How do you search for blogs/forums/media directly from experts rather then the usual SEO slop google/big tech shows you?

Hi lemmy. One time I was on YouTube and I wanted to learn more about my latest interest, neuroscience, so I entered into the search bar "Neuroscience" and every single result was from self help gurus.

Oftentimes, I will attempt to find information for something im curious about. More often then not, my search will be slowed by thousands of shitty SEO optimized/self-help guru made/absolutely utterly useless "Top 10 Things to so for X" content. This happens on pretty much every large platform I have ever searched on ever.

have gotten better at googling and searching for the results I want(searching "neuroscience lecture" instead of "neuroscience") But I can only improve my googling skills so much, so that's why I wanted to ask a few questions:

  1. How do I search the internet/google for blogs/forums/media from experts easily? Is there a chrome extension to remove SEO overoptimized results? Do I need to use a different search engine?

  2. Are there any approaches I can take that apply to more then just google?

57 points · 17 comments · view on lemmy.world

17 Comments

xmunk@sh.itjust.works · 20 pts · 1y

Due to how shitty our world is... you just slowly accumulate trusted sources. Google has no motivation to give you a reliable news source that'd compete with their incredibly anticompetitive news tab.

As a tech person I hang around on HackerNews a lot and have found some good sources through that.

Ekwen@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y

Some search engine do not index page on their visit rate or activity but on the contrary look for "forgotten" page, my favorite is https://search.marginalia.nu/.

Another way of searching for interesting page would be the use of internet link collection, one of my favorite being https://peelopaalu.neocities.org/. But while the links and pages are often interesting it's hard to look for a specific subject.

PunnyName@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y (1 reply)

While not a direct answer to your question, I want to provide this

https://scholar.google.com/

nichtburningturtle@feddit.org · 10 pts · 1y

Procedes to write seo optimized papers.

Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de · 5 pts · 1y (2 replies)

You can use the - (minus) sign,
which excludes pages that contain the word which has the - in front of them.

For example, currently I'm replaying GTA V single player, but when I search for content related to it, I'm often given articles about the online version.

To solve that I search:

GTA V <insert-topic-of-interest> -online

Which excludes all articles containing the word online.

I use SearXNG though,
but afaik this is implemented by most search engines.

phdepressed@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Nope, Google doesn't care about search operators anymore. Hasn't for a number of years. Have to use a different search engine.

Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 1y

Oh wow did not know that.

Well, if them spying on you and selling your data was not enough to make you switch to an alternative, then maybe/hopefully lack of search operators will be!

sudoer777@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 1y

I use Kagi and uprank non-shitty sites. I think there's also uBlacklist or uBO filters that can remote shitty sites.

OmanMkII@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 1y

I'd say you're not using the right filtering, which honestly takes a lot of practice and sheer luck.

Usually if I get garbage results, I try neuroscience -"top 10", which would remove the generic top 10 reasons for X results. If it's still self help garbage, then try more keywords like lecture, presentation, or theory. Some searches I straight up can't figure out though, and the query ends up removing being a mess. In those cases, it's worth trying again later and seeing if you've phrased it won't.

Sparrow_1029@programming.dev · 4 pts · 1y (1 reply)

I paid for Kagi for a while and many of my coworkers use it. It's a solid and growing engine that's getting a a lot right re: creating good UX and generating search results (which should be the goal of a search engine, *sigh).

That said, l use SearxNG daily nowadays because it's decentralized and privacy-focused. You can use any of the public instances or host your own if you like.

Here's an example of the search results for "Neuroscience" on the instance I use.

luce@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y

This is really helpful, SearxNG looks pretty good, might also check out Kagi

wuphysics87@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 1y

Go to Wikipedia and look at the references. The Wikipedia editor credo is "show don't tell". Meaning don't explain it. Summarize something that does, and link it.

Also, donate to Wikipedia.

ReadMoreBooks@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1y

What you're missing is the semantic and context inherent a syllabus. If you find a mentor that helps develop a syllabus then it'll become much easier to find learning resources.

sp451@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Maybe try this https://www.scienceos.ai/ – not as a replacement but as an addition

PagPag@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y

Create an account first? Lol nvm

StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/

Most of the operators in the working list also work in other search engines including YouTube's internal search engine.

eatham@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 1y

Those stopped working well on google search ages ago, all the competitors support them tho.