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

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

#41

Post by ramoz »

jeffbee wrote: post #29
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.

ty. I also tested the query in Bing, the results there were abismal

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

#42

Post by heavyset_go »

behnamoh wrote: post #28

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?

I think there's more quality content on the web now than there's ever been.

It's seems like Google wants to prioritize the commercialized web, though, by boosting BuzzFeed-like online publications that post ad-laden articles full of referral links in their search results, along with social media. Even in the development space, Google will prioritize w3schools and content farms that constantly churn out how to guides. Blogs and forums seem to get deprioritized in search results these days.

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

#43

Post by bironran »

I tried the query "databricks series b valuation" on Kagi (just a beta user there) and the results were:

  1. Databricks Funding Rounds, Valuation and Investors (https://craft.co/databricks/funding-rounds) - not directly to the point but does include information about all rounds.
  2. Databricks Raises $1B at $28B Valuation, Plans Massive - not answering the question at all.
  3. *Databricks Closes $33M Series B Funding - FinSMEs* (https://www.finsmes.com/2014/07/databricks-closes-33m-series-b-funding.html) - Direct hit! didn't even have to click into the page.
In my mind this is yet another proof of Google's search quality decline. I remember being so excited when I saw the first structured search result but now I tend to use other engines first.

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

#44

Post by fdgsdfogijq »

whakim wrote: post #40
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could just be that sundar pichai wants a bigger paycheck and tunes the knob on more ads money but less good search results

To me, it seems crazy that a company would actively try to self-sabotage their bread-and-butter product in search of a bit of extra revenue when they're already making record profits. Not to mention that, as the author of the article points out, Google published a well-known quantitative paper on why that's a bad tradeoff.

It happens all the time though. Look at amazon, they flood their marketplace with cheap knockoff products that hurt the credibility of their ecommerce offerings, but the money generated is too much to shut off. So in the short run, amazon makes more money for a worse reputation, and in the long run ??? its unclear

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

#45

Post by danielrpa »

whakim wrote: post #40
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could just be that sundar pichai wants a bigger paycheck and tunes the knob on more ads money but less good search results

To me, it seems crazy that a company would actively try to self-sabotage their bread-and-butter product in search of a bit of extra revenue when they're already making record profits. Not to mention that, as the author of the article points out, Google published a well-known quantitative paper on why that's a bad tradeoff.

The CEO and upper management might simply not care about the long-term viability of the company. Cashing out in the short-term sounds more like what these executives generally do.

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

#46

Post by ramoz »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #33
ramoz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have references for the theory?

Honestly its pure speculation. But I could see scenarios where neural network driven search is great 90% of the time, and misses the last 10%, but in aggregate improves their revenue and product. Users on HN complain about the results, whereas normal searchers dont. The SEO spam works since it answers the question/fulfills whatever distance metric they are using for the search query. Basic explanation of how one of t…

Interesting. I wonder how they might be approaching continuous learning.I.e. The UI has mechanisms for user feedback that might be useful in some fine tuning process

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

#47

Post by apatters »

whakim wrote: post #40
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could just be that sundar pichai wants a bigger paycheck and tunes the knob on more ads money but less good search results

To me, it seems crazy that a company would actively try to self-sabotage their bread-and-butter product in search of a bit of extra revenue when they're already making record profits. Not to mention that, as the author of the article points out, Google published a well-known quantitative paper on why that's a bad tradeoff.

It's rational and commonplace behavior for a monopoly to prioritize profit maximization over product quality, there must be thousands of case studies over the years. If a firm has no viable competitors, why do they care whether their product is good or not?

Google Search has 86% market share in the US.

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

#49

Post by whakim »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #44
whakim wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it seems crazy that a company would actively try to self-sabotage their bread-and-butter product in search of a bit of extra revenue when they're already making record profits. Not to mention that, as the author of the article points out, Google published a well-known quantitative paper on why that's a bad tradeoff.

It happens all the time though. Look at amazon, they flood their marketplace with cheap knockoff products that hurt the credibility of their ecommerce offerings, but the money generated is too much to shut off. So in the short run, amazon makes more money for a worse reputation, and in the long run ??? its unclear

I don't think that's analogous: you'd have to argue that Amazon spent a ton of time and effort on keeping cheap knockoff products off their marketplace and then did a sudden u-turn and decided not to do that anymore. Even then, I don't think the analogy holds, because the quality of Amazon's marketplace listings isn't anywhere near as synonymous with Amazon as the quality of Google's search results is with Google.

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

#50

Post by godelski »

whakim wrote: post #40
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could just be that sundar pichai wants a bigger paycheck and tunes the knob on more ads money but less good search results

To me, it seems crazy that a company would actively try to self-sabotage their bread-and-butter product in search of a bit of extra revenue when they're already making record profits. Not to mention that, as the author of the article points out, Google published a well-known quantitative paper on why that's a bad tradeoff.

That happens when companies have monopolies. They can sacrifice quality for profits. Happens frequently. Obviously you can't sacrifice quality to zero, but you can a bit. It would make sense that they would keep pushing it down little by little (returning higher and higher profits) to find the turning point. I don't think they're yet in danger though because there isn't a real uptick in the competition.
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