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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

#161

Post by sangnoir »

resonious wrote: post #144
rryan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one at Google is responsible for these half baked and largely irrelevant widgets or wants to stake their career fixing them. You're just ... wrong about this. There's an entire team of dozens of people (maybe hundreds now) focusing on this specific web answer feature. I personally worked on the team (not this feature, though). I don't understand why people say things they know nothing about.

I think people say this because some problems stick out like a sore thumb and stay that way for months if not years. The line of inference is that there must be no incentive inside the company to fix them.

Isn't this just the software engineering equivalent of the fundamental attribution problem? My backlog is long because I have important stuff(TM) to address, whereas their backlog is sign of dysfunction.

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

#162

Post by amelius »

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…

Could you try again from an incognito window?

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

#163

Post by marginalia_nu »

Ironically, my work on my own search engine has led me to be a bit more patient with Google's problems. At least I think I understand them better. Search engines fail in weird ways.

I think in part that Google just has gotten a spectacularly confusing failure mode. If it can't find good matching contents, it starts second-guessing your query and producing other results, which makes you think it's not even considering what you entered. It may even be "better" in the sense that it's more likely to return at least something relevant, but in practice it's bad UX because it's so unintuitive what's happening. It's probably one of those unfortunate optimizations that are invisible when they work and frustrating when they don't.

There is so much stuff on the Internet it's easy to start thinking there is guaranteed to be good results for any search, and that just doesn't seem to be the case. Especially with highly specified searches with 6-8 terms, you quickly enter the domain where you're reasonably unlikely to find an exact match.

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

#164

Post by ur-whale »

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...).

> I just tried that search, all of the results look relevant

Do you geolocate in Argentina?

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

#165

Post by londons_explore »

odessacubbage wrote: post #118
echen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abo…

in 10+ years of targeted advertising, i still have yet to see a single ad for something that is actually relevant to what i want to buy. i'm actually baffled that these companies that have my entire purchasing history and metadata still cannot do a better job at making me spend money than absolute randos on the internet.

Indeed - it really surprised me that we didn't see big ad companies saying:. "we've crunched all the data about you, and here is a list of the products you'll be wanting to buy this week. Buy them all? [Yes] [No]".

The company should be smart enough to know I only buy certain brands of dog food. It should know I need a gift for my mum (and what she likes). It knows I need new trainers but will only buy the cheapest. Etc.

The opportunity for this has pretty much closed with the era of data privacy coming in, but I think it is both surprising and a shame that this didn't happen in the last decade.

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

#166

Post by 6510 »

rryan wrote: post #135
otherotherchris wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be "fair", instant answers have been useless misinformation in every instance I've triggered them. And they've been broken for years. No one at Google is responsible for these half baked and largely irrelevant widgets or wants to stake their career fixing them.

> No one at Google is responsible for these half baked and largely irrelevant widgets or wants to stake their career fixing them. You're just ... wrong about this. There's an entire team of dozens of people (maybe hundreds now) focusing on this specific web answer feature. I personally worked on the team (not this feature, though). I don't understand why people say things they know nothing about.

> I don't understand why people say things they know nothing about.

Well, in all honesty I wonder how this exact same thing when reading the "answers".

I'm having visuals of someone repeatedly trying to throw something and missing the wall entirely.

Lets examine the original product implemented in wetware:

http://answers.google.com/answers/index.html

> "At the bottom of every question page we provide a link to answers-support@google.com. We encourage you to use this link whenever you see questionable content posted to the site. In your email, please provide information about the question, its ID number, and the reason you find the content questionable."

This one went through the wall!

You have no further questions.

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

#168

Post by psyc »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #163

Ironically, my work on my own search engine has led me to be a bit more patient with Google's problems. At least I think I understand them better. Search engines fail in weird ways. I think in part that Google just has gotten a spectacularly confusing failure mode. If it can't find good matching contents, it starts second-guessing your query and producing other results, which makes you think it's not even considering…

I've taken this possibility into account after the numerous recent threads about this, but I don't think it holds up. I'm very often able to find exactly what I'm looking for after 15 minutes of massaging search terms on 3-4 different search engines. The reason it feels like search has gone to hell, for me, is that for 20 years I took for granted that I could type the first terms that came into my mind into one search engine (Google) and the result I wanted was the first result.

Outside of programming-related topics, anything I search returns pages of pop psychology listicles or news articles. Since I am literally never looking for pop psych listicles, Google (and, to be fair, the other search engines as well) has become a lot less usable.

I agree that the open web has deteriorated, with crap drowning out real content. But I maintain that Google et al have failed, or been beat. The content is there, they just can't find it and/or rank it anymore.

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

#169

Post by inshadows »

Google search is OK for me in English. In my native language (central Europe), it's almost impossible to find content that is not eshop or someone selling something. I'm looking for HTML4 articles, phpbb forum discussion, etc. where people actually share knowledge, but I only get super-SEO optimized crap. The best I get is a blog spam from an eshop.

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

#170

Post by 6510 »

kebman wrote: post #90

If you search for anything political on Google, you'll notice that the results are clearly slanted in one direction, towards the opinion of a handful of pre-approved news outlets. This leads me to seek alternatives whenever I need neutral sources, for instance Yahoo search.

That strikes me as a wonderful idea for a new search engine: Just politics. Authors and sites could create a mini profile to refine the results.
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