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Every Google result now looks like an ad

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Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#351

Post by LoSboccacc »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #326
LoSboccacc wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. so, about that 4.6 Locators are human transcribable. Users can copy Internet locators from one medium to another (such as voice to paper, or paper to keyboard) without loss or corruption of information. This process is not required to be comfortable. you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right reso…

I agree with most this... but have somewhat of a counter point to "you can't copy a page title". You (often) can copy a page title into a client (Google) and expect it to find the right resource. This is usually done with articles, etc. Even your comment provides a perfect example - you didn't link to RFC 1736, but the text "Locators are human transcribable" is unique enough that the first Google result is correct. S…

counterpoint: https://i.imgur.com/ORLixJa.png

none of the result here are pointer to the source I've used

sure the content is the same, but the resource isn't, if anything this demonstrates how easy is to misled a user, directing him on a different resource thinking it's the same.

compare with stack overflow result:

https://i.imgur.com/maJi47G.png

luckily prominent sites get pushed on top of the result queue (had to cut it because it was submersed by advertisement) but the attack vector is evident.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#352

Post by quickthrower2 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #222
cytzol wrote: post #26

I've been in this A/B test for a couple of months now, so I've had time to adjust, and I still hate it. I've just become so used to seeing the complete URL in green. The complete URL! If you hover over the results, you'll see that they like to take bits like numeric components or the query string out. This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google…

> This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. URLs have always been an implementation detail and not a user feature. From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. HTML was built on hiding URLs behind text. Then AOL keywords happened. Then search explosion happened. And short URLs. And QR codes for real-world linking. And bookmarks because yet again typing in U…

URLs have always meant something to users. It’s how you trust the content and indeed the link. And now with so many exploits and phishing it’s even more important. Typing in a URL might be rarer, an honour only reserved for google, facebook etc. but reading urls is very important

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#353

Post by neodymiumphish »

clarry wrote: post #75
Analemma_ wrote: post #13

Earlier 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…

> 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…

A lot of this does, in fact, get solved through machine learning. If one search query is conducted a hundred times by different people with otherwise similar profiles, the machine learning can constantly modify the results until the hundredth person sees the best results first. For example, if the first 25 people all click on the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 8th result and then stop, it can modify the order of the results for the next 25 people, and randomize the order, so that some see 8-4-2-5 first, and others see 2-5-8-4, etc. The it re-assesses the results and gets smarter.

The gaming part is where there's a lot of importance, since it forces the machine to learn which users are acting nefariously.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#354

Post by jpindar »

beefield wrote: post #299
lykr0n wrote: post #3

I 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.…

> I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I am amazed that no search engine gives me easy way to blacklist domains from my results. That would make the usefulness of any of them to increase by orders of magnitude. (and if they are careful, they might be even able to use the blacklisted data to adjust their general results , not only my personal results as well) And…

Google used to have that, but of course they stopped it. There are browser addons that have he same effect though.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#355

Post by merpnderp »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #316
LeftHandPath wrote: post #260

I'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?

From wikipedia:

"DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot) and others. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the results."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#356

Post by Jare »

espadrine wrote: post #345
LeftHandPath wrote: post #260

I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.

> I've been using duckduckgo and bing Bing’s UI looks exactly like Google’s with a two-year delay. Their current ads have a single distinguisher from an organic result: the circled word ‘Ad’ in the same color and font size as the description. Same as Google before the change. A worse distinguisher as the one it had before, where ‘Ad’ used a distinct color. Do we really trust that Bing won’t copy the new design in two…

> Do we really trust that Bing won’t copy the new design in two years?

Do you need to? Worst case you have delayed the bad for two years.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#358

Post by neodymiumphish »

clarry wrote: post #313
JohnBooty wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kno…

I just think you're assuming these search engines are using way fewer factors than they actually use. It's probably exceptionally easy to tie your search behavior to someone else who's much more like you than "the average", unless you're using a search engine like DDG, Qwant, etc.

Maybe the best bet is for a search engine to try to include a simple, non-intrusive method of getting user input to determine the usefulness of a search result. Like, if it determines you came back as a "regret", maybe a ThumbsUp/ThumbsDown icon next to the last link you clicked to get you to say whether that link was useful in any way, or maybe a "block" option as well to say that you never want sites like that again.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#360

Post by sfgweilr4f »

Completely agree. I haven't used google for so long I thought I'd mis-typed it and got some click farm thing.

My impressions were the same as that tweet. I'm not happy with the new Google search results. At all. I can't tell what is what. Is it an Ad? Is it a page? Is it...? So I've now told people who contact me to avoid Google's home page and use DDG so they get the results they're after. Feedback so far is they prefer the DDG replacement instead of Google. "Fixed" is what one person said. Their POV was that Google's result page was now "broken". (These aren't tech savvy people, either)

I also read in one of the follow up tweets that we now apparently have a form of "banner blindness" where we skip ads because they are deemed not or less relevant. This theory might be right. But Google's solution is not wise: if we associate ads as less relevant and fade out attention when we see Ads versus results, what happens when the entire google results page looks like ads?

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