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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

#291

Post by jborichevskiy »

avionicsguy wrote: post #102

This should probably be a separate submission but why is search so bad everywhere? - Confluence: Native search is horrible IME - Microsoft Help (Applications): .chm files Need I say more. - Microsoft Task Bar: Native search okay and then horrible beyond a few key words and then ... BING :-( - Microsoft File Search: Even with full disk indexing (I turned it on) it still takes 15-20 minutes to find all jpegs with an SS…

Or MacOS Spotlight. Good lord. Most common occurrence: searching for Telegram, an app I have open 24/7 and interact with dozens of times a day.

CMD+Space

"T": LaTeXIT.app (an app I have used fewer than a dozen times in two years)

"E": LaTeXIT.app

"L": Telegram.app

"E": Electrum.app (how on earth??)

"G": telemetry.app (an app which cannot even be run)

"RAM" : Telegram

Similar experience searching for most apps, files, and words. It's horrendous.

MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#292

Post by 9BillionMistake »

zackees wrote: post #219
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…

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…

OP is using Google to search Reddit.

He is either a troll or a child, either way, just ignore him.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#293

Post by leereeves »

skosch wrote: post #289
leereeves wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point of that story isn't "two wrongs make a right", but that the left wing still accepts CNN just as the right wing still accepts PV.

"Gotchas" and "gaffes" are taken out of context all the time. And when reporters lie to go undercover and obtain a story, they're usually hailed as heroes.

These objections are only used to "discredit" opposing viewpoints. People don't object when sources they agree with use the same tactics.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#294

Post by jborichevskiy »

CriticalCathed wrote: post #253
fluffy87 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch out with doing more complicated searches like extending those to a date range - they get people “banned” from using google search.

Elaborate. I was doing some deep searching in very specific date ranges with lots of modifiers and google gave me the "your query reminds us of bots or some shit try again later" and I had to stop because it wouldn't let the queries through anymore. Is that what that was?

Yes, that sounds like that same thing.

I've encountered Google ReCaptcha as well a few times when searching from a logged out browser.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#295

Post by userbinator »

berkut wrote: post #202
cygned wrote: post #37

In my opinion, Google is getting worse constantly, which boils down to basically the following aspects for me: 1. I don’t like the UI anymore. I preferred the condensed view, with more information and less whitespace. 2. Popping up some kind of menu when you return from a search results page shifts down the rest of the items resulting in me clicking search links I am not interested in. 3. It tries to be smarter than…

You don't even seem to be able to simply get the URL of a search result any more: some hierarchical token thing is used instead to display each search result's address, and copying any link just gives you: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... with the url buried somewhere in the GET params.

Everything that you're looking for is (fortunately) still in the HTML source code. When Google started messing with the URLs I wrote a filter for my MITM proxy to put them back. Then it recently changed the format so I had to change the filter again. It's annoying for sure.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#297

Post by 9BillionMistake »

ma2rten wrote: post #11

This article is essentially just complaining that DDG and Google don't have special parsing for reddit pages ("How come it doesn't know that thread didn't get many upvotes?", "How come it thinks some change to the site's layout was an update to the page?") Maybe if you want to search reddit, the best search engine is the search bar on reddit.com.

You are right, OP is an idiot. Most people commenting obviously did not read the article and are just here to complain about google not working for them either.

Yours is the only real comment.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#299

Post by fouc »

blattimwind wrote: post #71
arielweisberg wrote: post #3

Google has definitely stopped being able to find the things I need. Pasting stack traces and error messages. Needle in a haystack phrases from an article or book. None of it works anymore. Does this mean they are ripe for disruption or has search gotten harder?

> Pasting stack traces and error messages. I cannot fathom the number of times I've pasted an error message enclosed by quotes and got garbage results, and then an hour of troubleshooting and searching later I come across a Github/bugtracker issue, which was nowhere in the search results, were the exact error message appears verbatim . The garbage results are generally completely unrelated stuff (a lot of Windows for…

It seems like pasting a very large search query should actually make it easier for the search engine to find relevant results, but given that this doesn't happen suggests that the search query handler is being too clever and getting in the way.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#300

Post by lostcolony »

leereeves wrote: post #293
skosch wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point of that story isn't "two wrongs make a right", but that the left wing still accepts CNN just as the right wing still accepts PV. "Gotchas" and "gaffes" are taken out of context all the time. And when reporters lie to go undercover and obtain a story, they're usually hailed as heroes. These objections are only used to "discredit" opposing viewpoints. People don't object when sources they agree with use the s…

I'm sorry, whataboutism doesn't actually lend credence.

You're free to select the occasional time when a news agency gets it wrong (and apologizes and issues a correction)...but to try and compare it to an intentionally biased organization that always, intentionally gets it wrong (by willfully setting up people, then editing their responses, to paint things in a particular light), and never backs down, never apologizes, well...at best, your bias is showing.

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