Products · Broad category
Search engines
Raised as a usability problem by 233 people on Hacker News over 20 years (2007–2026), in 202 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
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- 7Search results take too long to loadUnreviewed
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Every issue, all time, most people first
General web search results flooded with spam contentUnreviewed
20072026- Search engines return floods of garbage links instead of the requested information2026-04-17
- Good personal blogs are hard to discover through search engines2025-12-05
- AI-written blogspam makes it nearly impossible to find basic information2025-09-09
Search returns loosely matching results instead of what was typedUnreviewed
20072026- Search returns brutally useless results, so information is hard to find2026-10-12
- Search returns unrelated results for the query, with no clear explanation2026-08-30
- Search results are worse than before, and exact-match boolean operators are missing2023-04-11
Search returns incorrect AI answers and hides genuine reviews and recipesUnreviewed
20072026- AI search gives averaged answers that are not reliably correct, making comparison harder2026-05-19
- Good human-written sites are hard to find because results are dominated by AI content2026-03-11
- AI answers appear instead of real search results, whether wanted or not2026-02-15
Remembered pages hard to find because search results are hard to useUnreviewed
20072026- Can't find a page they remember because search results are hard to use2026-08-13
- Old way of exploring and discovering content through search no longer works2026-03-31
- Official Python docs are buried under low-quality tutorial sites in search results2020-12-21
Documentation search returns poor results that are hard to rely onUnreviewed
20072026- Searches return generic copy-paste guides instead of resources explaining underlying structure2024-09-04
- Searches for names return pages of long text or massive name lists instead of relevant results2021-09-16
- Search across documentation returns terrible results and is hard to rely on2021-06-06
Checking each search result by clicking is painfully tediousUnreviewed
20072026- Generic searches return many results, so users must scroll and check each one2023-06-17
- Learning from search requires many queries and juggling scattered browser tabs2023-05-02
- Searches lead to ad-filled pages that are traps for page views or clicks, forcing users to go through many results2019-12-23
Search results take too long to loadUnreviewed
20072026- Search spins up slow generated services; user waits with no clear progress2025-08-22
- Search results take too long to load2023-05-07
- Searches return irrelevant files and take 15 minutes to sort through2010-07-06
Factual information buried under pages of shopping resultsUnreviewed
20072026- General information searches are buried under commercial results, forcing wading through many pages2022-01-26
- Searches return scam sites copying content, making useful answers hard to find2021-06-09
- Shopping sites bury genuine factual information under pages of results2020-07-27
Search results layout is hard to scan compared to standard listsUnreviewed
20072026- Grid view search results are hard to scan and find things in2023-06-16
- Search results UI is hard to scan compared to standard list layout2021-10-17
- Results take too much vertical space, slow and cumbersome to scan2021-09-17
Quick search promised without signup, then account creation forcedUnreviewed
20072026- Search fails right after login, claiming user has run out of credits2024-11-22
- Must sign up before search works after typing a name, a surprise hurdle2021-05-25
- Promised a quick search without signup, then forced account creation2014-06-24
Ads camouflaged among search results make them hard to trustUnreviewed
20072026- Ads at top of results look like real results, so users click them accidentally2026-02-06
- Ads look nearly identical to organic results, so users can't tell them apart2022-07-10
- Search results hard to trust, with ads camouflaged among them2021-02-23
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Search returns brutally useless results, so information is hard to find2026-10-12
- Search engines feel useless, so the commenter can't find a research paper2026-10-11
- Silently rewrites queries and shows results without indicating the original query was changed2026-09-28
- Search returns unrelated results for the query, with no clear explanation2026-08-30
- Can't find a page they remember because search results are hard to use2026-08-13
- Search engines don't surface a well-built site without extra SEO work like JSON-LD and backlinks2026-06-24
- Would require a verification code for every search, then rate limits causing waits2026-06-23
- AI search gives averaged answers that are not reliably correct, making comparison harder2026-05-19
- Search engines return floods of garbage links instead of the requested information2026-04-17
- Old way of exploring and discovering content through search no longer works2026-03-31
- Hard to find what you wanted with early search engines2026-03-11
- Good human-written sites are hard to find because results are dominated by AI content2026-03-11
- AI answers appear instead of real search results, whether wanted or not2026-02-15
- Ads at top of results look like real results, so users click them accidentally2026-02-06
- SEO has made web search results unusable for people2026-02-06
- Pressing Enter does nothing until the search icon is clicked first2026-01-23
- Search engines have become nearly unusable for finding things2025-12-22
- Good personal blogs are hard to discover through search engines2025-12-05
- Search results are cluttered with sales pages and ads, so the wanted page is hard to reach2025-09-26
- AI-written blogspam makes it nearly impossible to find basic information2025-09-09
- Searching for electrical transformers returns the wrong results because of the newer ML meaning2025-09-04
- Search spins up slow generated services; user waits with no clear progress2025-08-22
- Page looks unlike usual search page, so users feel they're elsewhere2025-08-09
- Workaround hijacks another search engine, making it unusable, and hides the search term2025-07-24
- Recipe searches are buried under SEO spam, forcing manual filtering of results2025-07-18
- Users keep getting shitty UX from the web compared to LLM chatbots2025-06-09
- Date range filter takes too many clicks and is unreliable for finding old pages2025-04-08
- Results often disappoint, and the right answers require digging through advanced search settings2025-04-08
- Must skim several results, click, wait for scripts, and dismiss cookie popups2025-04-08
- Most results are LLM-generated filler that gives no useful answer2025-04-08
- Multi-word searches get cut short and filter to a wrong result2025-03-20
- Search returns incorrect AI answers, and legit reviews and recipes are hard to find2025-02-18
- Tools need schema setup and preprocessing, or are too complicated, before users can query files2025-02-14
- Repeated results from the same domain clutter pages and force scrolling through them2025-01-14
- Can't find a previously existing service because searching for it is impossible2024-12-06
- Searching for less or specific items returns the opposite, bigger or more extreme products2024-12-04
- Search fails right after login, claiming user has run out of credits2024-11-22
- Free plan signup fails with a credits error, pushing user toward upgrading2024-11-20
- Returns unrelated results by rewriting queries instead of showing no results2024-10-31
- Web search has become so user hostile the commenter stopped using it2024-10-14
- Searches return generic copy-paste guides instead of resources explaining underlying structure2024-09-04
- Good content is hard to find amid SEO spam clutter2024-08-12
- Can't find the search text field or button2024-07-20
- Can't find a specific blog post they remember2024-07-13
- Results are clustered duplicates, poorly interpreted keywords, and bloated SEO content hard to scan2024-06-26
- Can't find book reviews or niche discussions that used to be easy to find2024-06-19
- Search results are so poor the commenter avoids using search engines2024-05-21
- Content buried under interleaved ads and blocking consent and subscribe popups2024-04-19
- Hobbyist curated lists of good content are hard to find2024-04-19
- Tech searches return useless blogspam, making answers hard to find2024-04-15