Post #2046865

2025-05-11 20:03 UTC

@ocean I need to understand what people are searching for and why the first page doesn't help them. Cuz the only time I can't find something is because I don't really expect to find anything. Either cuz it's a very niche question or earlier when I tried to get a pdf/ebook of Harold and the Purple Crayon (still copyrighted I think, no straightforward download). Like I believe people are having a hard time. I just can't tell from my experience.

Replies (3)

@HeptaSean@social.tchncs.de 2025-05-11 20:20

@Paradox @ocean Same! I *can* somehow tell it getting less good over the years – some paid results to ignore here, some only seldomly helpful AI result there, … – but all in all it is still useful enough for me to this day. Do I include enough keywords in my searches? Do I only research topics that are not *that* prone to bad results? Don't know. 🤷‍♂️ (It's not always on the first page, though. I tend to ignore quite a lot of results based on the preview.)

Open ##2046866
@lispi314@udongein.xyz 2025-05-11 20:37

@Paradox @ocean Even just looking for straightforward cooking instructions leads to LLM vomit being the first few results on Google. (It's somewhat better if one searches for recipes in other languages than English.) Not exactly what I'd consider niche.

Open ##2046871
@HeptaSean@social.tchncs.de 2025-05-11 20:54

@Paradox By the way: Never heard of “Harold and the Purple Crayon” before, but https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Harold+and+the+Purple+Crayon%22+PDF results in a PDF with a Hindi translation (including the English original, but black and white without purple) and a PDF with a version with additional graphic explanations for people with disabilities on the first search result page. … which probably is as good as it gets for a work still under copyright.

Open ##2046877