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It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

stop.zona-m.net

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Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#101

Post by influx »

ghaff wrote: post #6

For better or worse, Google is very explicitly not a card catalog though. One might disagree about how Google determines relevance--and the criteria are opaque. But, in any case, it's quite different from a card catalog which, with the caveat that the work in question must be part of the library's curated collection, is completely non-judgmental about the relative importance of a given item.

It used to be. I remember when one of the selling points of google was how many pages they indexed and how fast your search came back over that data set.

I guess no one at Google is getting a promotion by making sure old pages can be returned.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#102

Post by brudgers »

"Deprecating" might be a better term than "forgetting." Google's business isn't driven by long tail content. Probably it never was.

Maybe somewhere there is a Google disk with the the hash of an exact phrase the author typed into the search box. But statistically, that hash won't be found in hot memory vector space when cosine similarity runs on a nearby server. Finding the phrase would require a batch job that runs much longer than the engineered time limit Google imposes on search queries. Without a "let me know in 24 hours" option, Google's search will partition data into what should and shouldn't be accessible. That partition will always be according to Google's business goals. All the information may be indexed, but only the fraction of the index beneficial to Google will ever be accessible to ordinary users.

The crux of the story is that there is no business case for Google to return the author's web pages in search results even if the Wayback Machine implies that Google could.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#103

Post by gambler »

This has been been happening for years and getting increasingly worse. But it's not just old websites. I think it's certain types of content.

Here is one specific example out of dozens I've seen. There is a short satirical rant "published" on Pastebin called The Java Way. Posted in 2015. Unfindable on Google. It was indexed and findable around the time it was posted.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=%22the+...

First result on DDG:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22the+java+way%22+pastebin&t=ffsb...

The worst part is that Pastebin uses Google for its own search.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#104

Post by Liquix »

founderling wrote: post #53
degenerate wrote: post #13

This author is in his own little bubble and doesn't understand the vast amount of blog-repost spam that google has to deal with. The way their algorithm most likely deals with this is a mixture of domain rank + tenure... how long has this copy of this article existed on this domain, and can we be sure this is the original copy? The author says the article was removed in 2006 (" [...] posts, were not accessible anymor…

Here is an example: http://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/metallica__5.html No matter how you search for the content on Google, nothing comes up: https://www.google.com/search?q="Metallica+only+played+2+son... DuckDuckGo has it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="Metallica+only+played+2+songs+fro... I checked the wayback machine and the content has constantly been on that url for over 10 years. This is the first example of an ol…

Anecdotally and perhaps unrelated - has anyone else noticed a decrease in the accuracy and general quality of Google search over the past 2-4 months? They've had to have been utilizing ML to 'improve' searches for some time now, but the quality of the results has decreased suddenly and inexplicably (for me).

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#105

Post by wyck »

Liquix wrote: post #104
founderling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an example: http://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/metallica__5.html No matter how you search for the content on Google, nothing comes up: https://www.google.com/search?q="Metallica+only+played+2+son... DuckDuckGo has it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="Metallica+only+played+2+songs+fro... I checked the wayback machine and the content has constantly been on that url for over 10 years. This is the first example of an ol…

Anecdotally and perhaps unrelated - has anyone else noticed a decrease in the accuracy and general quality of Google search over the past 2-4 months? They've had to have been utilizing ML to 'improve' searches for some time now, but the quality of the results has decreased suddenly and inexplicably (for me).

Yes, i'm having to go several pages deep and even then not finding anything relevant, I've started to use other search engines and reddit to actually find useful info.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#106

Post by zrm »

api wrote: post #42
degenerate wrote: post #13

This author is in his own little bubble and doesn't understand the vast amount of blog-repost spam that google has to deal with. The way their algorithm most likely deals with this is a mixture of domain rank + tenure... how long has this copy of this article existed on this domain, and can we be sure this is the original copy? The author says the article was removed in 2006 (" [...] posts, were not accessible anymor…

So as with all other open systems, spam is destroying the web.

It seems like the opposite actually -- spam is destroying Google.

They're so big that it's worth blackhats spending significant resources to game their algorithm. That induced them to implement a spam filter which is now discarding the ham along with the spam.

Which means that smaller search engines that aren't being targeted by spammers are now giving better results. That is a major long-term problem for Google if they can't avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater like this.

People only use Google because it has historically had the best results. They'll get some way on inertia now, but that doesn't last forever. They need to fix this or they're ultimately in trouble, and we could be heading for a landscape where being a search engine above a threshold size is a liability.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#107

Post by misterman0 »

founderling wrote: post #67
vissi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, search may have bugs (or undocumented features) too, I have googled content from other pages on this site (related to Metallica). Page 6 for example: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Listen+up+you+fags+metall...

I don't think the articles premise is that Google axed all content older then 5 years or so. But that it gradually discards old unique content. Which goes against the original mission of Google to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible". A "bug" could be an option, but I don't expect that to be the reason. It's too easy to find examples of forgotten content. And I don't think a bug of th…

>> Googles core business

Which core business are you referring to?

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#108

Post by fencepost »

EastSmith wrote: post #21
degenerate wrote: post #13

This author is in his own little bubble and doesn't understand the vast amount of blog-repost spam that google has to deal with. The way their algorithm most likely deals with this is a mixture of domain rank + tenure... how long has this copy of this article existed on this domain, and can we be sure this is the original copy? The author says the article was removed in 2006 (" [...] posts, were not accessible anymor…

Yeah, but how DDG was able to show "the new original"?

DDG's primary search is actually Bing IIRC.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#110

Post by gambler »

degenerate wrote: post #13

This author is in his own little bubble and doesn't understand the vast amount of blog-repost spam that google has to deal with. The way their algorithm most likely deals with this is a mixture of domain rank + tenure... how long has this copy of this article existed on this domain, and can we be sure this is the original copy? The author says the article was removed in 2006 (" [...] posts, were not accessible anymor…

>The way their algorithm most likely deals with this is a mixture of domain rank + tenure... how long has this copy of this article existed on this domain, and can we be sure this is the original copy?

This rationalization doesn't change the fact that it's incresingly hard or impossible to find certain things on Google, that they are effectively biased against certain types of websites and certain types of pages (even when the content is perfectly good) and that other search engines seem to be able to deal with these issues much better.

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