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

#71

Post by qiqitori » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:06 AM UTC

elondaits wrote: post #21

creato wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, beca…

Rule #1 of Google usage: turn off results based on search history. Think about it, how could that possibly improve your search results when you search for something you have never searched for before? I (sort of) remember the day that was announced, almost everyone turned it off immediately.

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

#72

Post by literallyaduck » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:06 AM UTC

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…

Go to image search and type in "white people" without quotes.

Now repeat the search but with "black people" without quotes.

Try the same for "white couple" without quotes.

Try the same for "black couple" without quotes.

Do you have any insight to this phenomenon?

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

#73

Post by denlekke » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:06 AM UTC

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 has felt quite sudden for me ~ within the past year

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

#74

Post by KarlKemp » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

apatters wrote: post #47

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'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.

The cases you mention involve maximizing profits by saving on costs. The theory above is that lower quality leads to an increase in revenue, and it is tenuous at best.

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

#75

Post by maxdo » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

Google is focused on cloud race thinking search is done. Please try to remember any new successful product of them for the last 4 years.

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

#76

Post by caconym_ » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:08 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #59

RandyRanderson wrote: post #8

One reason it might deteriorated is that goog is constantly battling ppl 'optimizing' their content for Google while competitors likely see less than 1/1000 of this.

That would make sense if so many easy to detect low hanging fruit like blog spam, scraped stack overflow pirates, and listicles didn't make it to the top. Those are easy for google to de-rank and yet they don't.

What's the source for it being easy? It seems easy, from the perspective of a human looking at results, but I'm not sure how much that's worth given the scale and complexity of the problem.

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

#77

Post by KarlKemp » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:09 AM UTC

danielrpa wrote: post #45

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.

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.

> Cashing out in the short-term sounds more like what these executives generally do.

It only sounds like what they do because you only ever read stuff written by people who believe that without any evidence.

Sundar Pichai has been with Google since 2004.

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

#78

Post by the_only_law » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

literallyaduck wrote: post #72

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…

Go to image search and type in "white people" without quotes. Now repeat the search but with "black people" without quotes. Try the same for "white couple" without quotes. Try the same for "black couple" without quotes. Do you have any insight to this phenomenon?

Not completely sure what this “phenomenon”. There’s a few things I can imagine you are insinuating but they all had simple explanations so I’m not sure.

Don’t disagree with the main theory that search quality is deteriorating. I have to use increasingly contrived queries to get anything but bullshit blog spam, and indexing seems really odd at times.

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

#79

Post by fdgsdfogijq » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

literallyaduck wrote: post #72

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…

Go to image search and type in "white people" without quotes. Now repeat the search but with "black people" without quotes. Try the same for "white couple" without quotes. Try the same for "black couple" without quotes. Do you have any insight to this phenomenon?

No post body was provided.

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

#80

Post by meowtimemania » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

literallyaduck wrote: post #72

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…

Go to image search and type in "white people" without quotes. Now repeat the search but with "black people" without quotes. Try the same for "white couple" without quotes. Try the same for "black couple" without quotes. Do you have any insight to this phenomenon?

I just did the 4 searches you suggested but didn’t see anything note worthy. What did I miss?