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On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

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Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#61

Post by Lagged2Death »

Alas, it’s 2016 and there’s still no serious competitor to Google.

Eh. I switched my default to Duck Duck Go and I'm pretty happy with it. Not quite as magical as Google was in its heyday but then neither is Google. Set up keywords for your searches ("g" for Google, "b" for Bing etc.) and they're all just a keystroke away anyhow.

And if you're too lazy to set up your own custom searches or you're using a borrowed machine, Duck Duck Go has some slick built-in "bang" searches: "!imdb aronofsky", "!msdn system.diagnostics" and so on.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#62

Post by vmorgulis »

ErikAugust wrote: post #25
romaniv wrote: post #20

Alas, it’s 2016 and there’s still no serious competitor to Google. And there will not be any time soon. Writing an efficient crawler for what we call the "modern" web is not something a small or even median-size company can pull off. Google enjoys a tremendous competitive advantage: people specifically optimize webpages for what it can and cannot do. So any newcomer to the field will have to replicate tons of technol…

You are perpetuating a myth for the sake of a monopoly. A novel solution could be designed and implemented by a small company but no one dares.

There is Yacy (a P2P search engine):

http://yacy.net/

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#63

Post by rsync »

Yes, yes, yes. I have been meaning to write this very blog post for years with examples just like this.

There is not a single day that goes by that I am not searching for something specific and particular in google and am treated to pages and pages of search results that are missing at least one of the terms, thus rendering the results useless.

The worst part is, the strikethrough "missing: search term" identifier does not always appear, and you click through to a page that is useless without knowing it.

My habit has become to immediately ctrl-f on the resulting page and look for my terms so I don't waste my time.

Further problems:

- "allinsite:" is just a toss-up whether it is respected or not. Who knows why, but it does not fix this problem.

- "quoted strings", such as for programming or naming conventions, are completely ignored and are useless.

- there is no "not" operator, which is desperately needed.[1]

The only function that actually works as advertised is the site: prefix which limits searches to that particular website. I won't be surprised when they break this too, because it's not producing enough search-result-revenue.

I am not a teenaged kid searching for Justin Bieber and perfectly happy with whatever "relevant" or "related" results pop up. I am a professional. I am an engineer. I need tools that work, and google is shit as a search engine.

[1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#64

Post by vonklaus »

Nadya wrote: post #51
vonklaus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see this case as a particular problem. "People wanting to learn about goats" might actually be in the minority. This is the problem. Search isn't a democracy. I lookup the results I need , so not giving me filtering ability makes no sense. An engine that does what google does is an amazing achievement, but no longer makes sense as a model for the exact reason you gave as a defense. edit: If disagreement cou…

But you are given the ability to filter your results! Countless ways actually! Qualify your searches and modify them if needed. You were looking for information about goats . You should qualify "goats" with some form of "information about" statement. "goat" + "animal" makes the wikipedia page for goats the first search result. "goat" + "facts" gives you countless trivia pages, information, videos, etc Alternatively:…

Correct. However the problems (as I see them now) are 2fold:

No concept of time. Best case conception of time seems to be either provided by the site, "article date" or something to this effect, or t0 = when google first learned about the page.

So yes, "goat" + "animal" will return your results. Try:

https://www.google.com/#q=%22nodejs%22+%2B+%222016%22++mongo...

Top anser for: "nodejs" + "2016" mongo api

returns top hit: 2015, 2nd hit 2014.

and that I can't give it context myself:

I am on Mac, but my pc is broken looking for windows info or don't include Alexa1000 links as authoritative. million short (i believe) removes the Alexa1000, but not their link authority.

Also, [neverShowWordpressSite unless traffic >3million unique] some larger news sites are actually built on wordpress like bloomberg. But the point is that I would delist by technology, and filter by time and tweak my authority parameters.

However, if google let you do this it would exponentially compound the difficulty as the algorithm would exist on both sides of equation.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#65

Post by vmorgulis »

webmasterraj wrote: post #28
ErikAugust wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are perpetuating a myth for the sake of a monopoly. A novel solution could be designed and implemented by a small company but no one dares.

Maybe. Search is a resource-intensive algorithmic problem. So you need one of two things to beat Google: more resources or a much better algorithm. You're not going to get the first unless you're Facebook or Amazon or God, but maybe you can build a smarter algorithm. You are up against an army of some of the smartest computer scientists and mathematicians ever assembled -- but what you have going for you is a complet…

> ..more resources or a much better algorithm.

Or a limited search space. For myself, it could be HN, SO and Wikipedia.

Content can even be static and downloaded once or regularly.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#66

Post by jib »

webmasterraj wrote: post #28
ErikAugust wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are perpetuating a myth for the sake of a monopoly. A novel solution could be designed and implemented by a small company but no one dares.

Maybe. Search is a resource-intensive algorithmic problem. So you need one of two things to beat Google: more resources or a much better algorithm. You're not going to get the first unless you're Facebook or Amazon or God, but maybe you can build a smarter algorithm. You are up against an army of some of the smartest computer scientists and mathematicians ever assembled -- but what you have going for you is a complet…

You can also niche your space. Hoogle would be an example of that. If you know the searcher cares about Haskell functions only I imagine you can beat Google in that space. That solution probably expands to other interest spheres.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#67

Post by dheera »

vonklaus wrote: post #42
dheera wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this case as a particular problem. "People wanting to learn about goats" might actually be in the minority. Most people actually googling that word may in fact be looking for some alternative meaning because someone used it in some other sense and they didn't understand, so they Googled. And then clicked Urban Dictionary, voting it up. However, there's a particularly interesting case: https://www.google.c…

> I don't see this case as a particular problem. "People wanting to learn about goats" might actually be in the minority. This is the problem. Search isn't a democracy. I lookup the results I need , so not giving me filtering ability makes no sense. An engine that does what google does is an amazing achievement, but no longer makes sense as a model for the exact reason you gave as a defense. edit: If disagreement cou…

Search being a democracy is really just a crude way of creating a better ranking system than just looking at, say, keyword occurrence count. Humans are great at filtering out spammy and useless websites, and the democracy system picks up on that.

As a next step, privacy issues aside, what if they "profiled" you by the types of things you search, and tried to guess what you need based on other people who "think like you"?

For example, I'm a programmer, and if I search "python", I'm probably searching for something different than a biologist who is researching reptiles. This would be fairly obvious to decide based on the other types of things I typically Google for.

I'm sure Google is probably already researching how to do this, though. It sounds difficult to me though because of the sheer number of models you'd have to train and store, and then figure out how to run a distributed index on. It might be more feasible to create some small set (e.g. ~1000ish) profiles of "types of people" and then match you into one of those types. This could also mildly alleviate the privacy issue as the profiling could be done offline on the client.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#68

Post by ComputerGuru »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #45

I don't understand this article, particularly this footnote: >OK, confession time: the article linked to in the fourth result – the one that says “no retina support […] Deluge” actually talks about another app’s lack of retina support on OS X, but just go with it! That's the result he's using to say the results are worse, that that result should be higher, but says in the footnote that's not even a result relevant to…

I'm the original author of the blog post; if you'll allow me to clarify. I apologize for the misleading footnote - I believe it gives the impression that this isn't the correct search result when it is.

"The" post that I wanted to be first place had the perfect summary in Google, discussed deluge on OS X, talked about the lack of retina for a few different apps, and explicitly mentioned a few without retina support but did not outright include deluge in that list of apps without retina support. It was the most-relevant result in that it actually discussed the topics being searched for. It was, for all intents and purposes, the correct result that should have been returned - only pedantically it did not provide a point-blank answer to whether or not deluge itself was retina-ready.

I agree with you 100%, the results in the first image which do include all the search terms are more relevant than the results in the second search. But Google, for some reason, chose to prioritize the results that did not have all the search terms over those that did. Now from the results in the first image, the first of the displayed results that did use all the search terms (i.e. did not say "Missing: deluge") was the most-relevant of all the results that were obtained from either listing (important pedantic note: whether it actually answered my original question or not does not detract from the fact that it was the most relevant. Because the other links neither answered my original question nor were relevant to it.)

I think a comment by "Robert" from the blog post (if I may re-post it here), best summarizes my disappointment:

Imagine if I told you I have someone who might be the perfect soulmate for you, but unfortunately because the pool of candidates for “perfect soulmates” is so small, I’m also including people that are maybe compatible with you or maybe not – a kind and thoughtful act, on my behalf…. And then I proceed to introduce you to these latters while holding back the perfect match until a random time that I saw fit?

Regardless of whether or not the suggestion for potential soulmate ends up working out, the fact remains, you don't say "I have a result for your search query, but let's look at these definitely irrelevant results first"

If you want to over-analyze this, let's look at the "blurbs" returned by Google for the search results:

1) Deluge's main download page; blurb: open-source cross-platform torrent client. Site includes screenshots, FAQ, and community forums. MISSING: RETINA

2) Download - Deluge. Latest release . Release... Deluge.app. MISSING: RETINA

3) Installing/Mac OS X: A deluge package is available which works on Mac. MISSING: RETINA

4) From Linux to OS X: Meet your new apps: OS X Mount Lion ships with an app similar to AppX and AppY ..... [sic] It has one notable shortcoming: no retina support .... [sic] There are plenty of great Bittorrent clients on Linux - Deluge, KTorrent, Transmission, etc.

Of these four results, only one specifically talks about Deluge.app and Retina. It's the fourth result. Based off these four blurbs, which do you think is the right page to click on with the highest probability of answering my question? 1) The product main page which I know, thanks to Google, does not have the word "retina" anywhere, 2) the product download page, which I know, thanks to Google despite the completely useless blurb, does not contain the word "retina" anywhere, 3) instructions for installing on Mac, which thanks to Google, I know does not contain the word "retina" anywhere, or 4) a page discussing a variety of apps available on OS X, including explicitly by name, Deluge, which also talks about the retina support of one or more of the aforementioned apps?

I clicked on number 4. A page that talks about Deluge and other torrent clients that are available on OS X and lambasts an (unknown from the blurb) app for not having retina support would ideally be the page that would contain specific information on whether or not Deluge has retina support. It didn't provide the direct answer I was looking for. But it was a hell of a lot more relevant than the first three results, and Google knew it.

Addendum:

Oh, and about deluge.app not being in quotes: that's a lesson learned the hard way. Mac apps unfortunately do not have "unique" names. Pages. Numbers. Deluge. etc. People often append ".app" to clarify their meaning for SEO purposes, and I know that Google indexes "foo.bar" (sans quotes) as "foo bar" (again, sans quotes). Ironically, the only "word" of the original search query that could have been logically dropped is "app". But odds are that a post discussing Mac apps would contain the word "app" or "apps" somewhere. It's not fair to put "deluge.app" in quotes to provide a counterexample, because I knowingly and deliberately did not place it in quotes in the first place, because that's the one term that I do not require to be present verbatim.

Also, this is just the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." I run into this problem many times on a daily basis. This is just the concrete example that triggered the post in question, and for which I was able to obtain screenshots of the different variations so that the situation could be properly documented.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#69

Post by vonklaus »

dheera wrote: post #67
vonklaus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see this case as a particular problem. "People wanting to learn about goats" might actually be in the minority. This is the problem. Search isn't a democracy. I lookup the results I need , so not giving me filtering ability makes no sense. An engine that does what google does is an amazing achievement, but no longer makes sense as a model for the exact reason you gave as a defense. edit: If disagreement cou…

Search being a democracy is really just a crude way of creating a better ranking system than just looking at, say, keyword occurrence count. Humans are great at filtering out spammy and useless websites, and the democracy system picks up on that. As a next step, privacy issues aside, what if they "profiled" you by the types of things you search, and tried to guess what you need based on other people who "think like y…

I made this point below about inability to provide context. In the other thread link, I think I provided why,. although I am no machine learning specialist but I think because:

Google can never necessarily know what you want and can never truly know you achieved your goal, so you could not train it properly.

Not only would you need to discover what profession I am in, assuming you had fully updated linked profile, etc. you would need to build a comparable universe of like minded people and calibrate.

Then, you would have to assume what inputs are similar in that they have same/similar parameters and expect similar results.

Then you would have to assume which link I clicked was the answer, for every person who did this same thing.

Then you would have to discount your bias as an engine, because you provide the top results to me and (for now) people trust the engine so they typically have a false choice of the first 5-10 things. If those 5-10 things are wrong, whole model is in error to extent it is wrong.

Any one of these would provide error and the cascade leads to larger disparity. Google IS SO AMAZINGLY GOOD, it has actually managed to make this not a problem for a very long time.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#70

Post by vonklaus »

jib wrote: post #56
vonklaus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see this case as a particular problem. "People wanting to learn about goats" might actually be in the minority. This is the problem. Search isn't a democracy. I lookup the results I need , so not giving me filtering ability makes no sense. An engine that does what google does is an amazing achievement, but no longer makes sense as a model for the exact reason you gave as a defense. edit: If disagreement cou…

It is though. Search is about providing the highest likelihood of the desired result, not matching words, at least in one value space. If most people searching for "goat" want to know what the word means in slang, that should be the top result. Possibly you could argue that you want a personal search profile that knows you value Wikipedia higher than other links, but for the default case it feels like optimising for…

The default case is that everyone has a "search profile" but it is made by google and applied to abstracted parameters.

Everyone wants a "search profile" except they would like to control it and how it is applied as it is, for most people, their most important interaction with a computer, e.g. how they access information.

Currently, in some respects, that is out of a single silo or set of balkanized silos.

This will not be true in the future. One place can not dictate information flow for world. Plus, Alphabet has better things to do

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