Would love links to the queries if you can remember them.

Not his, but mine: "split string python"

1-4: python.org (good, though one result is for version 2.3)

5: java2s.com (terrible. no content, huge ads. Thank you, flashblock)

6: tutorialspoint.com (w3schools-like. Borderline content farm)

7: stackoverflow.com (pretty relevant, good result)

8: diveintopython.org (should be the first non-python.org result)

9: diveintopython3.org (good)

10: oreilly.com (sample chapter for "Learning Python", excellent)

So, 1-4 are python.org, results 5-6 blow, and 7-10 are superb and should be nearer the top. Not a bad performance, but not perfect.

I would argue that results 1-4 are more confusing than 'good'. Most users in that situation are just going to open each one of those 4 in tabs.

Compare to DDG[1]:

1. An extract from a StackOverflow answer showing how to split a string into a list in python. It uses tokenize and isn't exactly what was being asked, but good.

2. python.org - A single result

3. Stackoverflow answer (a better answer)

4. java2s (urgh)

5. A shitty mailing list archive page from the dev group[2]

6. Another mailing list archive

7. A good tutorial, should be second result

8. A forum thread that is outdated

9. Wikibooks - a good answer, should be further up

Not one result in any search engine links directly to the str split() entry in the official docs.

[1] http://duckduckgo.com/?q=split+string+python

[2] Pages like this should be purged from all search engines, I hate finding them: http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/473717-string-split

Thx for the specific example. Presumably http://duckduckgo.com/?q=split+python is more what you were after with the 0-click function reference?

We've been trying a lot harder to get those into 0-click, but it doesn't show up yet when you put string in the middle.

ye thats it, it's just that the phrasing of the original example was a bit different. are you guys able to go through search logs to see different permutations of how visitors search for such terms?

ie. "python how to split", "split string python", "str split python" should all = "split python"

Did you see the wikibooks result? That was excellent, I didn't even know about it. Would it be possible to highlight that in the same way stackexchange is?

Those mailing list archive results are a real pain, they only have the answer <1% of the time and are hard to read.

DDG is awesome - it has been my default browser for a little while now. Can I just add one suggestion - put the 'make default browser search' somewhere on your homepage after detecting the user browser? I remember it took me 10+ clicks and links to work out how to make DDG default in Chrome.

Awesome, yeah, that's what we're trying to do now (wrt to the permutations), but we don't have a lot of data so it's a bit difficult.

Noted on the other results and thx for analyzing it so deeply. That realy helps.

There is an 'Add to Chrome' on the homepage, but it goes away after you click on it. Unfortunately, Chrome doesn't make it easy to switch providers. I wrote this up here (about 5 major browsers): http://ye.gg/addto

interesting post! that explain it - thanks

if you go into more specific questions (e.g. jsf select menu or oracleresultset tomcat), the top result used to be from efreedom, which rips off from stackoverflow. now, no more efreedom! freeedommm!

roseindia is still around though.its contents are usually a rewritten form of javadocs. and its like the epitome of horrible UI.

If this gets rid of "experts exchange" I will be very happy. At least content farms usually give some sort of answer to your question...

On the contrary, searching for javascript technical topics still throws up a lot of nonsense. developer.mozilla.org rarely comes up among the top results. For example [javascript offsetwidth] shows java2s.com results on position 2 and 3 for me (may be just my anecdotal case though, css queries seem better off).