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Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

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Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#61

Post by blondin »

jbritton wrote: post #10
bovermyer wrote: post #2

Fun experiment - try finding something on the World Wide Web without using a search engine. It's not as impossible as you might think. But it's certainly not easy.

Out of curiosity I have no idea how to approach this. Are there indexes of websites available to the public that you are suggesting that can be searched via grep or some simple scripting? Or are you suggesting writing a web crawler to build our own index? Or are you suggesting finding curated links to sites?

i might be wrong but i didn't think OP was suggesting to re-index the web. that's a totally different beast from finding an answer to a question/problem or learning a new topic.

depending on what i am looking for there are a few avenues i would explore if google wasn't available. github, gitlab, & stackoverflow/stackexchange for code related stuff.

wikipedia for general topics. youtube for how-tos. twitter for the news. newsletters and podcasts for links to new articles.

&c.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#62

Post by saagarjha »

huffmsa wrote: post #58
saagarjha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I think Hacker News does pretty well for itself, and it shows: the users that accumulate karma the fastest usually have insightful comments, which is rarely true elsewhere.

Eh. If I post something taking shots at Europeans before America wakes up (3-4am CST) I usually get down voted for a few hours before American commenters come on and exchange fire with the Euros. Your upboats are time sensitive.

Such comments are rarely insightful ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#63

Post by huffmsa »

saagarjha wrote: post #62
huffmsa wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. If I post something taking shots at Europeans before America wakes up (3-4am CST) I usually get down voted for a few hours before American commenters come on and exchange fire with the Euros. Your upboats are time sensitive.

Such comments are rarely insightful ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They usually are, they're just not what the Europeans like hearing.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#64

Post by cmckn »

> Google has become a card catalog that is constantly being reordered by an angry, misinformed mob.

Ever heard of PageRank? Google was literally founded on an algorithm that uses the endorsements of "an angry, misinformed mob" to determine importance/relevancy. Obviously this is only one factor in search results (and may not even be used anymore), but this approach is what has made Google successful.

I don't disagree with the general point that the amount of content in today's Web makes the job of a search engine much harder. Perhaps some of Google's techniques lower the result quality for some users, for some queries. That's a much more boring title for a blog post, I guess.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#65

Post by snarf21 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #3

> The web was supposed to forcefully challenge our opinions and push back, like a personal trainer who doesn't care how tired you say you are. What does this even mean? The web wasn't "supposed to" be anything. Though I'm not sure what magic search engine OP actually has in mind and how it's supposed to work. Besides, one of the modern mysteries is that we're in the age of instant information yet you'll notice how ma…

I agree. That might be what the author and other people hoped the internet would become but money drives the development of most things. If there is such an opportunity, then strike out on their own. People talk about privacy but most people just want free and easy, not to be challenged. Each of us is more than welcome to stay in the corners of the internet that we value.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#66

Post by basch »

huffmsa wrote: post #55
basch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support the author here. There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge. All that may be true, it may be out there, but it's damn hard to find. Google, Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook all prioritize freshness. Instead of being exposed to things outside our comfort zones, we take solace protected inside fi…

This is correct. Try filtering Google news by date. It doesn't work.

I just had one today, said the result was from 3 days ago, result was from more than a decade ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22617635

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#67

Post by threatofrain »

basch wrote: post #7
hombre_fatal wrote: post #3

> The web was supposed to forcefully challenge our opinions and push back, like a personal trainer who doesn't care how tired you say you are. What does this even mean? The web wasn't "supposed to" be anything. Though I'm not sure what magic search engine OP actually has in mind and how it's supposed to work. Besides, one of the modern mysteries is that we're in the age of instant information yet you'll notice how ma…

I support the author here. There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge. All that may be true, it may be out there, but it's damn hard to find. Google, Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook all prioritize freshness. Instead of being exposed to things outside our comfort zones, we take solace protected inside fi…

Politically correct is what people like, IMO, as measured by Disney products. I don’t believe Disney is politically correct as a matter of whim, as opposed to well measured brand strategy.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#68

Post by cadmuxe »

MivLives wrote: post #52
jrockway wrote: post #47

> Search for "GM" and the Gmail homepage ranks prominently. Is Google pushing its own products on people? Well, yes, but not here. This is an example of a query refinement algorithm at work. Google is altering its results in recognition of the fact that many people who search "gm" subsequently search for "gmail." I tried this and there are three news articles about General Motors, an infobox for General Motors, 4 sea…

Even as a Gmail user, my results align with yours. If I type it into the browser search bar however it is the first result. This is not Google's fault, as I'm on Firefox, which is smartly trying to look for sites I frequently visit.

Yeah, same here, gmail is the last result in my try. Oh, as a gmail user, why not it ranked as number 1? I don't care the GM news : ) I think people have different standard for a good/bad search result.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#69

Post by basch »

Barrin92 wrote: post #49
basch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support the author here. There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge. All that may be true, it may be out there, but it's damn hard to find. Google, Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook all prioritize freshness. Instead of being exposed to things outside our comfort zones, we take solace protected inside fi…

>There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge Did anyone really believe this other than middle aged libertarian hackers from the 90s who kept repeating this in prayer like fashion? The internet is, as the name suggests, a network. Google also is a sort of network, one that is semantically searchable. Bu…

>Google mission statement is “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

It does not succeed as well as it did in the past at its current mission. It has regressed.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#70

Post by JJMcJ »

dzonga wrote: post #29

which are some interesting search engines, do ya folks recommend. I recently ran into dogpile.com. really relevant results. please don't recommend ddg | bing as ddg simply mirrors bing.

No they use other search engines and have their own web crawler as well.
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