Million Short
Data
search engine
SHOW HN2012
Legend
Million Short
Imagine a search engine that removed top million sites from its index
millionshort.com552points
195comments
#3of 1,677 in 2012
Top 1%of 2012 by points
How HN took it
DebatedReal support and real criticism
46 positive, 31 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 37 critical, out of 118 comments about the project. Thread score +0.11.
Idea: 34 for, 17 againstExecution: 8 for, 17 againstPerformance: 2 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Surfaces fresh, human-written pages instead of SEO content
From 3 comments
The results are surprisingly good. I did some searches for recipes, and frankly without the top 1000 you really start getting some fresh hits. Entries by real people, rather than…
swalsh on HNI'm really liking this. Instead of being bombarded with content that's just blasted with keywords, I get relevant well-written articles. Not only that, but no more W3Schools in…
heydonovan on HNThe results feel actually fresh. It's removing the consumerism layer of bullshit that google serves us everyday. Also wondering if that has something to do with the "bubble" that…
serbrech on HN
Finds old-internet and obscure sites
From 2 comments
This reminds of searching the internet in the 90's, I'm finding results from pages I haven't visited or heard of before now. This is really refreshing.
libraryatnight on HNThis is pretty amazing. I didn't know that the old internet was still there! This may become my new favorite search engine.
pessimizer on HN
Objections
Filtering is incomplete for non .com/.net/.org domains such as .gov.au
From 2 comments
Good feedback. Right now the filtering is not 100% working for non .com, .net, .org, .co.uk domains. Still working on it.
taxonomyman on HNRight now the filtering is not 100% working for non .com, .net, .org, .co.uk domains. So, .gov.au isn't being properly filtered yet. Soon.
taxonomyman on HN
Popular sites like W3Schools and Google still appear through subdomains or redirects
From 2 comments
Your're right. We strip www from the domains. We need a better function to rip out the domain from a URL. Just haven't had time to cook one up yet.
taxonomyman on HNmerriam-webster.com redirects to m-w.com - looking into the others.. Sometimes if a site has header redirects it gets lost in the filters. Thx for pointing this out.
taxonomyman on HN
Searches for brand names or the user's own site return unrelated results
From 3 comments
This is a cool search engine for discovery, but it defeats the purpose when you are looking for a location. Do a search for "facebook", you will not get any result that links you…
hybrid11 on HNThere's one pretty big flaw with this approach... For certain searches that do not have "millions of results", you get completely unrelated results. If I search my name then the…
bstar77 on HNi searched for my site and in teh goog i get first page....here i found nothing....so for me this = no good. I understand the base but i dont understand the result
Ben_Burke on HN
Requests
Keep the search text after searching
From 2 comments
I would prefer if my previous search was populated in the search box after completing a search (since I might want to try the search with a different filter). It appears you have…
pfarrell on HNI love this! And am totally going to use it. Removing the top "thousand sites" removes pretty much all the sites I WISH I could have filtered from my Google results anyhow (ehow,…
garraeth on HN
Add to Firefox search bar
From 2 comments
Add a way for me to put this as my search engine in my firefox search bar. Please. EDIT: In trying to accomplish this task I found an add-on that lets you do this for anything.…
unimpressive on HNNow if I could add it to firefox's search bar...
qwertyz on HN
Allow include and exclude site lists
From 2 comments
You are right, but they won't allow the list to be 1 million sites long. You are talking 15 megs of data per data in plain text per request. But I like the idea of being able for…
taxonomyman on HNA few of the suggestions included the ability to set include/exclude sites which I think we'll add.
taxonomyman on HN
Questions
How is the site built and where does the index come from
From 2 comments
How did you build this? Are you indexing the entire web yourself? Or are you using Google's index/removing the top 1 million based on domain?
felixchan on HNWould you share some implementation details. What's your source for the top million sites; where do you get your site list from for the other results?
pbhjpbhj on HN
Alternatives named
Google
From 2 comments
Turns out removing the top million results from a search for Google... still returns google. Or google.com.au to be precise. It's a cool idea, but I'm not sure it's working. I…
bicknergseng on HNI'd be fascinated to see the kind of SEO that would go on if this took off. "Bad news-- we're a top 100 hit for several of our main keywords. We'll have to change our URL scheme…
Cushman on HN
DuckDuckGo
From 2 comments
Thank you - very refreshing! DuckDuckGo should implement something like this just for the spirit of it. The web just got more interesting. :)
cnbeuiwx on HNHere's what Dropbox thinks about power users: WSJ: What's next? Mr. Ferdowsi: We continue to focus on actually solving problems that real people have and not being distracted by…
halle_lu_jah on HN