Made it look like a url?

WouterB wrote:Made it look like a url?

By using the full URL syntax, he made it clear that the site operator accepts a URL as input. Subsequent replies showed people that the syntax can be relaxed.

But seriously folks this site operator stuff is more than 10 years old. In todays web world there are specialized databases that we use, and they have their own search functions that can be more appropriate than external crawlers. For example, if I search for "Whitney" on Summitpost, I don't care if a crawler found that more links go to an album about the mountain, I just want the Summitpost page on Mt. Whitney (even if it's unpopular). A search on Wikipedia itself is better than a Google search with the site operator because the Wikipedia search returns disambiguation pages and makes an effort to put topical pages first. That's what's nice about this DuckDuckGo "!" operator, it tunnels you right into those specialized site searches. Maybe Google has that feature too (but it's not "site:")

mvs wrote:In todays web world there are specialized databases that we use, and they have their own search functions that can be more appropriate than external crawlers. For example, if I search for "Whitney" on Summitpost, I don't care if a crawler found that more links go to an album about the mountain, I just want the Summitpost page on Mt. Whitney (even if it's unpopular).

I think nartreb 's point is that the Google search will return more valuable results because it is a superior search engine with better rankings.

I often use Google to search web forums, as most web forum searches are hopeless.

Can't comment on Wikipedia, except that when I misspell a keyword in a Google search, Google finds the Wikipedia page I want; Wikipedia search just shrugs its shoulders.

Geez MVS, what are you, some kind of computer genius or Wheezer type or what?

Geez MVS, what are you, some kind of computer genius or Wheezer type or what?

Geez MVS, what are you, some kind of computer genius or Wheezer type or what?

mvs wrote:But more importantly, they have a neat feature that lets you run a search directly in an important site.

http://tinyurl.com/2wvsnbp

Welcome to the internet.

nhluhr wrote:

mvs wrote:But more importantly, they have a neat feature that lets you run a search directly in an important site.

http://tinyurl.com/2wvsnbp

Welcome to the internet.

I'm sick of trying to explain to you guys how the !summitpost operator DIFFERS from the Google site: operator. Thanks for your snarky link though it was funny.

you don't even need to us the "site:" operator to get good summitpost results from google. just append "summitpost" to your search (e.g. google "cathedral peak summitpost") and 9+ times out of ten you will quickly find the summitpost content you are looking for.

I can see how ddg is different than google but I can't see how it is better. I spot checked several mountain-related searches on both ddg and google; google produced better results 100% of the time. The fundamental problem is that ddg seems to rely on summitpost's native search engine, which is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Bill Kish wrote:you don't even need to us the "site:" operator to get good summitpost results from google. just append "summitpost" to your search (e.g. google "cathedral peak summitpost") and 9+ times out of ten you will quickly find the summitpost content you are looking for.

I can see how ddg is different than google but I can't see how it is better. I spot checked several mountain-related searches on both ddg and google; google produced better results 100% of the time. The fundamental problem is that ddg seems to rely on summitpost's native search engine, which is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

What I want is the authoritative Summitpost Mountain Page or Route page. I'm not interested in all the other cool pages on Summitpost that Google found with the mountain. That is why I am using the (admittedly small scale, "knife-compared-to-a-gun") Summitpost search engine. Because I know that if I run the search with Google, I'm going to scan the results until I find the Summitpost Mountain page.

I also like the "!" operator idea, implemented for a bunch of other sites as well because it captures results you can't always get with Google. On some sites, pages are built "on the fly," or only indexed in the private sites database (maybe the page isn't popular). But sometimes that is exactly the page that you want. To really search for something obscure (and I certainly have a lot of practice, wanting to climb routes or peaks with little information, or information only in non-English languages), I have to combine the admittedly wonderful power of Google with additional searches of site databases. Dead links have to be trolled on archive.org. For me, the "!" operator on DuckDuckGo is an innovation and saves me some keystrokes and clicks.

But I GET IT. For everyone else Google is both sufficient and superior!

mvs wrote:

nhluhr wrote:

mvs wrote:But more importantly, they have a neat feature that lets you run a search directly in an important site.

http://tinyurl.com/2wvsnbp

Welcome to the internet.

I'm sick of trying to explain to you guys how the !summitpost operator DIFFERS from the Google site: operator. Thanks for your snarky link though it was funny.

It may differ but you get worse search results, as nartreb demonstrated earlier