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How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

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Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#201

Post by celticmusic »

friedegg wrote: post #196
celticmusic wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that google ignores quotes, atleast that was my experience starting years ago before I switched to DDG. Maybe they changed that stance at some point?

They used quotes to take the place of + which used to be a prefix you could add for words that were required. We lost + to Google+.

maybe that's what it was. Used to quotes meant "look for this exact sequence of letters", and at some point that started to maybe work sometimes, and maybe not othertimes.

It sounds like what you're saying is that it acts more like a typical full-text index now? I suppose it's better than nothing, but still not what I would like to see happen.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#202

Post by milesvp »

grawprog wrote: post #192
kerkeslager wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear what Peretti was talking about--let's make an effort to respond to his intended meaning and not get caught up in semantics. Peretti is talking about quality versus quantity: maybe Google doesn't serve up quality ads, maybe they just serve up quantity ads.

>quality ads I've seen this term for years but I still don't understand what it means. I don't want to see ads. There are no 'quality' ads. All ads are designed to sell me things period. I don't need anyone telling me about what I might want. I understand ads exist to make money and if they didn't we wouldn't have the internet etc. But there's no 'quality' to them, they're a necessary evil i've come to accept and ada…

You may have never seen a good ad then. There was a period of time I would actively look at ads on penny-arcade, because the owners of the site only ever allowed ads (mostly for games) that they themselves could at least tangentially endorse. This meant I basically got hand curated ads for products I was genuinely interested in, by people who’s taste I understood if not agreed with.

That said this ended up being the exception to proof the rule about ads being mostly noise, and I agree the world would be better with less of them. And almost certainly the current state of algorithmic ad serving is a disaster.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#203

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

kerkeslager wrote: post #181
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may be right, but if Google is bad at ads, it's not for any lack of incentive alignment. They make more money by serving up the most efficient (i.e. high-paying + likely to be clicked) ads. It's not impossible, but it's hard to picture another organization having both the economic means and incentives to do it better than Google does. As to the question posed by the article, isn't the answer obvious? I don't know…

> He may be right, but if Google is bad at ads, it's not for any lack of incentive alignment. They make more money by serving up the most efficient (i.e. high-paying + likely to be clicked) ads. It's not impossible, but it's hard to picture another organization having both the economic means and incentives to do it better than Google does. Yeah, I think the only way that would happen is if someone came up with a nove…

I can believe that if there were another solution that were marginally better it might not be enough to unseat the top player in the market. But switching costs in search are extremely low so it would be surprising if people did not switch for a substantially better experience. In particular, it would require us to believe that what happened when Google showed up on the scene would not happen again, and to me that just does not seem likely.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#204

Post by clairity »

grawprog wrote: post #192
kerkeslager wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear what Peretti was talking about--let's make an effort to respond to his intended meaning and not get caught up in semantics. Peretti is talking about quality versus quantity: maybe Google doesn't serve up quality ads, maybe they just serve up quantity ads.

>quality ads I've seen this term for years but I still don't understand what it means. I don't want to see ads. There are no 'quality' ads. All ads are designed to sell me things period. I don't need anyone telling me about what I might want. I understand ads exist to make money and if they didn't we wouldn't have the internet etc. But there's no 'quality' to them, they're a necessary evil i've come to accept and ada…

it's really not hard to define what a "good" ad might be--a product (or service) you don't know about but that solves an immediate problem without an immediately obvious solution. it'd anticipate your need, without invading your privacy.

fwiw, i generally don't want to be subjected to ads either, particularly for the privacy-invading aspect, but also the time- and attention-wasting aspect too. most ads are absolutely horribly conceived and targeted, especially spray-and-pray email spam.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#205

Post by BitwiseFool »

dmos62 wrote: post #134
BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two keywords in my search (usually the most generic ones) and ignore the rest. In addition, the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work. It is like google is guessing what I want, rather than trying to find what I have entered as…

What search engines are you using? I'm displeased with Google's search results, but others seem to be just trying to emulate it (and badly).

A mix between Bing and DuckDuckGo for general keyword searches and I use Apple Maps to search for local businesses.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#206

Post by BitwiseFool »

aphextim wrote: post #36
lanstin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of that skew might be their algorithm noticing that the great unwashed masses are looking for ecommerce. I should give DDG another try, it was not that great last time I tried (few years ago?)

I bounce between DDG and Qwant. I usually can find what I am looking for from one of those two options. https://www.qwant.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/

Thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard of Qwant before.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#207

Post by dakna »

titzer wrote: post #103
Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's precisely what makes Google "good at ads." They built the firehose. Own a destination where billions of people go everyday, find a way to measure their intent, serve my information to them. That = fantastic at ads.

After all this time watchin me, everything I ever asked it, all the ads I never clicked on, all the videos it watched me watch, all my emails it read, heck even after I worked for the dang company for nearly ten years, Google does not understand a very basic, essential thing about me. I hate advertising, damn it! I am sick of looking at it, I am sick of it looking at me. I am sick of hearing about how advertising is…

They understand that you are part of the cohort that doesn't want to be monetized. Which is the reason they don't change it for you, because the efforts required to remove this cohort from tracking and still serve useful search results are a lot higher than what they think people would pay for.

But let's surprise them. I personally would be willing to pay up to 10k per decade of my remaining life expectancy to opt out completely. Upfront payment, right now. A package deal including Amazon would be even better, maybe for 50% more?

I think at one point people need to put a price point to their privacy, otherwise nothing changes. The market has no incentive for this change right now. And yes, that would mean that privacy is a luxury for people who can afford it, which is not what I would like to see, especially since I remember the times when you had privacy by default when going online. But I can't imagine how it can become a fundamental right under the current market conditions.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#208

Post by moultano »

JohnFen wrote: post #2

I don't trust Google's search results right now. Not because they've blurred the line between ads and results (although that certainly makes the situation much worse), but because I don't tend to get very good results from Google search.

Note that they just reverted the part of the change that was perceived to blur the lines between ads and results.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#209

Post by listenallyall »

grawprog wrote: post #192
kerkeslager wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear what Peretti was talking about--let's make an effort to respond to his intended meaning and not get caught up in semantics. Peretti is talking about quality versus quantity: maybe Google doesn't serve up quality ads, maybe they just serve up quantity ads.

>quality ads I've seen this term for years but I still don't understand what it means. I don't want to see ads. There are no 'quality' ads. All ads are designed to sell me things period. I don't need anyone telling me about what I might want. I understand ads exist to make money and if they didn't we wouldn't have the internet etc. But there's no 'quality' to them, they're a necessary evil i've come to accept and ada…

Your hard-line position that all ads are bad, always, is laughable. If you search for "cheapest gasoline" it's not unreasonable that an ad for an electric car might be interesting. Or if you search for "Orlando hotels", an ad for generally less expensive hotels in Kissimmee (the next town over) is more valuable than a perfectly literal result. And if you search for "k8s cluster deployment tools" then you probably want as many ads as possible, so your evaluation doesn't fail to include a comprehensive set of options.

Perhaps you're saying I already know about electric cars and Kissimmee and kubernetes, to which I'd respond, yes, probably via ads. Maybe a commercial or sign or web ad, but also maybe through a TV news spot (pr campaign) or magazine review (expenses paid) or web article (with affiliate link).

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#210

Post by bilbo0s »

clairity wrote: post #204
grawprog wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>quality ads I've seen this term for years but I still don't understand what it means. I don't want to see ads. There are no 'quality' ads. All ads are designed to sell me things period. I don't need anyone telling me about what I might want. I understand ads exist to make money and if they didn't we wouldn't have the internet etc. But there's no 'quality' to them, they're a necessary evil i've come to accept and ada…

it's really not hard to define what a "good" ad might be--a product (or service) you don't know about but that solves an immediate problem without an immediately obvious solution. it'd anticipate your need, without invading your privacy. fwiw, i generally don't want to be subjected to ads either, particularly for the privacy-invading aspect, but also the time- and attention-wasting aspect too. most ads are absolutely…

You gave examples of what I assume you consider "bad" ads. What would be examples of "good" ads in your opinion? I mean, examples matching the definition you gave:

Anticipating needs of person X, (and serve person X an ad), without any foreknowledge of person X.

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