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Google Memory Loss

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Re: Google Memory Loss

#101

Post by Declanomous »

userbinator wrote: post #93

I've noticed this many times too, particularly recently, and I call it "Google Alzheimer's" --- what was once a very powerful search engine that could give you thousands (yes, I've tried exhausting its result pages many times, and used to have much success finding the perfect site many dozens of pages deep in the results) of pages containing nothing but the exact words and phrase you search for has seemingly degraded…

> has seemingly degraded into an approximation of a search engine that has knowledge of only very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference...)

I think the biggest irony is that the web allows for more adoption of long-tail movements than ever before, and Google has gotten significantly worse at turning these up. I assume this has something to do with the fact that information from the long tail is substantially less searched for than stuff within the normal bounds.

This is a nightmare if you have any hobbies that share a common phrase with a vastly more popular hobby, and is especially common when it comes to tech-related activities. I use Linux at home, and I program VBA at work. At home Linux is crossed out of most of the first few pages, and I just get a ton of results about Windows, and at work VBA is crossed off and I get results about VB6 and .NET.

Completely. Useless.

I can only imagine this has something to do with their increasing reliance on AI, and the fact that the AI is probably incentivized to give a correct response to as many people'above the fold' as is possible. If 95% of people are served by dropping the specifically-chosen search term, then the AI probably thinks it's doing a great job.

It seems like the web is being optimized for casual users, and using the internet is no longer as skill you can improve to create a path towards a more meaningful web experience.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#102

Post by jakecopp »

Puer wrote: post #97
aglionby wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had this for Chrome history as well. There have been multiple times where I'm sure I've browsed a site with some keyword in the title and it just doesn't show up in search. I don't tend to have a clue about the time window it would be in either so I can't go looking for it, so I can't prove it.

Chrome history may as well be useless and/or developed by the same people who created Reddit search.

I feel that it is intentionally bad so people don't realize how much Google knows about them.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#103

Post by amerine »

smoyer wrote: post #89

I've done essentially the opposite ... I use DuckDuckGo as my everyday search engine and only use Google when there's not an acceptable result there. Over the last couple of years, the number of times per week that I switch to Google has probably halved.

This is basically my exact experience. Once a long time ago I made DDG my default browser and it stuck. I really like using “!g” to switch quickly to google.

If my search bar DDG search doesn’t return satisfactory results, I hit my address/search bar key (cmd+l for me), press left arrow/start-of-line key, type “!g “ and hit return. That gives me a google result page quicker than the time it would take to reach the mouse. It’s become a good workflow.

I’m having to use it less and less. DuckDuckGo is getting really good.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#104

Post by miek »

ohazi wrote: post #17

I've convinced myself that this happens in gmail / hangouts history search too. It'll very confidently tell you that here are the only six results for your search term going back to the beginning of time, but if you go and manually dig up something that you know is there from ten years ago, then all of a sudden there are seven results the next time you search for the same term. I haven't done this methodically, and I…

Thank you for bringing this up. It would make my month if someone would chime in with a solution. I didn't know about this problem until very recently, and it caused some major headaches in my business.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#105

Post by aerovistae »

ohazi wrote: post #17

I've convinced myself that this happens in gmail / hangouts history search too. It'll very confidently tell you that here are the only six results for your search term going back to the beginning of time, but if you go and manually dig up something that you know is there from ten years ago, then all of a sudden there are seven results the next time you search for the same term. I haven't done this methodically, and I…

I've had this happen too. It's not just you. This has happened to me repeatedly and it is so, so frustrating.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#106

Post by jsnell »

lolc wrote: post #91
jsnell wrote: post #65

> I think Google has stopped in­dex­ing the old­er parts of the We­b. I think I can prove it. Google’s com­pe­ti­tion is do­ing bet­ter. The first sentence is just common sense, and no particular proof is needed. The last sentence might or might not be true, but the anecdotes in this article say nothing about whether or not its true. The problem is that we don't know how Tim selected these two particular pages as exa…

> The first sentence is just common sense, and no particular proof is needed. How is this common sense? > The problem is that we don't know how Tim selected these two particular pages as examples. Yes we do know. He was using Google to find his own old stuff over the years. Some content he was referring regularly disappeared from Google's results. These pages had previously been included in the results. > Another rea…

> How is this common sense?

Because it's in practice impossible to index every page. Index selection has always been a core quality feature in search engines. (Both re: which pages get included, and re: which pages get included in which layer of index in multi-layered index schemes).

> Yes we do know. He was using Google to find his own old stuff over the years. Some content he was referring regularly disappeared from Google's results. These pages had previously been included in the results.

That's just a guess, it's not actually stated anywhere in Tim's article. But yes, given he did not say otherwise, what you propose is probably what happened. He had a couple of pages which he knew were not found on Google, and checked whether they could be found on Bing.

But my whole point is that this kind of methodology is total garbage. And then he's making pretty absolute statements, like his tweet about the post "TIL that both Bing and DuckDuckGo apparently index a lot more of the Web than Google does".

Re: Google Memory Loss

#107

Post by wybiral »

Doesn't Google downplay non-HTTPS sites, which older ones probably will be. Also, maybe it's just part of the algorithm that people tend to search for recent pages more often than old ones.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#109

Post by mxfh »

flukus wrote: post #73
viraptor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the drop down in tools not enough?

Because I often don't know the range I'm looking for, it could have been yesterday or it could have been 4 years ago. If I select last 12 months I might miss something 13 months ago. There's a lot of ambiguity in what I'm searching for (otherwise it wouldn't be called a lookup) and when I'm looking for current information then weighting by age is a lot more natural. Another issue is that I don't know what the filter…

I often happen to search for things in multiple intervals. Often the top results are obsolete, since they are more than a year old.

What drove me nut's, is that their QA didn't catch the bug with the date format order for years. It only recently got fixed. The calendar selection was regional and put in the date in the regions format (Often dd/mm/yyyy), while the query form expects mm/dd/yyyy.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#110

Post by Puer »

jakecopp wrote: post #102
Puer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome history may as well be useless and/or developed by the same people who created Reddit search.

I feel that it is intentionally bad so people don't realize how much Google knows about them.

Meanwhile their image recognition gets better and better. For those of you who use Google Photos backup, try a keyword image search in Google Drive sometime of your untagged photos ("beach", "face," etc.) You'll be creepily surprised on what Google is indexing, even against what they claim they don't (try some sketchier words).
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