Hacker News Reader

Comment by usui | Hacker News Reader

I tried their "Best toaster" query and one thing I want to say is just how hilarious it is that "best x"-of-anything webpage HAS to have $CURRENT_YEAR in the title. Yelp does something similar to its Google search results.

As if nothing good or the best in its breed ever came out from $PREVIOUS_YEAR or any previous years before that!

Tell me you're a garbage SEO website without telling me, just slap on "in $CURRENT_YEAR" or use some capital letters, I love how easy it is to tell the wheat from the chaff!

edit: someone with a more negative outlook/rant than my glee https://reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/qowtws/cmv_seo_an...

View on HN

> As if nothing good or the best in its breed ever came out from $PREVIOUS_YEAR or any previous years before that!

I know most of these are blogspam sites and I hate them too, but the way I understand the rationale behind the year, and the way I would do it too is this:

Best $PRODUCT $CURRENT_YEAR can include products that were manufactured in $PREVIOUS_YEAR or $LONG_TIME_AGO. The $CURRENT_YEAR is saying that the list is up to date, not that all the items in the list were made in $CURRENT_YEAR.

I understand the point being made, but this is solved trivially by including a published date, eg: Best $product - published $exact_date

(or alternatively, instead of "published" use "updated").

This has the added benefit that those searching for $product towards the end of a year can decide whether such lists published/updated near the beginning of the year are relevant or not.

Totally. When I’m searching for the best option for some random thing, I’ll often add 2021 or 2022 to make sure the results are recent. And, inevitably, when I need to add “Reddit” to the search query, adding the year is still helpful to avoid showing 10 year old posts. I’m looking for recent recommendations in these types of searches, normally,

And searching for "best toaster 2020" gives plenty sites with a year in the title, not 2020, though...

Best toaster: https://shop.panasonic.com/kitchen-and-home/kitchen-applianc...

It is, in fact, a 20+ year old design that's had some minor updates but is still essentially the same as the one it replaced.

I just have one of the bread toasters with two slots. It was like 12$ and I can’t imagine a better toaster. What you’ve linked to is a toaster oven, which isn’t what Americans tend to think of when we hear “toaster.”

I'm American and don't think I know anyone who uses that kind of toaster. Lots of variety of experience in this country.

As an American with a toaster oven, I still call it a toaster colloquially. (As do others I know with toaster ovens.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y Toasters were IMO a basically solved problem.

I will say sometime I want the date in the title. For instance when looking up JavaScript topics where things move so fast, or even C++ where the year standArd can mean the difference between a language I want to use and not.

Yup, I agree to that! Helpful for the newest JavaScript libraries/Ecmascript features/best practices in $CURRENT_YEAR.

But, wow! Who knew that the landscape of toastering moves this quickly and changes so much from year to year?!

Or doing the reverse were you need info for a very specific version, and it’s absolutely obliterated by results of newer versions.

> As if nothing good or the best in its breed ever came out from $PREVIOUS_YEAR or any previous years before that!

That older one could still be the best, but this way you (or that’s how it’d be in a perfect world) know that they at least checked if anything better came out.

Even better are the articles that were written last year or whichever period SEO abuse started skyrocketing, except slapped on with [Updated $CURRENT_YEAR]!

So fresh, so new! Except when you click, you realize the article is dated and was barely updated at all from when it was written!

Some sites have changelogs for those articles. I always want to give them a hug for that ;)

8 Best Toasters of 2022 - Good Housekeeping Published: Dec 9, 2021

Best toaster 2022: 12 toasters for every kitchen Published: Jan 12, 2022

For a laugh I tried "best toaster 2023" and there are already two worthy pages.

I mean it’s just spam evolving to users realizing that, for a time, you could get better results by putting the year in the query.

Honestly I just don't want Google giving me a list from 2015 with entirely discontinued products...

> As if nothing good or the best in its breed ever came out from $PREVIOUS_YEAR or any previous years before that!

Try to apply this to software (e.g., "I want the December 2018 version of Chrome, it was the best version of Chrome so far.") and observe the reaction you get.

Not for minor builds, but it's trivial to find posts saying older versions of Windows/OS X/Firefox/Chrome are better. But you might have to go to a more substantive change like, with Chrome, Manifest3

Speaking of the "best toaster", this and related HN discussion comes to mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29342936

So of I could filter out all search results with a year in the title, perhaps I'll get something more "authentically organic"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com