[graycat]

Good to hear your concerns.

> The real problem with search engines is the fact that so many websites have hacked SEO that there is no meritocracy left.

I intend to announce the alpha test of my search engine here on HN.

My search engine is immune to all SEO efforts.

> I can possibly not find anything deep enough about any topic by searching on Google anymore.

In simple terms my search engine gives users content with the meaning they want and in particular stands to be very good, by far the best, at delivering content with "deep" meaning.

> I need something better.

Coming up.

> However, it will be interesting to figure the heuristics to deliver better quality search results today.

Uh, sorry, it's not fair to say that my search engine is based on "heuristics".

I'm betting on my search engine being successful and would have no confidence in heuristics.

Instead of heuristics I took some new approaches:

(1) I get some crucial, powerful new data.

(2) I manipulate the data to get the desired results, i.e., the meaning.

(3) The search engine likely has by far the best protections of user privacy. E.g., search results are the same for any two users doing the same query at essentially the same time and, thus, in particular, independent of any user history.

(4) The search engine is fully intended to be safe for work, families, and children.

For those data manipulations, I regarded the challenge as a math problem and took a math approach complete with theorems and proofs.

The theorems and proofs are from some advanced, not widely known, pure math with some original applied math I derived. Basically the manipulations are as specified in math theorems with proofs.

> A new breakthrough heuristic today will look something totally different, just as meritocratic and possibly resistant to gaming.

My search engine is "something totally different".

My search engine is my startup. I'm a sole, solo founder and have done all the work. In particular I designed and wrote the code: It's 100,000 lines of typing using Microsoft's .NET.

The typing was without an IDE (integrated development environment) and, instead, was just into my favorite general purpose text editor KEdit.

It's my first Web site: I got a good start on Microsoft's .NET and ASP.NET (for the Web pages) from

Jim Buyens, Web Database Development, Step by Step, .NET Edition, ISBN 0-7356-1637-X, Microsoft Press.

The code seems to run as intended. The code is not supposed to be just a "minimum viable product" but is intended for first production to peak usage of about 100 users a second; after that I'll have to do some extensions for more capacity. I wrote no prototype code. The code needs no refactoring and has no technical debt.

While users won't be aware of anything mathematical, I regard the effort as a math project. The crucial part is the core math that lets me give the results. I believe that that math will be difficult to duplicate or equal. After the math and the code for the math, the rest has been routine.

Ah, venture capital and YC were not interested in it! So I'm like the story "The Little Red Hen" that found a grain of wheat, couldn't get any help, then alone grew that grain into a successful bakery. But I'm able to fund the work just from my checkbook.

The project does seem to respond to your concerns. I hope you and others like it.

How should I announce the alpha test here at HN?

[pjc50]

This sounds extremely implausible; especially claiming "immune to SEO" is like declaring encryption "unbreakable". A lot of human effort would be devoted to it if your engine became popular.

[graycat]

How to be immune to SEO? Easy once see how.

More details are in my now old HN post at

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12404641

For a short answer, SEO has to do with keywords. My startup has nothing to do with keywords or even the English language at all. In particular, I'm not parsing the English language or any natural language; I'm not using natural language understanding techniques. In particular, my Web pages are so just dirt simple to use (user interface and user experience) that a child of 8 or so who knows no English should be able to learn to use the site in about 15 minutes of experimenting and about three minutes of watching someone use the site, e.g., via a YouTube video clip of screen captures. E.g., lots of kids of about that age get good with some video games without much or any use of English.

E.g., how are you and your spouse going to use keywords to look for an art print to hang on the wall over your living room?

Keyword search essentially assumes (1) you know what you want, (2) know that it exists, and (3) have keywords that accurately characterize it. That's the case, and commonly works great, for a lot of search, enough for a Google, Bing, and more in, IIRC, Russia and China. Also it long worked for the subject index of an old library card catalog.

But as in the post I replied to, it doesn't work very well when trying to go "deep".

Really, what people want is content with some meaning they have at least roughly in mind, e.g., a print that fits their artistic taste, sense of style, etc., for over the living room sofa. Well, it turns out there's some advanced pure math, not widely known, and still less widely really understood, for that.

Yes I encountered a LOT of obstacles since I wrote that post. The work is just fine; the obstacles were elsewhere. E.g., most recently I moved. But I'm getting the obstacles out of the way and getting back to the real work.

[pjc50]

> Really, what people want is content with some meaning they have at least roughly in mind

Yes, but capturing meaning mathematically is somewhat an unsolved problem in both mathematics, linguistics and semiotics. Your post claims you have some mathematics but (obviously as it's a secret) doesn't explain what.

SEO currently relies on keywords, but SEO as a practice is humans learning. There is a feedback loop between "write page", "user types string into search engine" and "page appears at certain rank in search listing". Humans are going to iteratively mutate their content and see where it appears in the listing. That will produce a set of techniques that are observed to increase the ranking.

[graycat]

> Yes, but capturing meaning mathematically is somewhat an unsolved problem in both mathematics, linguistics and semiotics.

I've been successful via my search math. For your claim, as far as I know, you are correct, but actually that does not make my search engine and its math impossible.

> That will produce a set of techniques that are observed to increase the ranking.

Ranking? I can't resist, to borrow from one of the most famous scenes in all of movies: "Ranking? What ranking? We don't need no stink'n ranking".

Nowhere in my search engine is anything like a ranking.

[pjc50]

So, do you only ever display one single result? Or do you display multiple results? Because if you display multiple results, they will be in a textual order, whether that's top to bottom or left to right, and that is a ranking.

People pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to move their result from #2 to #1 in the list of Google results.

[graycat]

> #2 to #1 in the list of Google results.

My user interface is very different from Google's, so different there's no real issue of #1 or #2.

Actually that #1 or #2, etc. is apparently such a big issue for Google, SEO, etc. that it suggests a weakness in Google, one that my work avoids.

You will see when you play a few minutes with my site after I announce the alpha test.

Google often works well; when Google works well, my site is not better. But the post I responded to mentions some ways Google doesn't work well, and for those and some others my site stands to work much better. I'm not really in direct competition with Google.

[yusef555]

stop vaguebooking and post it up on HN. if you're comfortable with where the product is at at the current moment then share it. it will never be finished so share it today.

[graycat]

I was not really announcing a new Web site, which I do intend to do at HN once my omelet is ready for actual eating, but just replying to the post

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22092248

of rahulchhabra07.

His post was interesting to me since it mentioned some of the problems that I saw and that got me to work on my startup. And my post might have been interesting to him since it confirms that (i) someone else also sees the same problems and (ii) has a solution on the way.

For explaining my work fully, maybe even going open source, lots of people would say that I shouldn't do that. Indeed, that anyone would do a startup in Internet search seems just wack-o since they would be competing with Google and Bing, some of the most valuable efforts on the planet.

So that my efforts are not just wack-o, (i) I'm going for a part of search, e.g., solving the problems of rahulchhabra07, not currently solved well; (ii) my work does not really replace Google or Bing when they work well, and they do, what, some billions of times a second or some such?; (iii) my user interface is so different from that of Google and Bing that at least first cut my work would be like combining a racoon and a beaver into a racobeaver or a beavorac; and (iv) at least to get started I need the protection of trade secret internals.

Or, uh, although I only just now thought of this, maybe Google would like my work because it might provide some evidence that they are not all of search and don't really have a monopoly, an issue in recent news.

[Nasrudith]

Nah - unbreakable encryption is actually possible with one time pads.

The only way SEO could be impossible is if there was no capacity to change search ranking no matter what - which would be both useless and impossible.

[freediver]

Get feedback before you launch. Id be happy to test it.

[graycat]

Thanks. I intend to announce the alpha test here at HN, and I will have an e-mail address for feedback (already do -- at least got that little item off my TODO list although it took 36 hours of on the phone mud wrestling with my ISP to set it up).