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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

#101

Post by osener »

nostrademons wrote: post #89

Google couldn't find what he was looking for because it doesn't exist on the web. Take a look at the search with a +retina term: https://www.google.com/search?q=deluge.app+%2Bretina Or in verbatim mode: https://www.google.com/search?q=deluge.app+retina&tbs=li:1 His article says that the answer is in the 4th result, the first that actually includes both of his search terms. But if you read that article, it's actually…

Yeah, in my experience the problem is not about Google ignoring search keywords. It is just that their recent updates made it much less apparent that what I'm looking for is not in their index. Their new algorithm seems to drop keywords until it can show me some results that are barely relevant and makes me think that I have to keep tweaking my keywords until I can find what I'm looking for, even if it doesn't exist on the web.

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

#102

Post by nkurz »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #34
robbrown451 wrote: post #18

There are lots of problems with Google search results recently, this is one I noticed today: https://www.google.com/webhp?q=goat#safe=on&q=goat Yes a crude Urban Dictionary definition was above the Wikipedia definition. Maybe they think they know my sense of humor and pop culture, but I really wanted to learn about actual goats, the animals, because my 2 year old daughter enjoys them so much at the petting zoo. Not a…

I get Wikipedia as the top result. Maybe Google is making a guess about your preference based on your history? Try the search in incognito/private mode and see.

I just tried with Incognito, and got Urban Dictionary as the top result: www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=goat

So maybe it's based on location? Ranked higher based on browser, IP, or something else?

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

#103

Post by nkurz »

roymurdock wrote: post #36
robbrown451 wrote: post #18

There are lots of problems with Google search results recently, this is one I noticed today: https://www.google.com/webhp?q=goat#safe=on&q=goat Yes a crude Urban Dictionary definition was above the Wikipedia definition. Maybe they think they know my sense of humor and pop culture, but I really wanted to learn about actual goats, the animals, because my 2 year old daughter enjoys them so much at the petting zoo. Not a…

You got unlucky. G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) is really popular slang at the moment for describing athletes, fashion, actors, etc. and people are undoubtedly searching for that term more than they are looking for the wikipedia page for the animal.

I presume that Rob would have been OK with "greatest of all time", which indeed is the top result once you click on the link. The problem is that the highlighted snippet on the Google page is significantly "racier":

  Urban Dictionary: goat
  www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=goat
  Urban Dictionary
  Tucking back your balls and dick, then bending over thus 
  resembling the back of a goat...according to the rules of 
  the game, the person who looks gets 4 kicks in ...

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

#105

Post by nkurz »

osener wrote: post #101
nostrademons wrote: post #89

Google couldn't find what he was looking for because it doesn't exist on the web. Take a look at the search with a +retina term: https://www.google.com/search?q=deluge.app+%2Bretina Or in verbatim mode: https://www.google.com/search?q=deluge.app+retina&tbs=li:1 His article says that the answer is in the 4th result, the first that actually includes both of his search terms. But if you read that article, it's actually…

Yeah, in my experience the problem is not about Google ignoring search keywords. It is just that their recent updates made it much less apparent that what I'm looking for is not in their index. Their new algorithm seems to drop keywords until it can show me some results that are barely relevant and makes me think that I have to keep tweaking my keywords until I can find what I'm looking for, even if it doesn't exist…

I agree that the lack of a clear "no pages matched your query" is large part of the problem. And as your phrasing indicates, it's also worth distinguishing between "not in their index" and "doesn't exist on the web". Google has a very large corpus, but doesn't include everything.

But the odd part here (and in line with original post) is that there are pages in Google's index that include both terms: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7169461?start=0&tstart=.... It's just that they don't start until 40 or so results in.

Searching in Verbatim mode without other modifiers seems to create the response that the original post wants: https://www.google.com/search?q=deluge.app+retina&tbs=li:1

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

#106

Post by nkurz »

vmp wrote: post #104

I find myself using the "verbatim" search option all the time, which is hidden one menu-layer deep in the "search tools" drop-down, behind the "All Results" button. It helps but I've noticed this trend of google search working against the user too.

Alternatively, in many browsers you can create a shortcut that you can use when entering a URL. I have:

  https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&num=100&tbs=li:1&filter=0
aliased to "v" for "verbatim". Here's instructions for adding a custom search engine to Chrome: http://www.swestwood.com/blog/view/fast-searching-chrome

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

#107

Post by Lagged2Death »

nkurz wrote: post #102
Lagged2Death wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get Wikipedia as the top result. Maybe Google is making a guess about your preference based on your history? Try the search in incognito/private mode and see.

I just tried with Incognito, and got Urban Dictionary as the top result: www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=goat So maybe it's based on location? Ranked higher based on browser, IP, or something else?

I was using a mobile browser before, and the page layout was different, putting the big summary box full of photos (which excerpts and links to Wikipedia) at the top.

On a desktop, I see what you mean; UrbanDictionary is indeed at the top of the plain-text search results.

Not going to defend Google at all. But for myself, if I'm looking for a Wikipedia-grade introduction to some topic, I usually just search Wikipedia directly. Wikipedia has become so ridiculously useful that it is the top result of a Google search half the time anyway. Wikipedia is a better human-curated web index than any of the old-school 1990s human-curated web indexes ever were.

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

#108

Post by m4x »

rsync wrote: post #74
zeven7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of your points are wrong. Quoted strings always work for me (symbols are still stripped -- Google is a natural language search engine, not a code search engine), and there is a "not" operator, if I understand what you mean by that. From the article you linked: When you use a dash before a word or site, it excludes sites with that info from your results. This is useful for words with multiple meanings, li…

"Quoted strings always work for me (symbols are still stripped..." That is the definition of not working. The point of the quotes is to allow searching for literal strings. You have elucidated the entire problem . Unless, of course, you're just searching for movie star names, in which case the rubbery nature of the search results really doesn't matter. It appears that -negative searching does work, which is amazing -…

Use quotes and search for rsync "--ignore-existing" or "rsync --ignore-existing". They are two different searches but both work fine and return useful results.

You can also remove the double dash and search for rsync ignore-existing

I appreciate the point of the posted article, but for the most part I don't actually have any trouble using Google as a programmer. You just need to format your searches correctly.

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

#109

Post by shawnee_ »

rsync wrote: post #63

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 do…

... there is no "not" operator, which is desperately needed

Not true. It can be achieved by simply adding the

  -
Operator to a search. For example, to get Google Search results about Tesla, minus all the stuff on the internet about the cars / motor company try...

  tesla -"tesla motors" -car

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

#110

Post by stephaniepier »

soared wrote: post #55
stephaniepier wrote: post #10

This happens to me frequently. I've also noticed that sometimes the "Did you mean [this]?" or "Search instead for [this]" don't show up anymore, which can be a big problem. As an example, it's difficult to find information on the company "Amazone" because Google insists on correcting it to Amazon. Usually putting things in quotes fixes it, but it's annoying when I know what I want to search for and Google keeps assum…

Except that in 99% of cases, Google is correct. The pure volume of people mistyping Amazon is good enough reason to autocorrect "Amazone." You know what you want to search for. So tell google what you want, "Amazone." I don't see how you can complain when you have the solution to the problem, don't use it, and are an incredibly niche (<1%) case.

I agree, and Amazone probably wasn't the best example. My point is that even when I search for something in quotes Google still autocorrects it (not talking specifically about Amazone here that was just one example I've encountered in the past). This is especially true when I have to find a person whose name isn't spelled normally.
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