.

That's exactly why you need something like discussions: refinement. There's no specific 'right result' for every possible user and query. Google might give precedence to blog posts or articles from big sites for some queries but what I really want is to search forum posts. They might as well just remove the search options for images with that premise, since they supposedly know what you really want and you don't need to filter.

Evernote

"The promise was that, as search engines get better, there would be no need for bookmarking and downloading, since all the content in the world is only one sloppy search query away."

It was back to the AltaVista age, when the web is simple and clean. Just like you, I could never think we can keep using keyword combinations to filter the search results to fit our needs forever.

We need a self-organized storage of information, we need more efficient ways than keyword combination, and we need the search results to be consistent in a period of time.

Can we achieve this goal and meet the users needs in the near future? Maybe: http://bit.ly/L6RKdN

This is the final nail in the coffin of DejaNews. Just another step in Google's continuing mission to make their Search product worse & worse.

It's baffling.

This.

DejaNews was the absolute best source of technical information from the USENET archives, with posts back to the 1980s. By 2001 Google had everything under control:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/USENET$20archives

Then Google lost it.

The addition of "Google Groups" resulted in tons of SPAM and almost nothing of use. Now, because their own baby is so ugly, Google decided to kill all their adopted children. So much for "Don't be evil".

I like USENET too. Information should be organized in that way. It was just too old. If we put the search engine of top of that with a nice graphical UI, that'll be a lot more help.

This is what I'm always thinking about since 1997. Now I got the chance to put together something for people's daily life, but not perfect. It's in early beta now. http://kck.st/JNqv8z

It feels like they will eventually remove all features except maybe for the get lucky button, if we are lucky.

You still can, just not as obviously: https://www.google.com/?tbm=dsc

Thank you, it works. After some googling, it seems the following are supported [1]:

  Applications : tbm=app
  Blogs*       : tbm=blg
  Books        : tbm=bks
  Discussions* : tbm=dsc
  Images       : tbm=isch
  News         : tbm=nws
  Patents      : tbm=pts
  Places*      : tbm=plcs
  Recipes*     : tbm=rcp
  Shopping*    : tbm=shop
  Video        : tbm=vid

* those not available via normal search page (from my location at least).

[1] http://stenevang.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/google-search-url-...

Does anyone know what these searches do? Does a filter limit the search to known domains, or silently add keywords that identify a site as a blog or a video?

Does anyone know what 'tbm' stands for?

Why would you want to search Discussions or Blogs? Everything interesting is already on Google+. /sarcasm

You know, someday Google+ will no longer be the "strategory" priority. There will be a new CEO. All the hands on the corporate ouija board will shift in yet another direction.

At which point, all these moves to deprecate parts of the web, in an effort to shore up G+? They will look even more unfortunate. So much discarded, for so little gain.

This actually looks worse than a move to shore up G+. The list of things they've pared it down to looks suspiciously like a list of categories that have the highest advertising revenue.

I also notice that depending on your search terms it now changes the order of the menu items; I was very surprised a few day ago when I noticed that Images wasn't the second list option on the screen.

To test this seach for "images" or "videos" on google. It will change the list order.

This is extremely irritating as it tries to guess whether you're trying to search for a certain type of of thing (text/images/vid/news/shopping/etc), as it frequently guesses wrong, and then sends us searching for the right list option because they've been shuffled round.

Designers, do not change your menu item order unless you're damned sure you're gonna get it right. Confusing your users is never helpful.

  ** edit **

Ah, I see the article mentions this. Well it's still bloody annoying.

Agree. We need the consistency, at least in a certain period of time. Whenever the search results changes, we are lost unless we choose to do the filtering. But the group of filtering does not quite make sense for everybody.

Google tried to be more intelligent on search, but it's not the right way. Let people keep their useful information of their own should be the right direction. See the video here: http://bit.ly/1hJKNux

Maybe this is a good spot to mention how much the updated Google Maps also suck. Pretty though.

Just awful, I agree.

I still can't figure out how to get street view without actually searching first.

Click where you want it, it should appear in the upper left.

the New android Map app is a terrible piece of crap too

it's a damn shame that the new phones ship with the new version stock & you have to root to permanently uninstall it.

Initially I think the Google Map is the best product from Google. That was the reason why I moved from Yahoo to Google. Then I got used to it.

Later on I found that the map printing has big problem to keep it as 100% like before after they did some weird change and changed back.

I guess Google should listen to their customers more than what they think and want to do. Is the information on this topic will be ignored by Google? Most probably. Then they tends to lose customers sooner than later.

Any alternatives? I asked about this two days ago but got no answers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7124132

Also, I know that "?tbm=dsc" works but I expect the quality of the results to start falling (it already has for a while) since Google probably isn't going to work to improve the filter.

http://boardreader.com/ is a search engine of just forums. Pretty useful.

Also this search list of Q&A sites might be useful: http://nuggety.com/u/nuggety/questions-and-answers

Everyone is dissing Google here. Perhaps understandably so since most folks in HN are advanced users and an advanced search feature was removed.

Google is driven by data and sorry but advanced users are a mere blip in that data. I can bet there was a gazilion user studies that showed that your grandma was super confused when 10 options would pop up when she pressed 'More'. The same studies showed that she was much less so confused when 4 options were presented, increasing engine usability for her.

My point here is that some folks attribute sinister motives (more search dollars), while the actual motive is just to make the interface usable for more people.

(Disclaimer: I work at Google, not in search though.)

I don't get your point. Is it that people should not complain about Google removing a feature they like, because you have presented a guess as to why they removed it? (FWIW - I agree with you that it was not maliciously removed)

Personally I like it when users complain loudly about decisions that impact them. The idea of negative publicity might deter such actions in the future (in theory anyway).

The point is in the third paragraph. A lot of comments here conclude that the motives for doing this are sinister. One person even thinks it was removed because it would make users spend hours reading discussions when that time should really be spent shopping.

People should absolutely complain when a change impacts them negatively. People should also keep in mind that with a user base the size of Google's, every change is going to upset someone.

http://xkcd.com/1172/

>People should absolutely complain when a change impacts them negatively. People should also keep in mind that with a user base the size of Google's, every change is going to upset someone.

We're in violent agreement !

The old saying "every change will upset someone/can't please 'em all chuckle chuckle" is a cop-out.

I've had managers say exactly this about flawed interfaces I've been asked to build, with marketing directives dictating crucial layout choices and ultimately problematic usability. Warned against but overridden with "can't please em all". Yet the complaints came rolling in big time over an extended period due these change to the tv guide I made.

The problem with marketing depts making interface decisions is that their priorities are with things like "aligning with the tone of the campaign" or "blatantly copying a competitor for lack of confidence in one's own original ideas".

We're talking about a feature that has been in Google search for many years, then suddenly gone in the blink of an eye, without explanation.

"Sinister" actions are done quietly, you hope no-one will notice. If their reasons are in the interests of users, they'd blog or post about it somewhere to keep people informed about their product. They failed to mention it.

Google has already made it clear they are directing traffic to G+ to sustain their bank balance and pursuit of making a Google spacecraft or whatever. This latest move, plundering useful things in search, is the same bad User Interface behaviour as forcing people to sign up to G+ to leave a rating out of five for an app. They're forcing together two unrelated systems or services with bad welds, or removing useful components leaving empty space.

I keep dreaming of an open source, distributed search engine and social network.

But I guess things will have to get much worse before they get better.

Don't give up, it can still happen. A lot of the bits and pieces exist to do that already, we just need to keep raising awareness, and maybe get a well-heeled individual or company (or two, or three) to throw some support behind the whole thing.

Open source, distributed search engine: http://yacy.net/

Open source, distributed social networks are a dime a dozen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_prot...

"Now when you search, the type of results you can select at the top of the page will vary depending on what makes sense for your search."

Makes sense to Google, that is. Shopping and apps make sense. A discussion that might take an hour to read or prompt one to read further discussions instead of shopping, liking or checking in doesn't.

It's a future where I decide to go out to eat because I can't find a recipe I like. I climb in my self driving car and it takes me to Taco Bell. And only Taco Bell.

Am i the only one recently having moments like "wait a second!", while using google services?

Connecting every google service to a single one might be the best thing for Google, BUT, not for me!

Google, you are almost merged with whole Internet thing, so stop forcing people into using a single system!!

I like and use gmail often but don't want to be logged in while checking youtube!

Just use a different browser.

Is there an operator similar to "define:" that you can use? I can find a link for operators, but I do not know how up to date it is.

http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html

This train has derailed a while ago.

You couldn't search discussions AND verbatim.

Verbatim got broken a while ago too.

Now they explicitly state that they skipped some of your search terms (presumably for better paid keywords).

Oh, and don't forget paying link-scheming SEO clients.

You can use this url* although it seems to me it's inferior to what they offered previously. Maybe it's just my imagination.

* https://www.google.com/webhp?tbm=dsc

If this isn't ironic, I don't know what is.

Why ironic?

NSA?

As in, it is ironic b/c Google is limiting our ability to deep search conversations while facilitating the NSA's deep searching of our communications.

But, simply stating "NSA?" is too subtle for the down vote happy set.

Google (which started as a search engine, way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth) is now increasingly working on _narrowing down_ the search options available to users.

I need more clarification on how this is ironic.

The appeal of Google, back in the days of Altavista, was in the fact that it could search various things, giving better results. Now it's intent on giving you fewer things to search.

That changed long ago. All the google is doing last two years is stopping projects, removing features and replacing acceptable GUIs by less practical ones.

To be fair, they also work pretty hard at collecting your personal information.

"Now it's intent on giving you fewer things to search"

This intention is viable and supposedly helpful for users because we don't need millions of results back, which just does not make sense. We need fewer but more relevant results back with high quality information. This is hard to achieve.

Only some human-powered search engines can provide this much quality but they cannot cover a wide range of the web due to the resource constraints. Google always tries to use better algorithms to do this job better. So users are suffering from their experiments.

I agree if search engines can only do this much job is ok, don't need to be too intelligent, like the days back to AltaVista. Actually Google's PageRank and server farms killed it, while some meta search engines can help to provide a broader coverage. Now we are about the time to find better solutions: http://bit.ly/1fu5glK

Here, from the Oxford English Dictionary:

"""A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things."""

One would expect Google to help IMPROVE search, not hinder it.

Nail in the head.

All they want now is displaying more results = more ad revenue.

Duck Duck Go.

Jus' sayin'

I am afraid I don't understand. Duck Duck Go searches google, so if you are having a problem with a google service, how would this help?

No, it uses bing + a little secret sauce, as I understand it.

Edit: "Link results are API driven, though top links may come from other sources. Link sources include: Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Blekko, WolframAlpha, and many others."[1]

"DuckDuckGo gets its results from over one hundred sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, which are stored in our own index), Yahoo! (through BOSS), Yandex, WolframAlpha, and Bing. For any given search, there is usually a vertical search engine out there that does a better job at answering it than a general search engine. Our long-term goal is to get you information from that best source, ideally in instant answer form."[2]

1. http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/1/28/duckduckgo-archite...

2. https://duck.co/help/results/sources

Ah, my mistake, I confused it with scroogle. I tried to upvote you but I don't think I have enough Karma.

I am finding google search more and more doesnt find what I am looking for. Its frustrating.

I am very sad to see the blog option go away. I used that all the time.

Sorry to simplify, but I remember when Google enabled,

I tried to use Google to autocomplete your sentence but all I got was a link to this discussion.

I want that f--- filter back, it's the best thing about Google...

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