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

Post by SturgeonsLaw » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:00 AM UTC

evouga wrote: post #145

Gigachad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, I disagree. With keyword search, I am confident that eventually, with enough included and excluded terms, I will find what I’m looking for. With natural language search, sometimes it works great, but it’s a crapshoot and when you don’t get the results you need you’re stuck. Several times in recent memory Google has returned results so bad, I completely gave up searching. Most recently was when i was trying to loo…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:04 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #177

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…

On Amazon I searched in "CDs & Vinyl" for the band "The Birdstones". It showed me results in books. Criminy. Amazon does this all the time. If I wanted a book, I'd have searched under "Books". I am not confused about the difference between "CDs" and "Books". What's the good of having categories if they're completely ignored?

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

pjc50 wrote: post #179

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…

> 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. I'm increasingly of the opinion that Google (the advertising engine) has destroyed Google (the search engine), by the two step process of making it profitable to produce blogspam then forcing search to remove blogspam - and a lot of the useful content h…

Post by aix1 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:10 AM UTC

cik wrote: post #231

aix1 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious and tried it myself. The search results page explains -- right at the top -- what is happening: Showing results from All Departments No results for The Birdstones in Music, CDs & Vinyl I think this widening of search scope is not unreasonable.

It depends how you view the problem. If one assumes that humans make mistakes - it's probably reasonable to show people things outside their selected search scope. If you're an exacting user, this is rather frustrating. Realistically neither of the above were the concern. It's an attempt to boost engagement in the hopes that you'll find a product for eventual purchase, nothing more.

Post by amelius » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:14 AM UTC

djohnston wrote: post #233

mcv wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of an ability to vote on search results seems like a baffling omission. Normally Google loves to crowdsource their work, but for this one area where we would actually want it, they decide that they know better when they clearly don't.

It would be abused into the ground by the same people who set up these scam sites in the first place. For most things on the internet, the crappiness of the average person is the limiting factor.