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

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

#381

Post by breakfastduck » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

Reuzel wrote: post #312

willhinsa wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Common sense and technological advancement tells us that, quantitatively, Google search has become better year over year, for all their relevant metrics/cost functions. lmfao. so you're telling me "quantitatively" that google search results have gotten better, without citing any data at all, but with an appeal to common sense and "technological advancement"? what if i told you that search is an adversarial problem,…

> lmfao. so you're telling me "quantitatively" that google search results have gotten better, without citing any data at all, but with an appeal to common sense and "technological advancement"? Yes. If that sounds so unacceptable or strange to you, I suggest you try it. Works really well when reasoning about unavailable data, or researching a field with slow peer-review process. > what if i told you that search is an…

> Yes, that's plausible. Should be measurable quantitively too. Can you cite some data on this? :)

It's a bit bloody rich for you to come out with that attitude when your entire point revolves around your opinion of 'common sense'

> Do you really think it is possible that Google runs an implementation test of a new ranking model, and deploys it, while all measurements, human labeling, and user tests show it is doing worse? Of course not! Only if you think you are smarter, could you think that Google search changed and has gotten worse.

You seem to be confusing the concepts of 'Google have made their tech more profitable' and 'Google have made their search capability better'.

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

#382

Post by herpderperator » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

> For example, google seems to want full sentences instead of just keywords now.

Are we really shaming Google for having superior NLP? If you want the answer to a question, ask the question! I see no problem with this progress.

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

#383

Post by Pxtl » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:05 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…

What I'm wondering is if the efficiency of the spider itself has dropped. I've often hunted for an old Reddit post I once saw a long time ago and found no hits - maybe I got the wording wrong, but I suspect the real reason is that lower-popularity reddit content is simply not getting indexed at all. Or maybe it's the extreme recency bias others have discussed. Of course, I have no evidence because I can't find the thing that I can't find.

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

#384

Post by der-ofenmeister » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #167

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…

> Also, I am by now 100% sure that Google has just stopped indexing the long tail. Rather weird if true, but I can't really disagree with your observation. It seems like large parts of the web have disappeared in the last five to ten years. Google do most likely index the sites, but their current algorithm just don't use them, because it as much a promotion algorithm at it is search.

Well, ads and information are at direct competition, and we all know who's winning the battle. It seems Bing is better for most searches now, even technical ones because they seem to index more of github and stackoverflow than Google.

Man, ads really are the devil.

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

#385

Post by ggm » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

Good quantitative data is hard to find in this space. I'd welcome it, both as a user and out of interest in the data science. How would you quantify things? What search corpus bearing in mind the algorithm is possibly influenced by what terms are being used worldwide, weighting caches and the like.

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

#386

Post by pja » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:11 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…

Recently my Google suggested search completions has started suggesting that I add "reddit" to a lot of my searches.

I can only presume that so many people have given up on the web as indexed by Google and are just searching for " reddit" now as the only way to get any kind of content written by real people on a subject instead of SEOd filler "content".

Presumably it won't be long before Reddit itself is flooded with spam content to take advantage of this - I'm sure it's already happening to high value keywords.

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

#387

Post by gausswho » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

zerd wrote: post #221

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…

Google now also has an extreme recency bias. Most things I search for will give top results for recent SEO optimized blog posts/Youtube videos instead of established authoritative resources. If you search for something that happens to overlap with a recent movie name, good luck, it'll drown. And I constantly "have" "to" "search" "like" "this" because Google thinks it knows better than me.

While I also am annoyed how much I need to enquoten to refine search, in most cases I wish it upped the bias further. My default search applies the 'Past year' filter because otherwise I get lots of outdated answers.

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

#388

Post by aaron695 » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

You've asked ~4 different questions.

Close to none of the replies acknowledge this.

Yes, HN quantifiably is close to useless. They can't even understand the problem/questions let alone the answer.

To answer some

No, Google is not worse, it's just different. But I can't quantify it. I haven't kept old data.

For Dorking check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shodan_(website) Google Dorking still works fine. Almost by definition it's up to you to find new Dorks as the old ones get closed.

The fact Sal dulu a used to autocomplete to Sal dulu Antasma might have been Personal results, did it work for anyone else? Have you turned this off?

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

#389

Post by pja » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

kawfey wrote: post #260

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…

Gotta use "site:reddit.com" If I'm asking google or DDG for advice on a product, it's either going to be a reddit or Wirecutter for me. 99% of results on "best *" results in _*literally hundreds*_ of domains like "best*for2021.com" "buybest*.com" "top10*reviews.com" that are all generated by bots containing only the worst knockoff / counterfeit / Chinesium products and tons and tons of Amazon affiliate links. E.g. I…

WireCutter has really gone downhill since they were bought out imo.

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

#390

Post by gausswho » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #329

Trufa wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get what people are talking about, first three results for best exercise bikes: https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-exercise-bikes https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/best-exercise-bikes-40742... https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/g23064646/best-exercise-b... Not sure if they are amazing results but it's decent for such a generic query.

These are all monetized results. Brands send bikes to these places to review. It's an advertisement. If you want an organic result like a personal blog post from someone or a niche interest forum like you might have found on google search 15 years ago or so, it's just not really there. Everything you see has been paid for to be seen by you. Once you realize that, a lot of the web feel like this uncanny potemkin inter…

Four years old now, but here's a good long read on how an entire industry's review sites may be acquired or strongarmed into being invisible shills: https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...