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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

#61

Post by mdoms »

umeshunni wrote: post #6
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 think the broader theme that these outrage bait posts miss is that the web itself is rotting / deteriorating. Most interesting content isn't on the web anymore and is definitely not in text. Content that would be have been on an open web forum 10 years ago, are now hidden behind various data silos/walled gardens - whether it's Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or Discord. Each of these walled gardens have…

There's no less interesting information on the internet than there was a few years ago - to the contrary there's much more. I agree that the ratio of good to trash content has plummeted but it's the job of Google and its competitors to find the good stuff. If they're failing at their core competency then it's worth discussing.

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

#62

Post by echen »

AlbertCory wrote: post #14

I've been gone from G for 4 1/2 years now. When I was there, the weekly meetings often featured "search quality" measurements that were rigorous in their objectivity (I thought). They bent over backwards to be non-self-deluding. I distinctly remember Udi Manber saying "if the web is slow, it's our fault" (actually, the speech was that everything is "our fault"), meaning, really, "take responsibility for problems and…

Yeah, when I was at Google, the SERP (and caring about users) was a shrine at all levels. Here's an example of one of the weekly Search meetings AlbertCory is talking about: https://search.googleblog.com/2012/03/video-search-quality-m...

For example, my first week at Google/YouTube, I was in a New Hire meeting with our VP. Someone asked about profitability, and he responded that Larry said we didn't have to worry about revenue yet, since the main goal was user growth/happiness, and revenue could come later. Which I thought was fascinating, considering how big YouTube already was at the time (in 2013)!

Though I think this changed a year later, and I find YouTube ads a poor experience compared to Instagram and TikTok -- which aren't merely "better than the rest", but stuff I actually enjoy watching.

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

#63

Post by fhe »

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...).

just to add another data point, I tried the same search too, and all results look normal and relevant.

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

#64

Post by ffhhj »

JimDabell wrote: post #55
whakim wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world) and then suddenly stop. Are you able to share any of those objective measures of quality? Because it seems to me that most of the discussions around the declining quality of Google search amount to anecdata backed up by reasoning that doesn't really make a lot o…

> It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world) and then suddenly stop. Is anybody claiming that it’s sudden? Everybody I’ve seen complain about Google search results has seemed to think that it’s been getting slowly worse over a long period of time.

It seems Google started decaying when they gave up their social platform G+

Nowadays all those tweaks to the algorithms, specially search and gmail spam filters, are like a desperate attempt to make the ship move faster by removing parts of the hull while keeping the water out. It will just sink at some point.

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

#65

Post by fnord77 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #14

I've been gone from G for 4 1/2 years now. When I was there, the weekly meetings often featured "search quality" measurements that were rigorous in their objectivity (I thought). They bent over backwards to be non-self-deluding. I distinctly remember Udi Manber saying "if the web is slow, it's our fault" (actually, the speech was that everything is "our fault"), meaning, really, "take responsibility for problems and…

just an anecdote, but I see quite a few people in my linked in network who are now at google within the last few years. People I wouldn't consider "google quality".

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

#66

Post by Gigachad »

JimDabell wrote: post #55
whakim wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world) and then suddenly stop. Are you able to share any of those objective measures of quality? Because it seems to me that most of the discussions around the declining quality of Google search amount to anecdata backed up by reasoning that doesn't really make a lot o…

> It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world) and then suddenly stop. Is anybody claiming that it’s sudden? Everybody I’ve seen complain about Google search results has seemed to think that it’s been getting slowly worse over a long period of time.

I don’t think google search has gotten worse, I think the SEO abusers have just started winning. So much content on the web is automatically generated and made to look just like real hand crafted content. So much of it has titles and headings which have little relation to the search.

I was recently searching for a piece of ceramic cookware, specifically looking to avoid non stick coatings. And google search showed me lots of listings with my exact search terms, but when I click the page it shows their generic product range which has nothing to do with ceramic despite the title saying so.

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

#67

Post by fnord77 »

godelski wrote: post #50
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.

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.

> you can't sacrifice quality to zero,

GM tried in the 80s

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

#68

Post by User23 »

klondike_ wrote: post #54

I think that Google is optimizing for the "average user" to the detriment of power users such as the HN crowd. Most people treat Google as an internet oracle and send queries like "how do I do X" while power users will search for keywords. One example of this optimization is the automatic answer boxes that show up for certain questions, which are wrong disturbingly often or don't include important details.

I miss Altavista. I could generally either find exactly what I was looking for inside of three iterations of refining the search, or find that it wasn't to be found.

I still just want a blazing fast full text search of the reachable WWW that understands regexes and a basic predicate calculus. Unfortunately the overhead and small potential user base means that under the current regime such a thing will never be made.

Speaking of, if any government actually wants competition, they don't need to break up Google, they just need to force them to offer full access to their cache and compute at some reasonable rate, much like how the ILECs were made to carry the CLECs' traffic.

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

#69

Post by stephc_int13 »

JimDabell wrote: post #55
whakim wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world) and then suddenly stop. Are you able to share any of those objective measures of quality? Because it seems to me that most of the discussions around the declining quality of Google search amount to anecdata backed up by reasoning that doesn't really make a lot o…

> It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world) and then suddenly stop. Is anybody claiming that it’s sudden? Everybody I’ve seen complain about Google search results has seemed to think that it’s been getting slowly worse over a long period of time.

Not sudden for me. It has been progressively worse over time, and unfortunately the competition is not much better.

Searching today is not as bad as it was during the Altavista/Netscape/56k modem era, but it is getting dangerously close, from my personal and anecdotal experience.

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

#70

Post by Gigachad »

klondike_ wrote: post #54

I think that Google is optimizing for the "average user" to the detriment of power users such as the HN crowd. Most people treat Google as an internet oracle and send queries like "how do I do X" while power users will search for keywords. One example of this optimization is the automatic answer boxes that show up for certain questions, which are wrong disturbingly often or don't include important details.

I think this is overall a good thing. Power users have trained their behaviour to work in the way that simple systems can deal with. While average users ask the question exactly how they would ask another human. Google has now reached a level where it works best when you deal with it in a natural and human level.

There is nothing actually better about the way we originally used search engines, it was just required at the time.

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