Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

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"Nobody is entitled to a particular place in ranking and making this maximally transparent would almost certainly results in people gaming them more effectively decreasing the quality of search results for all users."

According to this logic, if results were listed alphabetically (i.e., based on a truly objective criteria), we would see folks naming everything beginning with "0" or "A".

The above statement seems to ignore the history of search engine paid placement (people are certainly entitled, so long as they pay) which has evolved into "Ads by Google" appearing above search results. Further, the statement admits gaming occurs ["gaming them more effectively"] regardless of Google secret "solutions".

Listing search results by subjective criteria while portarying this as some sort of pseudo-objective "search" is not helpful. The "web search engine" has become a front for an online ad services business. The public is absolutely entitled to an index of the public information web, not controlled by a private company selling ad services. One day, we may get it.

> According to this logic, if results were listed alphabetically (i.e., based on a truly objective criteria), we would see folks naming everything beginning with "0" or "A".

This is seen in practice. The yellow pages were?(are?) alphabetical, which is why you see so many business that start with the letter A.

The Yellow Pages still exist IRL. There was an interesting book I read some years back about the history of the phone book and it included some history behind the yellow pages.^1

The YP allowed an advertiser to pay for a larger type font, or a quarter/half/full page ad, in addition to the free listing. It is also divided into subject catgories.

What has been lost with Google's web search is the concept of the accessible free listing. It is only accesible under Google's secret rules. The ability to finger through the pages to get to, say, the last entry beginning with "Z" is not possible with Google search. Google will hide the bottom of the list and only display the first several pages. This creates pressure to buy ads or SEO services (game the search) in order to "appear at the top", which is "the only way to be found". Absurd. Google will not even return more than 400 results anymore.

While the phenomenon of naming things to begin with "A" may be seen in pratice outside of the web, this has not rendered the system of alphabetical listing obsolete.^2 Not even close. Also, there are likely other factors influencing the decision to name things beginning with letters like "A". As many computer nerds know, not all letters are equally common in the English language. Anyone who has looked at large zone files knows that domain names tend to begin with "A", but such choice of name is not done to game alphabetical ordering.

1. About 11 years ago I read a book by Ammon Shea called The Phone Book. It had some discussion of the history of the Yellow Pages.

2. Last year, Judith Flanders published a book on the history of alphabetical order.

It's not obvious to me what the bounds of "all websites" are.

The list of all phone numbers is obviously enumerable. There's a registry and a flat list of phone numbers. But, resource constraints aside, is it possible to enumerate all websites? I suppose you could theoretically enumerate every domain name, but that isn't necessarily the same thing.

> The public is absolutely entitled to an index of the public information web, not controlled by a private company selling ad services. One day, we may get it.

You aren't entitled to one paid for by google but I don't think there is any reason you can't fund the PBS of search engines. There in fact save lack of interest or motivation why you couldn't start working on it tomorrow and lobby for government support.

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