Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#121

Post by sidibe » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

dna_polymerase wrote: post #75

alangibson wrote: post #12

Everytime one of these threads show up, I find myself wondering why someone doesn't launch a technical and research focused competitor. There seems to be such broad agreement that Google is now terrible for research that there's for sure a market for it. Edit: I'd love to see a some-of-the-web search engine like this. Start just with university sites, prepress archives, quality forums, public dev Slacks, etc.

> Everytime one of these threads show up, I find myself wondering why someone doesn't launch a technical and research focused competitor. There seems to be such broad agreement that Google is now terrible for research that there's for sure a market for it. Your bubble seems to agree, but the lack of serious competition, even in niches, is a sign that outside the HN bubble Google is in fact not seen as any worse.

Seems like for a decade several times a week this question shows up on HN and 99% of comments agree. Personally for my uses I don't remember it being significantly better, I'm not sure what I'm missing.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#122

Post by mabbo » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

The goals of Google have changed. Or rather, they haven't.

At one time, the premise was that good results would bring people back. Getting the exact right answer every time was the go-to means to get customers to return, and see more Ads. More ads meant more income, which meant a successful company.

But now, Google has the dominant market power. Customers are going to Google by default, never considering an alternative. Everyone who wants to have their results above the fold have to pay to play- because everything above the fold is a paid ad. And below the fold, sure, we can have something the algorithm dug up for you too. But that isn't the point anymore.

Google is a business. They don't optimize for accuracy, they optimize for money. It used to be that accuracy made money, so they did that. But that was never the end goal, and it's become far less important.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#123

Post by sebow » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

On one hand, google has been shown several time to quite literally censor certain keywords/topics out of their results, so in that regard yes.

As for the quality of results overall, depends if you value "what the crowd thinks". I personally don't, but i can see the value of it, especially when searching something very niche where the google search right now can semi-comprehend the context and give you the ~best answer.

For me, I haven't daily-drove google search since 2015 (ddg, startpage,customized searx all work fine for me), so i can't say that i know the nitty-gritty besides using google to compare results between engines.It gave me the impression of becoming an echo-chamber due to the "fact-checking" role google assumed.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#124

Post by MisterTea » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

drainyard wrote: post #42

flacebo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "people also searched for" box is not just useless, but also very much messing with usability for me. Every time I click on a link, go back, then trying to click on the next link, this box shows up and I accidentally click on that (because it shows up with a little delay and an animation). This filter takes care of that box completely: www.google.com##.exp-outline www.google.com##[style="display: block; opacity:…

I cannot stress enough how infuriating it is when a page loads content under my mouse cursor at such a delay that I can manage to point at a link and click on it _before_ the new content is loaded so that I click/tap an unexpected link. This happens _all_ the time on the Twitter app search bar.

This is my normal android experience. Use the share function, it displays a list of apps or chat conversations which actually are relevant, tap the app.... annnnnnnd the list refreshes with a new list and congrats, it buffered the tap before the menu refreshes and opens whatever app is now under your finger which is of course the wrong app. So when I use share I have to wait a few seconds to ensure the menu is refreshed and then pick an app. This behavior is throughout most of the ecosystem where input is valid and buffered before things are rendered to screen. Such a well engineered UX.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#125

Post by esyir » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

vgeek wrote: post #9

The results keep getting "refined" so as to suit the popular 80% of queries, while getting much worse for any technical or obscure queries. Forced synonyms and "people also searched for" are typically useless and almost infuriating. Once you get off the first or second page, the results get even worse-- with pages entirely unrelated to the query (e.g. not even containing the searched phrases). They are probably testi…

I often see this line of thought come up whether topics like this float around and wonder: how can we demonstrate /quantify /prove this. Especially since I'm already partial to agreement.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#126

Post by micromacrofoot » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avo…

This is a reply to myself... but does anyone have ideas about how this can go away? Have we lost the internet to eternal marketing and data-mining arms races? Is this why people are flocking to search-opaque places like Discord?

Sometimes I feel like that internet isn't for me anymore, and that's a little distressing.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#127

Post by underscore_ku » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

google,youtube search is trash now. it's adds search now

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#128

Post by zw123456 » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

One thing I have noticed, not sure if this is recent or well treaded ground here on HN no doubt, but if you Hover over the "I'm feeling luck" button then leave and hover again, it gives a bunch of different options like "I'm feeling adventurous", I'm Feeling Puzzled, I'm Feeling Curious. I am not sure what changes to the algorithm is made when you use one of those, they do seem to give different results. I am sure it is probably documented someplace but I think it would be nice if they had a drop down menu there instead with perhaps a bit of elaboration. I have tried using different ones when the regular search is giving me pop culture type results due to perhaps ambiguity with the more interesting topic I am searching on.

I always thought a good one would be "And now for something completely Different" that would give you random low ranked results just for fun :)

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#129

Post by Philadelphia » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #122

The goals of Google have changed. Or rather, they haven't. At one time, the premise was that good results would bring people back. Getting the exact right answer every time was the go-to means to get customers to return, and see more Ads. More ads meant more income, which meant a successful company. But now, Google has the dominant market power. Customers are going to Google by default, never considering an alternati…

People used to call that kind of stuff “being evil”

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#130

Post by azalemeth » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #106

fxtentacle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is also my observation. They will show content that completely does not contain your query words if that content is just popular enough. The result is that niche technical topics get drowned out by related popular discussions. Also, I am by now 100% sure that Google has just stopped indexing the long tail. Like if I search for function names of public source code that I downloaded from GitHub, Google won't…

(same poster) BTW, amazon.com is in my opinion even more infuriating. I just searched for "Odense Marzipan" (which is a 100+ years old brand serving the royal danish court) and they show me pictures of gamepads made out of chocolate along with a note: Your search "odense marzipan" was automatically translated into "odicht marzipan". Then searching for "odicht" out of curiousity, they auto-correct it to "olight". So I…

Thanks for introducing me to Odense marzipan (I have a job in Aarhus!)

I very much get the feeling that amazon and eBay "Don't like" Denmark – the former redirects amazon.dk to amazon.de saying "we deliver!" and the latter doesn't exist (but it does wholly-own a local alternative). Going to Denmark always makes me aware of how good the local Danish things are, and how inflexible and annoying the "global" options usually are by comparison. Riding roughshod over the language is a good example of this.