Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022 • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#21

Post by elondaits » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:38 AM UTC

creato wrote: post #17

elondaits wrote: post #13

When I search for "databricks series b valuation" in Google (from Argentina, using Google.com in English) result #6 is: "Python get value from database - Büro Jorge Schmidt", which judging by title and preview seems to be a Python + MySQL tutorial. It returns a 403 error and might be a hacked site, since the home page is for a graphic design studio in Munich. Result #8 is something similar: "Intellij flatten packages…

I just tried that search, all of the results look relevant and I definitely don't get any of the results you are getting. I wonder if you have some malware that is hijacking the results? I once had some malware (chrome extension) that was corrupting my search results. It was surprisingly difficult to remove (given that it was a chrome extension...).

No, I get the same results on Safari on iOS (iPhone) so I have to eliminate the possibility of malware.

Google results are personalized, based on location, search history, etc. The fact that I'm in Argentina has been adding a lot of noise to results on searches where my location is not relevant at all.

In this case, I suspect that Google thinks these hacked sites with developer target content are relevant to me, because of my regular search history.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#22

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:38 AM UTC

elondaits wrote: post #13

When I search for "databricks series b valuation" in Google (from Argentina, using Google.com in English) result #6 is: "Python get value from database - Büro Jorge Schmidt", which judging by title and preview seems to be a Python + MySQL tutorial. It returns a 403 error and might be a hacked site, since the home page is for a graphic design studio in Munich. Result #8 is something similar: "Intellij flatten packages…

[deleted]

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#23

Post by fdgsdfogijq » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:39 AM UTC

One theory is that Google has made a substantial change to a neural network based search, and they are still working out the kinks in getting it to work. How could it not be A/B tested such that we wouldn't notice the bad searches? The answer to that I am not sure. I read their research publications, and the NLP research coming out of Google is far beyond any other company. I can only imagine what they aren't publishing.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#24

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:39 AM UTC

echen wrote: post #2

There's been a lot of HN discussion [1][2][3] about Google Search recently, and whether it’s gone downhill. I used to work on Search and Search Measurement at YouTube, Twitter, and Microsoft, so I thought it would be fun to move beyond anecdotes, grab some data, and do a quantitative analysis. tl;dr I didn't have historical data, to see how Google Search has trended over time. But compared to Bing, Google still gener…

I'm pretty sure the term of art for submitting a headline in the form of a question when the article does not and cannot answer the question is "clickbait".

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#25

Post by ramoz » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:40 AM UTC

When I search “tim lee food blogger age” Google actually shows results with “age” striked out (so it shows top results as if age wasn’t part of the queried string).

Trying to think why/how it’d conclude that age wasn’t necessary for good results.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#26

Post by ramoz » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:42 AM UTC

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #23

One theory is that Google has made a substantial change to a neural network based search, and they are still working out the kinks in getting it to work. How could it not be A/B tested such that we wouldn't notice the bad searches? The answer to that I am not sure. I read their research publications, and the NLP research coming out of Google is far beyond any other company. I can only imagine what they aren't publish…

Do you have references for the theory?

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#27

Post by pverghese » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:43 AM UTC

elondaits wrote: post #13

When I search for "databricks series b valuation" in Google (from Argentina, using Google.com in English) result #6 is: "Python get value from database - Büro Jorge Schmidt", which judging by title and preview seems to be a Python + MySQL tutorial. It returns a 403 error and might be a hacked site, since the home page is for a graphic design studio in Munich. Result #8 is something similar: "Intellij flatten packages…

Just tried that search in English. First result is "The data- and AI-focused company has secured a $1.6 billion round at a $38 billion". And if you click the search box you get the first search option as databricks valuation history where the first result is funding every round.

Google has been so much better for search for me than other search engines. Atleast for what I search for programming, news etc.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#28

Post by behnamoh » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:43 AM UTC

Is it Google that's deteriorating, or is it the quality of the web in general that's gone downhill and Google just reflects that?

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#29

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:44 AM UTC

ramoz wrote: post #25

When I search “tim lee food blogger age” Google actually shows results with “age” striked out (so it shows top results as if age wasn’t part of the queried string). Trying to think why/how it’d conclude that age wasn’t necessary for good results.

Censoring terms of the search vector to find relevant results is a legitimate approach that works well. In this example, the article author gives a Wikipedia page as the desired top result. That document does not include the term "age" anywhere. Therefore you can see how the term is not necessary to the search.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#30

Post by jbman223 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:45 AM UTC

halpert wrote: post #16

I believe the theory that Google is optimizing for ad revenue. Sites without ads get ranked lower. The biggest example I can think of is Wikipedia. When I search a proper noun with a Wikipedia article, I almost want to go look at that article. Recently, I feel like I really have to dig for it.

Anecdotal evidence - but I feel like this could be completely valid.

One of my biggest side projects for many years was a student tool centered around test scores. It was a niche use case with a huge amount of students using the tool on one day per year (1m+). There was exactly one competitor. I had a better domain but a much worse site in terms of design, speed etc. We were nearly the same in traffic, until I decided to monetize the site with a lot of Google ads. Immediately, Google shot my site up in the rankings, and actually seemed to penalize the competitive site. My traffic went up 10x and the competitive site remained flat. This happened for 3 years, then the niche use of both of our tools was “patched”.