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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

#351

Post by BitwiseFool »

Jenk wrote: post #289
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.

Are these client-side only extensions that are manipulating the DOM, or are they somehow feeding parameters to google to exclude domains (by e.g., automatically suffixing a series of "-site:blah.com"s to the query)?

I don't know if I'm secretly being A/B tested, but Google seems to ignore - and "" terms in my queries from time to time.

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

#352

Post by andrew_ »

The most frustrating part of using Google these days (for me anyhow) is Google returning results that don't match terms that I specifically wrap in quotes. If I search for:

"gamakatsu octopus hooks"

I expect to only receive results for that. Instead I get bombarded by results that match a portion, or when Google thinks I tangentially might have meant something else. There was a time when it respected the quote characters, but those days have long since passed.

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

#353

Post by gregallan »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #173
psyc wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 searc…

> 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. If you are adjusting your query, then you are going to get different results, possibly including ones that contain the information you want (but not your original search terms). We've been tweaking search terms to find what we were looking for since day one, what's changed the most it…

I think this is my biggest problem with how Google now works. It's always been disappointing when you didn't find what you were looking for. But you used to be able to examine the results and see how your search terms might not have been optimal, and adjust accordingly. It was the expectation that you'd have to tweak. Now, changing your exact search terms hardly seem to make a difference.

I think the major difference is that the algorithm used to highly weight matching of specific words and phrases from the search terms, so adding a word, re-ordering, and swapping for synonyms would drastically change the results. Now it seems they're using ML and natural language processing to try to actually understand what you're looking for and give it to you. You can change your search terms, but the language embedding doesn't change much, so the system is actually working as intended. I could see that this might actually be desirable for a large segment of the population who wants their search engine to "just work" in response to natural language queries. If the corpus being indexed was high quality, maybe this would be a good experience. But due to the ads, affiliate marketing, and blogspam that make up a large part of modern internet content, it's simply frustrating.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've done user testing that validates their approach. Programmers tend to be comfortable with the concept that a computer will do what you ask, even if it's not what you meant, but most people want to get the right results on the first try. The natural language/ML approach may be much more intuitive and forgiving in that regard. It's just not an approach that's compatible with the low average quality of the content being indexed, in that it takes away the authority of the user to improve their search results.

I think there's somewhat of a tradeoff in search performance between quality of results on the first try and ability to improve the results on subsequent tries, and google is now optimizing for the former at great cost to the latter. And honestly they're failing at both.

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

#354

Post by jfoster »

Google's primary differentiation used to be that they were by far the best search engine. Since then, they have moved upstream:

1. Android

2. Chrome

3. A deal with Apple

Even if a much better search engine were to emerge, without an extremely large delta in search quality, they may struggle to compete against Google because Google controls the entry points.

Apple & Microsoft still control the platforms (OSes) upon which Google reaches the majority of consumers, though. Seems likely that Apple will try to displace Google eventually.

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

#356

Post by Schroedingersat »

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.

Their entire business (advertising) is clustering. They've already done the hard bit.

Just cluster people by downvotes and whatever other thousand metrics are already being tracked, and allow them to see results given by other clusters by showing which areas are dense on a PCA or something or saying 'I want my results to only be influenced by people who have downvoted github.org' or whatever.

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

#357

Post by amelius »

wruza wrote: post #281
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.

They don't have to make it a public vote. I'm fine to do this work myself for a week or so, and then enjoy crap-free searches. Or link my votes account to someone who I trust and use their opinion. Idk why everyone is praising public anything, because local communities and knowledge webs worked fine pre-internet. Most of the bullshit came with globalization.

I wish there was some standardized way to say "I trust you" on the internet, and share part of their information bubble (e.g. reviews, up/downvoted websites, youtube recommendations, etc.), and this bubble could have some transitive properties (if I trust X and X trusts Y, then to some extent I trust Y too).

But it's probably too privacy sensitive (if I see which sites you upvoted, then I have some information about you). Hence, that's probably why this has to be either completely private or completely public.

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

#358

Post by Schroedingersat »

jspiral wrote: post #338
djohnston wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is you'd have an email client but all data is stored encrypted on chain and you'd have to pay tx costs to send things. By having this sort of stamp tax spammer wouldn't be able to scale mass messaging as it would bankrupt them.

in meatspace though, my real mailbox is mostly filled with spam that the sender paid to have delivered. granted, it would at least act as a limiting factor.

If you have an auditable tx history, then mixers/exchanges/wallets etc can be marked as sources of the money used by spammers

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

#359

Post by caconym_ »

dpacmittal wrote: post #282
caconym_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kagi filters all of that out. If an upstart can do it, Google with its unlimited resources can do it too

Kagi seems to be in closed beta, so I wasn't able to test this claim even on an anecdotal level.

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

#360

Post by lacksconfidence »

mcv wrote: post #339
tommek4077 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browserfingerprinting, they see you again on ther resultspage after x seconds -> bad result. They don't see you again -> good result.

That's not how I use the results page, though. I open the top x number of results in separate tabs, and then check those pages. I only go back to the tab with the results page after I've checked them all, so that might be a while, even if they all suck. So if they look at my behaviour the way you say, then the feedback they'd get from me would be that the top x-1 results are always bad, while the xth result is always…

Luckily for search, it is how the vast majority of users use things. Less than 1% of users doing things differently makes the stats a little messier, but still works quite well.
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