In other news, duckduckgo's growth draws a perfect exponential curve:
Every Google result now looks like an ad
311–320 of 1001 posts
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#312I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I've tried both, and it's just not the same. Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon and get the 3rd link about how to run tuned in a no daemon mode. Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, but prefaced by a lot of "while technically not wrong, not what I'm looking for" links.…
To me it is not so much result quality as integration. Currently, with Google no matter what I am searching for, I just type it into my location bar and hit enter. Whether I am looking for a new bar to check out on a Friday night or what does a specific compile error mean in Haskell. So in the first case, I will get a map with bars around me and in the second case I will get a link to stackoverflow. With DDG these become functionally separate. To do the Haskell error search I do the same thing, but to do a local bar search I have to open a separate tab, go to Google and do a search there. Same goes for looking for things like theater plays (Google will give me reviews, showtimes and a link to buy tickets all right there at the top of my search page), address or place name searches (map, directions, open hours and website link all come up right away) etc. The only thing I can do with DDG is the old fashioned "find me links relevant to these keywords" searches.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. A million flies are attracted to shit. I don't believe this sort of training data will ever become useful if it's in the same pool with the rest of the world. See also: voting with your wallet against the tyranny of the majority of uninf…
See the replies elsewhere. The metrics go beyond simple, naive "click counting." Specifically they also measure metrics like "regret" - if you went back to the search results and chose something else this indicates it wasn't a useful search result for the query and this counts against it. In theory this is quite a nice defense against clickbaity, content free results.
> Specifically they also measure metrics like "regret"
I explicitly addressed this:
> clicking on many results can indicate that they're bad (I click another result because the previous wasn't good), or because they're good (I'm browsing choices).
You don't know the reason why I clicked back. Maybe I got what I needed at a glance, and I'm browsing to the next thing to see if there's more of what I need.
You don't know that the Average Joe (and a million other Average Joes) wasted 15 minutes on clickbaity content free crap despite not getting anything useful out of it. You know, those same SEO spam sites are trying to find ways to make the user stay as long as possible; they are in the game. And I'm sure there are plenty of gullible users who will stay. Who knows, maybe SEO spam is working and that's precisely why we see SEO spam sites in results?
Again, I think training like this is pretending the problem is much simpler than it is. And I think that there is a real danger that training like this just optimizes for 1) average users 2) sites that managed to game the system with their SEO. Neither is optimizing for quality results.
That theory has so many holes and pitfalls.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results. If you have the time, you can also use the Feedback link on the bottom-right of the page to report bad s…
Thanks for posting, it's nice to hear from someone on the inside! Downvoters: why on earth are you downvoting Analemma's post? It's constructive, on point and overall the kind of post which makes HN comments valuable.
What I'm about to say will probably get downvoted as well, but I've noticed HN getting more polarized in terms of votes in the last maybe 2 years.
Because of the way that downvoting works on HN, the few times I use it, my thought is "nobody should see this comment". Because enough downvotes delegitemize and hide a comment, it's effectively telling other people that it's not worth being read.
I don't know if that's actually going through people's minds when they downvote, but that's what I think which is exactly why I rarely use it. But too many people now are simply using it on posts they don't like, even if a post deserves to be there. For some reason, it's an unpopular opinion to believe that an idea or opinion you think is wrong deserves to be seen and rebutted rather than silenced.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#315Yeah, Google now shows organic results with similar styling with a favicon so you can only tell the difference by the "Ad" shows next to paid ads. Everyone should switch to DuckDuckGo which shows search results with a favicon and ads in the same format distinguished by and "Ad" next to them. Or maybe Bing which shows the search results with ads mixed in (conveniently distinguished from organic results with an "Ad" mark).
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#316I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.
What does DDG use for an algorithm? Originally Google was just using pagerank but that was too easy to game by SEO. This means DDG needed to address this, and apparently they have (e.g, search for 'favicon' like the post). How long can we rely on DDG staying neutral in their algorithm?
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#317Google also broke accessibility of their search results with this change. Now instead of the page titles, screen readers only read the entire URL. If they don't fix this soon, I'll be permanently switching to DDG.
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Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#318Anyone here have a pro-Google stance? Because at this point I'm vehemently against the company and most of its products.
There's no good replacement for Calendar or Docs/Sheets as of now, that I'm aware of. Microsoft's suite as mentioned by therealdrag0 is an obvious alternative, and perhaps less advertiser-oriented, but still not a great in-browser option IMO.
Especially when considering the interoperability of the "platform," it's clear Google is streets ahead of the competition.
It's a shame that the best featured tools in this space are also not open-source, and used (probably) to mine massive amounts of data.
I'd be ok if you mined my data while I'm on your servers, but only if you allow me to host my own version of your software for when I don't want to be on your servers.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#319Total aside, but since we are talking google. It's funny how they have worked so hard to make sure that relevant results show up correctly but if you are paying for ad space, they don't care (sure they have relevancy tests but not if the advertiser is dumb enough to spend too much money). For instance, a search for an intravenous needle tip might show an ad for Barb's cross-stitch needle tip (total made-up example). They know that the result isn't relevant, but Barb is spending so much money they don't care. Seems like there should be a solution to this. Or at least to let Barb know she is doing it wrong.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#320Anyone here have a pro-Google stance? Because at this point I'm vehemently against the company and most of its products. There's no good replacement for Calendar or Docs/Sheets as of now, that I'm aware of. Microsoft's suite as mentioned by therealdrag0 is an obvious alternative, and perhaps less advertiser-oriented, but still not a great in-browser option IMO. Especially when considering the interoperability of the…
Of course, Search has viable alternatives but it's really not the biggest thorn in my side.