▲ ▼ Search Engine Wall of Shame
A while back, I started writing down the search queries for bad search results from different search engines to publish one day a
'Search Engine Wall of Shame'.
But this needs to be public effort to create any meaningful action from search engines. How many of you would be willing to contribute to such platform by submitting your bad search results?
Some examples, Format: [Search Engine],[Search query],[Expected Result],[Actual Top Result],[URL] , [Alternate better result search engine]
- Google, "Port Chrome extension to Firefox", Official document from Mozilla, 3rd party blog, [https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Port+Chrome+extension+to+Firefox] , DDG (First result from Mozilla).
- DDG, "have i been pwned credit card number", Does HIBP include credit card details, Irrelevant news article, [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=have+i+been+pwned+credit+card+number] , Google (Shows discussion on topic from actual creator as 2nd result)
In this case Google got me the best result purely because I wanted the latest result, But the results from DDG might have better content and the podcast article links to it.
Have you considered using Reddit for this? This feels like a subreddit people would contribute to.
That's a good suggestion indeed. But maintaining a subreddit is cumbersome, let's see if more people are interested in this and perhaps would join the initiative.
Search engines do have feedback for search results, But nothing like a wall of shame as an incentive to improve their product right?
Here's a discussion on blocking certain sites from appearing in the search results, Collection of such frequently blocked sites could add value to the purpose of Search Engine Wall of Shame.