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Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

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

#421

Post by hotpotamus »

zinxq wrote: post #171

There's a whole class of searches that no longer have value because of SEO. Try "best exercise bike" or anything that can be similarly monetized and you will of course end up at a well-crafted page designed to monetize you. My deepest apologies for saying this, but for any type of query that has a monetization angle, I now add "site:www.reddit.com" to the query to find actual discussion about it. Normal Reddit discla…

You know, I cleaned out my grandparent's old house recently and came across a Schwin exercise bike from probably the 70's. It has some sort of speedometer/dynomometer thing, a resistance adjustment, and a mechanical timer. You know what? I got up on it and went for 10 minutes and my heart was beating faster and my legs felt like they were getting a workout. What more do you need in a bike? Especially now - I had my phone to listen to a podcast and watch to monitor heartrate if I'd like - what else does a bike need to do?

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

#422

Post by Blikkentrekker »

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…

Frankly, I mostly receive political articles and columns when asking for more more objective things.

I remember once searching for how common same-sex relationships among teenagers are in Japan, as some say it is very common, and all I received were political opinion pieces that did not in any way come with the numbers I sought on Google, so I then tried DuckDuckGo and to my amusement what I received with the same query was mostly pornography.

Neither particularly useful, but the contrast in how both prioritize was interesting to me.

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

#423

Post by seoulmetro »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #224

Similarly, Google maps has begun giving me really bad routes and I live only 30 minutes outside a major tech city. It coincided with the little green leaf that promises to route me on 'eco friendly routes'. Don't see how sitting in the car longer can be more eco friendly

Oh my god there's an eco mode for driving now? That's hilarious... and scary.

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

#424

Post by betwixthewires »

honkycat wrote: post #415
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…

For me, Discord is the new reddit. When I want information about a product, I join the discord forum associated with that hobby and I ask for recommendations. Since Discord is a chat service like IRC, I get replies from humans instead of shady astro-turfed websites.

This is a decent solution, but not at scale. A big reason to even have all previous discussion archived is searchability and information availability. If the question has been answered it shouldn't be hard to find it. Having to have a human do the work of explaining something every time someone on the internet wonders about it is infeasible.

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

#425

Post by seoulmetro »

quinnjh wrote: post #371

Ive made multiple 4-5 word queries looking for specific information ive found before and will be presented with 1-3 pages of results. What happened? I remember always getting g o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o g l e pages and pretty much always being able to go to the 30th "O". I find it hard to believe the internet is now smaller than it was in mid 2000s Plenty of technical topics where i get better results from duck d…

They're censoring searches. If Google were a tool like a saw, it'd have 2 or 3 of it's 200 cutting grooves left. People would say, oh it's just poorly maintained! But the reality is they shaved those grooves off because they were scared you'd finish cutting.

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

#426

Post by rhines »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #370
trulyme wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is infuriating on all UIs, but I haven't seen one that would implement a very obvious solution: if the area around click has changed in 100ms before the event, disregard the click. Either a webpage or a browser could do that. I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of it, so there must be some reason why it isn't done - does anyone know why?

> Either a webpage or a browser could do that. The browser should do it. Websites often do this intentionally in order to trick users into clicking ads. The only way to stop these abuses is for the browser itself to stop enabling them.

Unfortunately Google would make the Gmail team very grumpy if they did this - Gmail's by far the worst offender in my experience. Every single time I open my email I have to remind myself to wait for a moment before clicking on my newest emails, because most of the time there's going to be a couple ad "emails" popping in and shuffling everything else down a few seconds after all the real emails have loaded.

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

#427

Post by Reuzel »

breakfastduck wrote: post #381
Reuzel wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Of all things, I am sure that this discussion thread did not add value to this community conversation, and as such, serves as spam. Apologies, and let's hope Google bot finds ways to ignore low-information content in a threaded forum. Maybe they could even locate the exact post which caused the derail, and apply some authority penalty on its author.

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

#428

Post by rhines »

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…

You're not going to find people doing unpaid work reviewing the best exercise bikes, or other expensive items. Very few people can afford to go out and buy 10-20 exercise bikes, and fewer still people can afford to do so every time a new bike is released. And yet fewer will then go and write up their experiences and keep their list updated over time.

For stuff like this you will only get spec comparison articles or comparison articles from big sites who get gear sent to them or make so much from affiliate sales that they can afford to rent/buy gear. It's simply not likely for anyone to put so much time and effort into it for a passion project.

However, where you can still find independent reviews is if you look up a specific item. Granted, they may still put an affiliate link in, because why not try to make some money when you've put in the work of making a good review, but at least they'll have bought the gear themselves and are using it because it's what they like best, and can speak to the pros and cons of the equipment in detail.

So the big lists are still useful - check out a couple "top 10" lists, read the specs, and get an idea of what's suitable. Then look up the promising candidates individually, and find more "real" content about them. I find this usually gives results which are better than just reading Reddit discussions, at least for higher value items.

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

#429

Post by frosted-flakes »

moffkalast wrote: post #235
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…

> hashbang Maybe it's just me but those always seem vastly gratuitous. Like shouldn't the engine figure that out automatically? It's like half its job.

The engine should automatically detect that I want to be booted to a third-party site? Err, no. That would be infuriating behaviour if it happened without explicit instruction.

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

#430

Post by notJim »

mda wrote: post #290
notJim wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Most of the time, this is just a list of coats someone googled and copy-pasted info from the marketing pages. This page is an affiliate-marketing site masquerading as a review site. Not sure if specifically that page is, but that's what the majority of "product review" results in Google are nowadays.

I know these review pages are usually affiliate links, but the problem is, when the subject is something like this (commercial interest), it is extremely hard to find anything that is objective. Emergency prep guy seems like at least owns or knows about the products he lists, however he also discloses his site is owned by a company which is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. So maybe Google…

> So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest

As you say, this is harder to do well than it sounds. There are definitely a lot of hobbyist types who review things and make a side (or even major) income from affiliate sales. With human judgment, it's quite easy to differentiate the honest hobbyist from the spam sites. I fear that any automated attempt to punish the spam sites would end up hurting the hobbyists more.

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