Like, if I'm troubleshooting something
- search the error message at startpage.com, duckduckgo, yandex, searx, in that order, going maybe 5 pages deep, trying date filtering and advanced search operators (AND, OR are advanced to me lol)
- search the error message at reddit
- search the error message on twitter
- ?
Should I be searching matrix rooms, or other online forums, or other non indexed pages I don't know about?
It seems like the quality of general search results, over the last 6 months I'm gonna say, have gone to dogshit. Loads of results on startpage that have your search term embedded in them somewhere, but are spam, for example.
Why not Stack Exchange? Any given question has a bunch of nerds squabbling over who can be the most right in the answers, the quality is usually very high as a result
Yeah, one of the best resources out there. But if the solution isn't there, outside of stack exchange and a few other reliables, the quality of search results has been shit. You haven't experienced pages of spam search results, with your search term embedded somewhere, usually after page 2/3 of results on startpage? They weren't there 6 months ago, unless I'm hallucinating again.
a lot of times including
"forum"in my searches will lead to actual human discussion that can be helpful100%
About 4 years ago google had an option to search only forums for a search term - it was a drop down option like date or whatever. It was the most useful thing about the whole google ecosystem. The ability to get search results exclusively from actual human discussions.
They removed this function and ignored & managed the massive outcry at the time.
There are only nefarious reasons for removing the function imo.