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211 points pseudolus | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.499s | source
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simonw ◴[] No.42200491[source]
An interesting intellectual exercise is to think about how a search engine could provide the best possible answer (from a user satisfaction perspective) to a query like "best CBD gummies".

A lot of people have a significant financial incentive to win at that search query.

What would the perfect top search result for that look like?

It would probably be an article written by professional writers in a trustworthy publication with a strong ethics policy, provably followed over the years, concerning whether they accept payment for promoting specific products in supposedly impartial reviews.

If you can figure out how to algorithmically detect that kind of content you could build a pretty great search engine!

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eviks ◴[] No.42201140[source]
Since "the best" doesn't exist, just like there is no magical professional that has unique insight into the mind of the user making the search, a search engine could become pretty great by simply not taking decades to remove scams like the one described in the article from the top of search results
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1. kmoser ◴[] No.42201171[source]
There are many criteria for "best" that are acceptable to many people, e.g. lowest price, proven high quality ingredients, efficacy, etc. "Website with high reputation that happens to be running ads for company XYZ" is usually not how people define "best".
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2. eviks ◴[] No.42201241[source]
By splitting one very ambiguous term into another "high quality" one you haven't resolved anything.

And people do transfer trust from the medium to the product, so neither is the second filter very robust when it comes to people perception