[mmahemoff]

I can only give you anecdotal evidence, which is that myself and many others (per social media) are constantly appending "reddit" because the first N results are all e-commerce sites or thinly-veiled promos for them in the form of listicles.

e.g. Search for "camera with wifi" versus "camera with wifi reddit". If you're doing any research, you will find the latter more useful. Now I know some will say many people just want to buy the product and will be satisfied with a direct link to purchase, but the thing is a good search engine will mix in different types of results. What you get here is dozens of virtually identical results with any genuine info - e.g. a recent post on a reputable personal blog or a social media post - completely buried.

Do any other engines do it better? Maybe not. But Google itself certainly used to do it better, if only because it didn't have the majority of the internet trying to game its algo.

[basch]

At this point, I basically need to know or find an authorities source first. PCMag still appears to be a good resource, moreso than Tom's Hardware and Wirecutter at times (I think.) It's sort of the same shit, but they seem to put a little more work into being right. Too many listicles that are "10 best" are really "the first 10 the author saw while searching." When coronavirus started, theres no way anybody writing most of those "review rollups" ordered and tried on any of the masks they assembled into posts. There are fewer and fewer places that seem to be trying things themselves before recommending them.

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-sony-mirrorless-lenses

Google really needs an authoritative mode that strips out or deduplicates the news cycle and blogsphere. Something that can tell that every post is basically the same thing and turns it into one entry. I want uniqueness and quality. I dont need the same opinion repeated across 10 urls.

A CTRL+F of the MUM page didnt find the word duplicate once.

[nsonha]

next generation of search engines should have a config where people can customize their algorithm.

I don't feel that google did worse over the years, more like the commerce part of the internet overtaking the information part.

Actually you make a good point, since google has a shopping tab maybe they should show ads over there only and dedicate the "normal" google to general info

[selfhoster11]

Not to mention that most of those listicles are an extremely shallow cross-section of available products. Reddit is far more willing to suggest off-the-wall options like used 5 year old hardware that still performs better than the newest shiny, and uncovers far more slightly options that are slightly off the beaten, consumerist path.

[mmahemoff]

And also, a search engine with a greater bias on UX would be more personalised, so it would show those kinds of results to the people who regularly seek them.

[numpad0]

It’s funny Google Search still does good at what they were intended for, searching intelligence by keyword to gain understanding.

Google neither care to confirm or deny but the origin of Google Search is reportedly some CIA/NSA internal program. Imagine there’s a ton of random Soviet documents, and you wanted to know what the codename chikensandwich in Slicebread division might refer to, or which document is referred to the most from other documents regarding the topic. Don’t you think, Google Search as you remember it does exactly that.

And this conspiracy theory explains why Search, Maps and Mail and very few other products built by such a laid back disorganized organization work so well and only those work well, that it’s because those are technology dump from NSA and Google is just an elaborate museum shop allowed to capitalize on their heritage.

1: https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...