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Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

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Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#91

Post by micromacrofoot »

tmccrary55 wrote: post #68
iamben wrote: post #63

We're going to end up going back to community sites. Reddit is obviously the good example here, but you can guarantee if you find a 'racing bike' forum (or whatever), take the time to join up, search, ask - someone with a passion for it will give you a great, well researched list because they love it and take pride from knowing . Exactly the same as when I ask my friend who's passionate about wine for his recommendat…

I bet Reddit could take a big chunk of Stack Overflow's market share.

people sometimes bemoan stack overflow's rigor and pedantry, but try to ask a technical question on reddit... unless you're in a very well moderated reddit you're getting worse answers or no answers at all

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#92

Post by bradleyjg »

seoaeu wrote: post #84
flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

It is always weird to me that people think the quality of Google results compared to the past are a deliberate choice by Google, and not the consequence of an adversarial process where marketers spend billions of dollars trying to distort the rankings

Google makes an annualized $71 billion in profit after paying tens of thousands of software engineers.

I’m not saying I think they should win outright but they should at least be holding their own if they are giving it their all.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#94

Post by wpietri »

flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

I get this from their perspective. Their goal isn't to work just for people whose work makes them extremely precise in phrasing. I am sure that a lot of the mechanisms that make me bonkers are ones that make search results better for the average user.

But it's still frustrating when my skill in using words to trick machines into doing what I want gradually becomes useless.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#95

Post by habibur »

seoaeu wrote: post #84
flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

It is always weird to me that people think the quality of Google results compared to the past are a deliberate choice by Google, and not the consequence of an adversarial process where marketers spend billions of dollars trying to distort the rankings

That had been the case for long. And google periodically reset their search algorithm purging billions of pages to clean up the junk. After which the results got better.

But sometime back, it stopped doing it. Or can't do it anymore.

Web-search is now up for disruption, when that happens.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#96

Post by wpietri »

flenserboy wrote: post #86
cainxinth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take your point, but don’t you think you’re overstating things a bit? The internet is still incredibly useful and so is Google search (granted, it takes more effort and sophistication to avoid the spam).

I don't think I'm overstating things. Yes, the internet is useful, but consider how the ability to accurately search is the real key to the whole of it. As the original post points out, this hits us in day-to-day matters just as much as in trying to find/discover useful research on a particular topic. The simple fact is this: not only must nearly every link you click be viewed with suspicion, so must every search res…

When you say "most useful", I have to ask, most useful to whom?

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#97

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

So here's a side-question. The original key idea behind Google's approach to search was page rank : how many, and what kinds, of other sites linked to this one (and potentially, in what context).

Does anyone think that this can possibly be at the core of Google's page rank anymore? Most pages don't have any significant number of links any more, and if they do, they are presumably garbage most of the time. Who is out there writing articles called "How to find the best bicycle for under $500" and providing links to excellent, current reviews of bicycles under $500? The answer might not be "nobody", but my instinct is that it's so small that it's effectively the same thing.

Consequently, at some point, Google switched from trying to leverage human judgement (i.e. how many other people link to a page), and have been forced (?) to replace that with their own assessment of a page based largely on its own content, metadata and outbound links.

Whereas in the 2000's, you could blame people for crappy results from a Google search ("why do people keep linking to that stupid article"), at this point it seems to me that everything, absolutely everything about Google results can be laid at Google's feet.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#98

Post by kderbyma »

flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

it's so bad these days. If you are on mobile good luck finding anything of use if it doesn't involve ads somehow....non affiliated content, useful personal blogs - high quality ad free pages....good luck!

it's to the point where I find what I want when I search torrent search engines.....and not via any search engines on the web.....

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#100

Post by Robotbeat »

zwaps wrote: post #71

Hm, this is not really news, but perhaps it's the first time I consciously think about it. The article is right. I used to search Google for what the best X is. At some point. Indeed, I also used to search amazon and read the reviews. Now, and for what feels like a while, I am not doing that anymore. Like, at all. And this is not a decision I consciously made. If I want to know what the best dishwasher is, I am not g…

I use Reddit a lot for this.

But this is an arms race with SEOs and bots. Eventually Reddit will probably be worthless for this.

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