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Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

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Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#101

Post by polote »

I don't feel like ranking results according to a query makes a lot of sense nowadays. Google works pretty well that it is almost always able to give you results that are relevant to your query.

But where Google fails and other search engine is to show results that are relevant to the user.

As some comments have said here for the query "python throw exception" some people want to get the official python doc when others want a snippet and when other want a tutorial, and some want other things. The fact that there is only one first result and it is the same for everyone IS the issue.

In my personal experience Google works very well for code queries much better than any queries on SEO topics

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#102

Post by Forgeties79 »

polote wrote: post #101

I don't feel like ranking results according to a query makes a lot of sense nowadays. Google works pretty well that it is almost always able to give you results that are relevant to your query. But where Google fails and other search engine is to show results that are relevant to the user. As some comments have said here for the query "python throw exception" some people want to get the official python doc when other…

> But we’re Google fails…is to show results that are relevant to the user

This is going to sound tongue-in-cheek but I mean it with all sincerity: isn’t it wild given the data they hoover up?

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#104

Post by beachy »

mulmen wrote: post #84
beachy wrote: post #54

The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites that use a whole page to blather on and on, leading to a tiny information nugget at the end. No value, just excellent SEO scamming. As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less…

This used to be a feature of Google Search. It then moved from the Google Account to Chrome. I'm not sure if it still exists in the Chrome browser. It can be done with addons but of course that doesn't feed back to Google. It does surprise me that Google wouldn't want to capture this signal. Maybe it is too susceptible to abuse?

It surprises me too. Perhaps they are snow blind from having had something like it in the past and then removing it.

But in the modern era, I feel that being able to use human signals like that - on top of the fancy algorithms - could well be a killer network effect for them.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#105

Post by lelandbatey »

twelvechairs wrote: post #90
PaulHoule wrote: post #87

For Python programming I would say 100% of the time you should look the answer up in the official manual for a well-defined problem (delete a file) because the manual is correct, well-written, etc. It's astonishing how often Google and Bing snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on queries like this. If you go looking in splogs, spam overflow and other spam sites at best you are going to get wrong answers, at worse y…

I agree yet in the article google is criticised for having the official docs as search result 1. I guess I just want different results to the same query than the author

Of the three code related searches in the original blog post, only one Google example listed the official Python documentation as the first link. In the other two examples, the sites shown where:

- W3 Schools

- StackOverflow

I will definitely agree with you that the author seems to want very different things from their search results than we might though. I will always always prefer the official docs (which I can pick through) when I make as vague a search as " throw exception". If I wanted to know "how do I in ", then that's what I'd Google.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#106

Post by julianlam »

victor106 wrote: post #29

Also noticed a recent change that Google did, if I search for e.g:- Volvo XC 60, it does not show me the Volvo XC 60 page on Volvo.com, it instead shows the ad that Volvo paid for and a bunch of other ads. So they essentially don’t want you to click on the organic link that points to Volvo.com. They want Volvo to know that all the traffic to them is being sent due to the Ad and not from any organic links. This is wha…

Wouldn't this just be caused by Volvo committing ad spend on their own keyword?

I liken it to a defense strategy.

Imagine if they didn't, and a search for Volvo XC 60 showed an ad for a Subaru!

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#107

Post by polote »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #102
polote wrote: post #101

I don't feel like ranking results according to a query makes a lot of sense nowadays. Google works pretty well that it is almost always able to give you results that are relevant to your query. But where Google fails and other search engine is to show results that are relevant to the user. As some comments have said here for the query "python throw exception" some people want to get the official python doc when other…

> But we’re Google fails…is to show results that are relevant to the user This is going to sound tongue-in-cheek but I mean it with all sincerity: isn’t it wild given the data they hoover up?

Maybe, but compared to other they don't do worse

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#108

Post by headsoup »

beachy wrote: post #54

The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites that use a whole page to blather on and on, leading to a tiny information nugget at the end. No value, just excellent SEO scamming. As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less…

I'd say it depends on the money they make. I'm not sure how, but it must be profitable enough for them to let it persist.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#109

Post by version_five »

beachy wrote: post #54

The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites that use a whole page to blather on and on, leading to a tiny information nugget at the end. No value, just excellent SEO scamming. As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less…

There is a programmable search feature [0] that lets you limit search to a defined list of sites. Someone did a ShowHN a few months ago where they had built a programmable search with 200ish common sites that a stereotype HN reader might like (software documentation, wikipedia, reddit, some news and other media, etc), and it was actually pretty good.

I've said before, google is now basically what I'd call a "smart" portal site. For most stuff, you already know the handful of sites you might want to look at, and google just sort of brings you there from a relatively clean interface, as opposed to a traditional portal that would have lots of categorized nested links to traverse. In most cases you're not searching for a random site that you wouldn't know existed if it wasn't indexed, like in 1998. So the whitelist approach actually works pretty well.

[0] https://developers.google.com/custom-search/

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#110

Post by dismantlethesun »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #60
criddell wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google spies on us so they can better serve us. Maybe it’s time that they let us directly tell them what we want. Let me easily blacklist sites from the search results. They could even take the blacklists from all people with a high reputation and use that as a signal when they are building search results for others.

Sounds very easy to abuse. Don't like the competition's website? Pay a clickfarm to blacklist them on Google. I'd prefer a browser extension that removes results locally. Actually all I need is probably just a rule in uBO.

If Google can't tell the difference between a click farm and real people then how can they hope to have advertisers trust that their ad performance is accurate?
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