Live data from Hacker News

Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

blog.thatwayhat.com

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#11

I tried "sun hats" and got the ad from coolibar and only one other result out of ten on the first page. So, I ask for some more facts, not just anecdotal evidence of failure. Do you visit coolibar regularly? were you logged in or incognito? I tried both and got similar results. How many searches did you perform to come up with these anomalies? Have you seen this behavior before or perhaps it was just a bug? UPDATE: I…

I posted the pdf's of the results (linked to the search terms). I see google giving me results like this a lot. I signed out of google, cleared my browser cache and history, and still the same results. I never joined google plus.

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#12
post #5

Unfortunately, I can't reproduce these results. I'm not saying they are false, but that maybe they have to do with personalized results for the author. Did you try logging out and doing the same searches? There was a maximum of results from the same page that could be shown (I think it was about five), so I'm not sure how you can get this results. Also, there's another issue. Even if you get the same webpages all the…

From what everyone here is saying, it is clear to me I am being put in some kind of fish bowl with the results I am getting while other people are not in my same fish bowl. I can't explain it, since (as I mentioned above) I cleared my history and cache, signed out, restart browser and still the same outcome. Personally I care a lot about the results both for my business purposes and my personal searching, so this upsets me a lot.

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#13

I tried "sun hats" and got the ad from coolibar and only one other result out of ten on the first page. So, I ask for some more facts, not just anecdotal evidence of failure. Do you visit coolibar regularly? were you logged in or incognito? I tried both and got similar results. How many searches did you perform to come up with these anomalies? Have you seen this behavior before or perhaps it was just a bug? UPDATE: I…

Not spammed at all -- this is what I am dealing with and thought it was google.

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#15
post #7

gmyachtsman, if you are searching specifically for products, try using Google's shopping search : http://www.google.com/shopping

Thanks, I do know google shopping and even list my products there. I wonder if other people are having the same problems for things that they search for frequently -- whatever that is.

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#16

What do you think, am I right about this?

Here's what I see (with personalisation). Without is roughly the same, only the two ads top right are missing and replaced with something that looks more generic. http://i.imgur.com/xwoOP.png

davewasthere, hmmm, folding sun hat is not exactly my search term. Seems you are in the UK, I am in NYC, but this is what I am getting: http://blog.thatwayhat.com/blogfiles/folding-sun-hat-Google-...

I would not have searched exactly for this before, but I am getting 4 in a row from ifactoryoutlet.com 3 in a row from dharmatrading.com 11 in a row from alibaba.com etc

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#17
post #5

Unfortunately, I can't reproduce these results. I'm not saying they are false, but that maybe they have to do with personalized results for the author. Did you try logging out and doing the same searches? There was a maximum of results from the same page that could be shown (I think it was about five), so I'm not sure how you can get this results. Also, there's another issue. Even if you get the same webpages all the…

Yes, they are different pages on each of the .com sites, but still, it is really repetitive. I would if others like you are getting duplicative results on other topics. (Though for me it seems to be all around -- even Sunday News which I would never be actually putting into the google search engine). This duplication problem is not appearing for me in yahoo to anywhere the same extent.

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#18

Weird I have pretty different results to your search. Odd outlier outcome of Google personalization or perhaps even malware?

hmmm, I had not thought of malware.

This might be a long shot, but consider doing an online antivirus scan such as housecall.trendmicro.com and see what's up.

In my younger days of downloading things from the Internet, I've downloaded malware that hijacks your search results to be spamtacular -- for fun and profit on their end of course.

Re: Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent

#20
post #3

This may be the result of some weird personalization specific to the author, which I suppose may be interesting itself. I do not see similar results at all (one result from coolibar for sun hats and 1 result from amazon for womens sun hats).

I am getting this kind of result all the time from google. Interesting you are not.

I am getting similar results as travisp ... definitely not 34 in a row from Alibaba. Definitely some personalization from Google going on here.
Post reply on HN