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How is search so bad? A case study

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Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#281

Post by dylan604 »

seshagiric wrote: post #213
l0b0 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it time for paid search engines? Make users vote with their wallets and pay for the eternal arms race. Problem is, whoever is behind something like that would have to start with an already sufficiently superior experience (or massive geek cred) to make people pay from the early days. Maybe going back to manually curated results of a subset of topics would work? Or some Stack Overflow-esque model of user powered me…

Probably not. The problem with current search engines is that they need some way to rank the pages and hence inherently susceptible to clever SEO (that curates pages to get ranked high for certain type of queries). So having a paid search engine does not fully solve the SEO problem. Having no Ads does not takeout the SEO problem of boosting pages to top.

If the paid for search engine ignores SEO "optimizations" and actually ranks on content AND these results prove better that attracts actual paying users, then we don't have to wait for SEO to die. Just like SEO rose to prominence to win Google result ranking because that's where the users were, the sites would stop the SEO crap.

Getting this hypothetical site to get users is the real problem. Same thing with getting users to a Facebook alternative.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#282

Post by Nasrudith »

viklove wrote: post #252
joshuamorton wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Google, but don't work on search) > If wikipedia contains cherry picked slander against a person, topic or website then the raters are instructed to provide a low page rank score This sounds like a good thing to me. Sites that contain lies, fabrications, and falsehoods should not be as highly ranked as those which do not. Why should shareholders sure Google for, as far as I can tell from your argument, try…

Why do your colleagues get to decide what is fact and what is fiction? It's our right, as humans, to be able to make that decision on our own after we encounter information. If Wikipedia gains a reputation for libel, then the onus should be on the public to stop trusting them. Google does not have the moral authority to censor the internet, and it's absolutely wrong for them to attempt this. Information should be fre…

They get to decide because it is their algorithm and the whole point is of a search function is to discriminate inputs to be relevant. They aren't "getting in the way" - they are using it as they please.

What you ask for isn't freedom but control over everyone else - there is nothing stopping you from running your own spiders, search engines, and rankings.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#283

Post by dylan604 »

trangon wrote: post #192
lettergram wrote: post #158

I've been thinking about this for years[1]. The truth is, what Google solved was parsing the search query, not identifying the best results. In fact, Google is not incentivized to give you the best results, they are designed to maximize their revenue, derived from getting you to view / click ads. Google is not a search company, they are an advertising company. The more searches you make, the more revenue they make. T…

I somehow doubt that all of Google’s internal decisions are as simple as “well we’re an ads company, let’s just not worry about search quality.”

Why do you doubt this? As a company in total, I believe that all decisions are made on "will this sell more ads". At the same time, I believe that some of the ideas from the software devs are born from doing something cool. It then gets rolled into "how can we use this new thing to sell more ads"?

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#284

Post by leereeves »

JamesBarney wrote: post #279
leereeves wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a political context, "credible" is often a synonym for "agrees with me". Anyone ranking "page quality" should be conscious of and try to avoid that, and yet the word "bias" doesn't even appear in the linked guidelines for Search Quality Raters. Of course Google's own bias (and involvement in particular political campaigns) is well known, and opposed to Project Veritas, so it's quite possible that you are right and…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas I doubt this affected search rankings but Project Veritas does have a ton of credibility issues.

I see some claims that PV edited videos, selectively removing portions to give a particular impression, which may well be true.

But when CNN did that[1,2], changing "take that shit [violence] to the suburbs" into "a call for peace", the left wing media ignored it. Wikipedia editors didn't add it to CNN's page[3] or add a message that CNN has a history of deceptively editing videos.

That's why it's so important to get information from many sources, because every source (including Wikipedia) is selectively edited to favor an agenda. At the very least, by choosing what stories to cover, but sometimes more blatantly.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-8Cn6boqcA

2: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/cnn-sorry-for...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#285

Post by skosch »

preommr wrote: post #256
zackees wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason why search is so bad is that Google is downranking the internet. I should know - I blew the whistle on the whole censorship regime and walked 950 pages to the DOJ and media outlets. --> zachvorhies.com What did I disclose? That Google was using a project called "Machine Learning Faireness" to rerank the entire internet. Part of this beast has to do with a secret Page Rank score that Google's army of w…

Google's search rankings are based on opinions held by other credible sources. This isn't really blowing the whistle when, as you admitted, Google admits this openly. And maybe your site doesn't get ranked well because it's directly tied to project veritas. I don't like being too political, especially on hn and on an account tied to my real identity, but project veritas and it's associates exhibit appalling behavior…

His website contains gems like "Things got political in June 2017 when Google deleted "covfefe" out of it's arabic translation dictionary in order to make a Trump tweet become nonsense." (No, covfefe doesn't mean anything in Arabic.)

Here is someone who believes that a private company's open attempts to rank websites by quality amounts to "seditious behaviour" deserving of criminal prosecution, and the only people willing to pay attention were Project Veritas. Google has plenty of ethics issues, but this guy's claims are absurd.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#286

Post by frandroid »

MayeulC wrote: post #51
rahulchhabra07 wrote: post #32

I have been thinking about the same problem since a few weeks. The real problem with search engines is the fact that so many websites have hacked SEO that there is no meritocracy left. Results are not sorted based on relevance or quality but by SEO experts' efforts at making the search results favor themselves. I can possibly not find anything deep enough about any topic by searching on Google anymore. It's just surf…

> A new breakthrough heuristic today will look something totally different, just as meritocratic and possibly resistant to gaming. I wonder how much of this could be obtained back by penalizing: 1. The number of javascript dependencies 2. The number of ads on the page, or the depth of the ad network This might start a virtuous circle, but in the end, this is just a game of cat-and-mouse, and website might optimize fo…

> 1. The number of javascript dependencies

How about we don't start looking at the /how/ a site is made, when it's already difficult to sort out the /what/ it is.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#287

Post by Nasrudith »

pjc50 wrote: post #217
graycat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to hear your concerns. > The real problem with search engines is the fact that so many websites have hacked SEO that there is no meritocracy left. I intend to announce the alpha test of my search engine here on HN. My search engine is immune to all SEO efforts. > I can possibly not find anything deep enough about any topic by searching on Google anymore. In simple terms my search engine gives users content with…

This sounds extremely implausible; especially claiming "immune to SEO" is like declaring encryption "unbreakable". A lot of human effort would be devoted to it if your engine became popular.

Nah - unbreakable encryption is actually possible with one time pads.

The only way SEO could be impossible is if there was no capacity to change search ranking no matter what - which would be both useless and impossible.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#288

Post by wwweston »

leereeves wrote: post #261
preommr wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's search rankings are based on opinions held by other credible sources. This isn't really blowing the whistle when, as you admitted, Google admits this openly. And maybe your site doesn't get ranked well because it's directly tied to project veritas. I don't like being too political, especially on hn and on an account tied to my real identity, but project veritas and it's associates exhibit appalling behavior…

In a political context, "credible" is often a synonym for "agrees with me". Anyone ranking "page quality" should be conscious of and try to avoid that, and yet the word "bias" doesn't even appear in the linked guidelines for Search Quality Raters. Of course Google's own bias (and involvement in particular political campaigns) is well known, and opposed to Project Veritas, so it's quite possible that you are right and…

> In a political context, "credible" is often a synonym for "agrees with me".

Not among credible sources.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#289

Post by skosch »

leereeves wrote: post #284
JamesBarney wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas I doubt this affected search rankings but Project Veritas does have a ton of credibility issues.

I see some claims that PV edited videos, selectively removing portions to give a particular impression, which may well be true. But when CNN did that[1,2], changing "take that shit [violence] to the suburbs" into "a call for peace", the left wing media ignored it. Wikipedia editors didn't add it to CNN's page[3] or add a message that CNN has a history of deceptively editing videos. That's why it's so important to get…

Two wrongs don't make a right – but more importantly, Project Veritas deliberately uses lies and deception to obtain its footage, which it then edits to remove context. That crosses a line far beyond run-of-the-mill reporting bias.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#290

Post by burfog »

JamesBarney wrote: post #279
leereeves wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a political context, "credible" is often a synonym for "agrees with me". Anyone ranking "page quality" should be conscious of and try to avoid that, and yet the word "bias" doesn't even appear in the linked guidelines for Search Quality Raters. Of course Google's own bias (and involvement in particular political campaigns) is well known, and opposed to Project Veritas, so it's quite possible that you are right and…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas I doubt this affected search rankings but Project Veritas does have a ton of credibility issues.

They are getting slammed hard by the powerful people and corporations that they have been exposing. Wikipedia edit wars often do not converge on the truth.

Project Veritas is highly reliable. The worst you could legitimately accuse them of is a bit of overexcited promotion when an upcoming video is mundane. They are more trustworthy than all of the big-budget news programs.

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