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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

#241

Post by machiaweliczny »

cik wrote: post #228
lbriner wrote: post #203

One thing I find annoying is that they still return results that are those sites that seem to register a load of terms that all point to the same page. You see this with telephone numbers, song lyrics etc. where the result looks like "Lyrics for Stairway to Heaven" but you click through and there is no content, just a page that says "Upload some lyrics to this song".. etc. These sites should be heavily penalised for…

I've found my result quality has gone up dramatically now that I use extensions allowing me to block domains from google search results. It seems silly that I ought have to do this, but Google has finally become useful again as a result.

Could you provide name of this extension?

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

#242

Post by amelius »

mcv wrote: post #229
amelius wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, give me a downvote button on Google results.

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.

Yes, Google says they want all our information to "improve our user experience". Except it's not very credible that this is the true reason.

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

#243

Post by 6LLvveMx2koXfwn »

mcv wrote: post #229
amelius wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, give me a downvote button on Google results.

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.

Isn't Google's monetization for Search results the primary reason for not allowing crowd funded quality metrics? If only good results get to the top how do they make money? Google's Search business model appears to be predicated on poor results getting disproportionately prominent listing.

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

#244

Post by machiaweliczny »

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.

What if they took only votes from people that pay and have account for X time? Also what’s the problem with adding revert per user? With some events architekture it should be trivial. They could even train AI on this data to automatically sugest suspects.

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

#245

Post by fifnir »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #241
cik wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found my result quality has gone up dramatically now that I use extensions allowing me to block domains from google search results. It seems silly that I ought have to do this, but Google has finally become useful again as a result.

Could you provide name of this extension?

I use uBlacklist, it puts a little "block this domain from results" button next to google results

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

#246

Post by eitland »

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 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.

This is probably part of it but not the whole explanation:

Try to search on Google for:

    slack ngrok
When I and others did earlier today there were a number of pages that contained the words including from the slack.com domain.

The top result however was a page that didn't contain ngrok at all.

I saw a specialist at another search engine comment that it was because it was a very popular result (at least thats what I read into it).

Here's my problem with Google: they are either just really bad at QA or they don't care or they consistently overestimate their dumb AI and underestimate me.

I'm fed up.

Not including pages that doesn't contain the search terms or anything similar isn't hard when there are multiple good results at the exact same domain / pagerank, is it?

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

#247

Post by echen »

tempestn wrote: post #206

While Google results may well be deteriorating, this example strikes me as a poor one. Unless you're trying to demonstrate poor results, why wouldn't you put quotation marks around "series b"? There's no point in making the algorithm guess what you mean when you can be explicit.

Putting "series b" in quotes doesn't actually help! https://imgur.com/a/zNNTK3d And "series b" is a common enough phrase that I wouldn't guess you should have to.

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

#248

Post by djohnston »

amelius wrote: post #240
djohnston wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't that provide more data on who are the scammers?

Not really. In these areas there's a general principle that the moment you start using a signal to enforce on bad actors that signal's value decays. It's sad, I actually think web3 could help curb abuse at scale by making it too expensive to scale horizontally. Imagine paying a "stamp" to send an email on the blockchain, spam email would dramatically drop. Maybe similar mechanics could be in play for other things but then you lose democratization of information.

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

#249

Post by mcv »

6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #243
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.

Isn't Google's monetization for Search results the primary reason for not allowing crowd funded quality metrics? If only good results get to the top how do they make money? Google's Search business model appears to be predicated on poor results getting disproportionately prominent listing.

The actual sponsored links end up at the top anyway. I don't see how bad regular results would contribute to their revenue; it would just drive people away.

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

#250

Post by eitland »

aix1 wrote: post #238
cik wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't design this UX, so can't be certain of the designer's intent. However, more charitable interpretations could be: 1. perhaps the user has accidentally chosen the wrong category? 2. perhaps the product they're looking for is miscategorised? (I've definitely seen these.)

But then tell me loud and clear that you did it.

If WalterBright didn't see it it probably wasn't loud and clear enough.

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