HACKER Q&A
📣 higerordermap

How do you avoid bullshit tech content in search?


This happens when I want any deep technical treatment of a topic.

There are hundreds of SEO-optimized websites that basically post obvious shallow information and still achieve to trick search engine algorithms with great effort. I don't want those shallow information articles. There's wikipedia always for surface introduction of the topic.

Examples of such sites include GeeksForGeeks, Many medium blogs, DZone, ZDNet etc..

Are there any search tricks / filters / alternative search engines or proxying search engines that allow to avoid bullshit tech content?


  👤 gas9S9zw3P9c Accepted Answer ✓
I typically only look for upvoted content. Prefix your searches with "site:reddit.com", "site:news.ycombinator.com" or "site:stackoverflow.com" - The social/human filter is quite a good one in my experience and it gets rid of all the Medium-like personal branding fluff.

👤 slovette
So, I think it may be more what you’re searching for and less the SEO of it. At least from my experience.

1. Use more specifically targeting words. I.e. I needed a specific valve for a new gas line I put in a few months ago. The kind of thing that’s not sold at Home Depot, but at wholesale outfits specifically tailored for plumbers. Instead of search for “3/4 gas valve” I searched for “3/4 gas cock” as “cock” is an industry word for “valve” and the results of which would get me more precisely to the sources I was looking for.

The same can be used for technical stuff. An example, instead of searching for “how do I add a firewall rule to a router” I’ll search for “cisco allow udp 53 rule”.

2. Often I find that the same couple sites are the places that have the specific information I’ve looked for in the past. I do this for product reviews as an example: “cove security reddit”. For a more technical example, during the gas line, I searched: “3/4 gas 10” WC Reddit”. This got me into a few conversation threads where a master plumber was explaining the max BTU usage I could have on a similar line to mine, he then explained the math behind it with some very valuable knowledge from his experience on permitting and gas company nuances. Exactly what I was looking for.

These are two basic examples that show methods that work super well for me in finding what I need and skipping the bullshit out there. These combined with learning Googles operator syntax is the ticket.

You could go as far as messing with DNS or some blocking methods, but that seems likes a ton of work for little return. Just learn how to search a little better. :)


👤 mstipetic
I personally don't know what the purpose of google is now. Any time I want to find something even a bit more niche or specific, it's completely useless. Try searching for some economic data, enterprise budget allocations or something similar, it's impossible. They seem to be optimising for recipes, questions like Katy Perry net worth and recent news.

👤 varbhat
1) Remove/Block Certain sites from Google/DDG. Use

https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/

2) Using Host Files, i think that you can block domains of the sites that you are not interested.

3) Search Individual Sites .

Instead of Searching the whole web , there are some sites which contains good resource of certain field. If you are searching from that certain field, first search that site.


👤 unearth3d
I save a txt file at the start of a search with a random number in the name (I let vscode decide that), then I can just save files with the random string and can sort them later.

I save all my search terms as I proceed (and record all word-stemming, plurals..), and indent hits, and then search for cites and indent again where hits, then when a sub-search dries up I start again with a new string and so on. I find it saves a lot of time, reduces saving junk and I can always go back. And I get a valid cite chain.

I search in epic-browser as it cuts down the clutter. Mostly on scholar (I turn off citations and patents and usually start with all years as some things are mis-dated, this also and issue with ResearchGare where their pub date May be decades after the paper date), sometimes the open web (altho' mainly on specific domains; .edu .ac ..). Some countries I exclude.


👤 qppo
For me, I find search is ok for finding places to find places, if that makes sense. Like I've had a lot of trouble finding detailed information on a few technical niches, but search led me to forums that led me to private slack/discord channels on what I was looking for and active community members that had already filtered the good/bad content in their working memory.

👤 iordachej
We made a firefox plugin a few years ago meant for human-raking search results exactly for the same reason: too much noise. Then FireFox switch to WebExtensions APIs for programming addons and we did not had the resources to maintain it. It seems that the search issues get worse since.

👤 aww_dang
Focus on the documentation. Experiment with new technologies by using the associated software. Usually a deep dive into the manual is enough. When this isn't provided, there's sources. When neither of those is present, I'm not interested.

👤 cblconfederate
Have you ever struggled with bullsit content in search results? Scroll down for the top 10 tips on how to avoid it.

👤 quickthrower2
Sounds like you need human recommendations for content - eg from IRC, colleagues or friends or maybe ask on Reddit or even HN. Always worth searching HN.algolia.com and then finding advice / links on HN from there.

👤 markus_zhang
nowadays I always add ycombinator after my search terms to see if it has been discussed here.

👤 brudgers
IRTFM.

👤 aurizon
Well, we live in the age of fake news, and fake celebrity pix, and also fake research. An ingenue to any field is easy to fool - an expert - not so much. In effect, the defence against fake anything is a comprehensive personal knowledge base on that subject, be it news, a celebrity or research. Ask yourself:- do you really think President Trump sold Alaska back to Russia for 10 times what was paid? Not so much. This SEO BS muddies the water and makes it hard to wade through the crap. Many give up and become flat earthers or antivaxers because they could not discriminate valid data from crap.