Search Engines Suck
Search engines are getting more frustrating. So much noise to filter.
Looking for Linux only related results? The search engines are not designed to filter. Instead they are designed to aggregate and display every minutiae of superficial data. The quantity of results is supposed to impress more than the quality of the results.
Often when I search I add the keyword linux with the hope of focusing the results. Yet the fact that the word linux appears somewhere on a web page or the page’s web site is sufficient to return the page as a result, even when the article targets Windows or Mac users.
Often search results are duplicated. The ducduckgo engine is notable for this kind of superfluous noise. The same results in every other link. For example, try this search in duckduckgo:
fedora dnf "local mirror"
Four of the first five links are the same LinuxQuestions thread.
Using startpage.com brings its own set of problems. Despite being a wrapper to google.com, often a startpage search results in no results at all.
Then there are all of the useless site aggregators that add no value. These aggregators slurp other sites and repeat the same information. These site aggregators should automatically be ignored by search engines.
Noise, noise, noise.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: General
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