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Comment by Declanomous

I really hate how google will show every possible copy of a newswire article before it shows local sources, etc. I've had slightly better luck with DuckDuckGo on that front, but I always feel like there is a happy medium between Google's ridiculously "context-aware"* algorithm, and DuckDuckGo's "context-agnostic"* algorithm.

What's really annoying is that if you use Google trends, it will let you know the context of what you are looking for, and you can clarify. I really hate it when I'm trying to look for something on Google, and I know it's just using the wrong interpretation of a word.

Easy example: I do a fair amount of scripting in VBA. I often want to look up documentation for things in VBA. If I use VBA in my search term, I will get a bunch of 15 year old pages on Excel tips and tricks. If I search VBA MSDN, I will get a bunch of pages on VB.net or VB6. I specifically have to use VBA MSDN OFFICE ACCESS in order to get the correct results. DuckDuckGo does not have this problem, but I use date filtering a lot, where DDG falls apart.

Search engines aside, it's ridiculous that Microsoft allowed this situation to happen in the first place.

*I'm not sure if either of those terms is remotely accurate, but they seem to articulate what I'm trying to say.

parent Declanomous 9 years ago

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