Exactly. I would say more specifically, Google's PageRank algorithm for prioritizing results was genius because it excluded the vast oceans of word-spam sites that floated to the top of all the other search engines.

At the time, they gave better results and the clean and simple design got right to it without all of the BANNER! BANNER! HONK!HONK! of the competitors.

They had ads, but they were just text links that said they were ads and weren't playing games with rankings based on who bribed them.

The reason it was better is that the other search engines used the programmer-entered data in a page’s title, meta tags, and headings to categorize the page’s content, whereas google also used the text of links pointing to that page to categorize the page.

Google crowdsourced categorization to content consumers, ie people acting in the same role as searcher.

In a way, it’s an excellent example of the concept of negotiated identity.

Remember when they got rid of Jeeves?

Fwiw I was aware of a number of those, hence why in the OP I mention: "and few really good competitors." That wasn't to suggest there were few total competitors, only that there were few really good competitors, which I think is generally the case any time you have a large number of, well, anything tbh.

May be rather dismissive, but it's not a new observation by any means.

Sort of, I don't know enough (or think I know enough) to speak to the specifics of the PageRank system stuff, which is why I glossed over it. From personal experience with however it works, earlier or now, I've not really felt like it suited the way I wanted to search for things, nor allowed for it.

On a really basic level I gather it was (and may still be) related to how often some sites were linked to from other sites, with some extra background weighting this way or that to help surface presumably relevant results. To put it crudely, sort of a popularity contest, give or take the weighting details. That tends to suck though for new or less popular/obscure stuff, the latter of which I tend to prefer (unintentionally, but somewhat intentionally).

Yea but it's not the case today. I get as good or better results out of duck duck go, and bing is good too now. The only reason to continue using Google is if you love ads.

"disrupted" 🤢

I've tried Kagi search a few times this last couple of weeks and was reasonably impressed. If it works out I'd be happy to pay a few pennies for better product recommendations

To be clear, when referring to a reasonably good product, which iteration of their attempts are you describing?

What's the cost? What makes it better? Is it like Google used to be?

I used the trial and then just started paying for it. So far, it is much better results, and I like that they do not track you. Also, their small web lens has been fun to play around with.

Another Kagi fan here. I pay $10 a month.

I'm a reasonably heavy search user, but have never hit the quota.

It's wonderful to have relevant results again.

The one thing it doesn't work for is shopping. From time to time I use Google. I should probably switch that to Bing, as the lesser of two evils.

kagi.com - I think they are taking their shot!