Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#21

Post by capableweb » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

dnissley wrote: post #17

xyzzyz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When every site was full of s and  s back in the day, Google had not been at all confused by it.

Are we sure about that? My recollection is the same, but it would be nice to have some way of ensuring my memory isn't faulty...

Just to remind you of how things were when Google first launched (1996): W3C just started with the recommendation of CSS level 1 (https://www.w3.org/Press/CSS1-REC-PR.html), people were using dl, dt, ul, li and blockquote elements for "styling" (layouting really) websites, Internet Explorer 1.0 was launched the year before and most people who wrote HTML documents were amateurs at best. It's a 100% bet that the markup of yore was messed up compared to todays "standards".

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#22

Post by GistNoesis » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

ergonaught wrote: post #5

Google finds it for: "David, is where dreams are born.”" And: "The voice was deep and melodious when it spoke." And most other things. Examine the raw HTML for that area and you might give them a pass when searching for an exact phrase that doesn't actually exist in the document itself.

You are probably right. In the HTML there are some "br" line returns between each line of the citation. It can find the citation from parts of each of these lines but not from the whole citation.

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#23

Post by monkeybutton » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

I was looking for a specific person recently and searched: Canada

I guess they were pretty obscure so Google in all their wisdom displayed the results for Canada, with the entire name struck through. Fantastic. Defaulting to the most generic term in a query to the point of absolute uselessness.

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#24

Post by Someone1234 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:20 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #11

Because Google is... annoying, and silly, try verbatim search tools > verbatim, after you get search results.

Verbatim helps with Google silently altering your query (essentially an alternative to the now-required quoting everything) but it doesn't solve the massive spam issue that has infected Google.

Google, as a company, feels a lot like IBM at the end of its glory days. Google won't suddenly disappear but much like IBM they will slowly shrink in relevance forever.

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#25

Post by Retric » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

ergonaught wrote: post #5

Google finds it for: "David, is where dreams are born.”" And: "The voice was deep and melodious when it spoke." And most other things. Examine the raw HTML for that area and you might give them a pass when searching for an exact phrase that doesn't actually exist in the document itself.

I don’t, Google dates to 1996. Stripping white spaces/line breaks etc should be part of basic parsing. Consider someone typing in a poem or song lyrics etc a few extra
should be expected especially back then.

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#26

Post by User23 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

hamiltonians wrote: post #12

google hardly works for anything

It’s still not bad at getting Wikipedia links.

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#27

Post by Tempest1981 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #19

I stopped using Google entirely. I honestly feel violated every time it strips out words that I asked it to search for on the very first page. NO, I said search for this, do not do something ELSE you piece of shit. I actually use DuckDuckGo exclusively now, not because it got better (it did a tiny bit), but because Google got so absolutely horrible that DDG is now actually better! I have the habit of trying Google if…

While searching for info on a virus DLL, Google was pathetic. I only had luck with yandex.com

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#28

Post by Liquix » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #7

This (shitty NLP) has been bad for a while, but I did notice it get worse recently in a way that feels crippling to me. I don't have a functional search engine anymore.

Does anyone have insight into _why_ google search has deteriorated so rapidly over the last ~6-12 months? Optimizing for NLP or websites learning SEO don't seem like they would have this big of an impact. Everyone seems to agree [0] [1] [2] that this is a problem yet it keeps getting worse

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27379083

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29794372

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29414562

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#29

Post by moistly » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:36 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #19

I stopped using Google entirely. I honestly feel violated every time it strips out words that I asked it to search for on the very first page. NO, I said search for this, do not do something ELSE you piece of shit. I actually use DuckDuckGo exclusively now, not because it got better (it did a tiny bit), but because Google got so absolutely horrible that DDG is now actually better! I have the habit of trying Google if…

So many bot-authored and SEO-tweaked garbage listicles and advertiser-funded “reviews” and poorly-written “TIL”/“learn from me” blogs bloated by advertising. In a few ways the web is better now than it was a few decades ago, and in very many ways it is much worse. Advertising has basically leeched almost all the value out of the web.

Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches

#30

Post by laurent92 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

monkeybutton wrote: post #23

I was looking for a specific person recently and searched: Canada I guess they were pretty obscure so Google in all their wisdom displayed the results for Canada, with the entire name struck through. Fantastic. Defaulting to the most generic term in a query to the point of absolute uselessness.

I’ve always found “lemming” ridiculous, especially in all software that copied Google despite not being generalist. “We’ve seen you are searching for ‘Phillips screw 24x17’, I won’t tell you that we don’t have any but here are results for ‘Screwdrivers’, just in case you want to use a screwdriver instead of a screw. Also here are a few Phillips TVs, in case this might help you fix your car.”