Google Memory Loss • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Memory Loss

#131

Post by fixermark » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

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…

I wonder if what you're seeing is a result of the Internet growing, not specifically Google degrading. Which is to say, as the indexable dataset grows, you'd expect the individual indices to turn up more and more heterogeneous results over time.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#132

Post by kuschku » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

kens wrote: post #108

If there seems to be a problem with Google not indexing your site, Google's webmaster tools can help debug what's going on: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

That's if your own site is affected - but what if I want to find content from another site, and Google doesnt properly index that? I can't exactly use Google's webmaster tools for that, and the owner may not care, or can't be contacted.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#133

Post by sincerely » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #117

I wouldn't be surprised if this issue is as mysterious to Google staff as it is to you. Google Search no longer runs a clearly defined algorithm to find search results. It is a collection of AI systems that are trained continuously on a variety of data. There is probably no human alive who fully understands how Google makes decisions about which results to return and how to rank them. They just understand how to prov…

If that's the case then this seems like a symptom of a problem I've been thinking about for a while...is it safe to build systems where it's impossible for someone to understand how it works? What happens when it breaks down? Who will be responsible?

Re: Google Memory Loss

#134

Post by visarga » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

Google search team, I wouldn't want to be in your place today. My frustration with Google Search is it's degree of protection against bots. If you, Google, can spider everything webmasters post, why can't webmasters spider everything Google returns?

In my case, I would like to use Google search to bootstrap a few minor search engine indexes and collect data for NLP projects. But the free version is too limited and the paid version prohibitively expensive, so, no luck.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#135

Post by fixermark » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #121

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…

I've noticed the same and if you look across internet and search properties it's trending the same way. I'm not certain yet, but I think it has to do with systems relying more and more on the the system giving a high weighting on popular or frequent searches. In other words, these systems are filtering content by how frequent they are searched and annealing returns which have low frequency. This makes sense from a ma…

I think the interesting question is: if you optimize the design to return rarely-accessed results reliably, what feature that we take for granted does that design sacrifice?

Re: Google Memory Loss

#136

Post by fixermark » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

symmitchry wrote: post #116

quickben wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it meets profits.

I find it incredible that google can profit from Gmail. (Actually I find it incredible that Google can profit at all.)

Advertising is an incredibly profitable industry.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#137

Post by whatusername » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:54 AM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #124

Puer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I can one up that: I was living in Dubai a few years ago and have a number of photos of fancy cars I could never even dream of affording. If I search for “Lamborghini” or “Rolls Royce” it gives me the photos of those cars. I’ve never tagged them and I’m not an Android user, so they aren’t reading my messages. https://imgur.com/caz8D2Y I even have four photos I took at night, in burst mode, as a Bughatti Veyron zoomed…

iOS photos app does this as well.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#138

Post by fixermark » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC

timbray wrote: post #74

[Tim here] Folks might notice that the article is once again find-able. Being 2 links from the top of Hacker News will do that…

Or the dataset outage was temporary. Remember, it's a distributed data corpus.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#139

Post by userbinator » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:57 AM UTC

rectang wrote: post #129

dannyw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking this way. I wish I could use the Google of 10 years ago. Pre-personalization, pre-deep-learning RankBrain, just the reliable and consistent search engine where complex queries will return the result I want, if it is there. Today, if I'm searching for something unpopular or specific, I usually get frustrated. You would expect the opposite to happen as the size of the web should incre…

I wish I could go back to the Google of 1999. PageRank was magic before people learned to game it. The results were incredibly good.

PageRank was magic before people learned to game it

Even then, before Google started going after them by filtering results, the SEO spam sites were pretty easily recognisable and ignorable as you scrolled through the results. Now, they still show up in droves (try searching for service manual PDFs and you'll instantly see what I mean) but you hit the end of the viewable results far too soon to find the useful stuff buried in later pages.

In other words, Google's ranking now seems to be "good SEO'd sites > spammy SEO'd sites > everything else", and cuts off results before getting to that third category, when that third category should ideally switch places with the second and maybe even the first.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#140

Post by fixermark » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:58 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #134

Google search team, I wouldn't want to be in your place today. My frustration with Google Search is it's degree of protection against bots. If you, Google, can spider everything webmasters post, why can't webmasters spider everything Google returns? In my case, I would like to use Google search to bootstrap a few minor search engine indexes and collect data for NLP projects. But the free version is too limited and th…

> why can't webmasters spider everything Google returns?

I'm sure you could start client-side caching every search you ever do to Google.

But if you're searching enough to eat up Google's bandwidth, they're paying for that data and they're under no obligation to keep serving you as a client (much as any server is under no particular obligation to serve a search spider).