Try search.marginalia.nu (especially https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random but try some searches for git commands or history too, just remember it is a search engine, not a conversation partner so only include words that should be in the article you search for) and come back to me afterwards.
I thought like you that if even Google couldn't find anything it was not there, but after discovering marginalia I now know it is just Google that has become unusably bad.
For day to day searching I now use Kagi and for me it is easily worth 10 or maybe 20 dollars a month since it "just works" unlike Google and has a larger index than Marginalia.
For now though Marginalia gets the money since Kagi is still in beta.
Re:The next Google
by nuancebydefault on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @05:09PM
(#30925065)
Just searched for "linux users" in marginalia and google. Google's first answer seemed spot on. (users command usage); Marginalia provided me with in comparison _marginal_ results.
Maybe it is because google knows me better then i am aware of. I really don't notice google results getting worse, while i read so several times in HN comments...
Re:The next Google
by marginalia_nu on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @05:30PM
(#30925291)
Yeah it's not a search engine for answering questions, but for finding documents. You'll get along with it better if you see it as something like grep for the web. This is something I'm very intentionally trying to accomplish, as it's something I feel Google has gotten worse at.
Re:The next Google
by nuancebydefault on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @06:31AM
(#30930474)
Thanks for your reply! I will consider using Marginalia when looking for documents next time!
> search.marginalia.nu
This is just retrieving articles when I search, not actual websites. Interesting if you're looking for article related to search keywords I guess, but genuinely unusable for actually finding something specific.
Re:The next Google
by nuancebydefault on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @05:15PM
(#30925137)
Gave it another try with "ssh scp". Google's first result explains me how to use scp (ssh provides a hint about the context), which was what i would be looking for. Marganilla... not so much it seems
Re:The next Google
by marginalia_nu on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @05:28PM
(#30925274)
Re:The next Google
by nuancebydefault on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @05:19PM
(#30937537)
The second hit links to a man page of scp. It is a formal description of the syntax, not what I was looking for... I'd rather have a short intro and a few examples of typical usage instead, am I being pedantic? If i wanted a formal description i would google 'scp cli', 'scp options' or even 'man scp'. Also, on a tangent, to be honest -- I find searching simply for 'scp' not a very clever approach. How did Marginalia guess it would be the cli tool and not one of the other acronyms?
Re:The next Google
by marginalia_nu on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @05:25PM
(#30937594)
Yeah that's not the sort of search engine this is. If you search for SCP, it will show you documents where that term is relevant, using domain ranking as a tiebreaker. It's quite intentionally not trying to read your mind.
I think it showed the man page first because that domain is highly ranked.
If so, then where can I search this small place? Iād love to.
Re:The next Google
by politician on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:28PM
(#30923753)
I think this is exactly correct.
There are no more websites worth linking to anymore... If you filter out all SEO spam there is barely few webpages left...
Google is desperately trying to hide that fact. Most of the web 1.0 can nowadays fit into small town telephone directory... You do not need mulitibilion dolar business to run web directory...