MattSourceful

Can I edit the title to something like "Show HN: Sourceful - a search-engine for public Google docs"?

Apologies, I guess in the context of the Show HN it's less of a list and more a tool to submit and comment on Google docs to which people can try out.

Sourceful viewing figures are taken into account in Sourceful to sort "Hot" page but not displayed to users.

Outside of Sourceful, to see what is the most viewed document on the web, the best way is to use a tool like ahrefs. However, the quality of the doc does not seem to be strongly correlated to this number as the top docs are often clickbait/practically useless.

Those are very good points. Without going into too many details, I am hoping to resolve some of the issues you've mentioned and provide a bit more stability to this format.

Haven't thought about celebrities screen-shotting their thoughts but it's definitely a thing :) there could be something there.

It's a great spreadsheet! It's been doing really well on Sourceful and is currently the highest rated doc for tag "freelance".

I couldn't agree more with you about Google docs for prototyping. A Google Sheet + Form (e.g. collecting signup emails) combination offers some serious potential.

I would like Sourceful to be a place where projects like that are promoted and initial discussion around them takes place. Twitter/Facebook are not ideal places for that as the content there is too ephemeral.

No, most of the time they are not indexed by search engines - unless the docs has got a lot of good backlinks, it will not be visible through search. Also, a lot of docs which seem to do well in Google search are scam pages with illegal movie downloads, etc.

So there is a lot of added value in showcasing and promoting great docs which are not easy to find. Another area is giving feedback to the doc owner though commenting - the collaboration system in Google docs is not ideal for high-level discussion about the doc.

Good point about Slack and Discord. It's interesting that even though participants are semi-private - in my experience - the standard of discourse is usually higher than the non-private places like Facebook.

What are your thoughs about using Google Docs and Sheets as a quick-and-dirty way to create and distribute content, especially by non-tech-savvy users?

It appears that the use of this format has been growing, especially during the recent events (coronavirus pandemic, climate change then BLM protests).