Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

gabrielweinberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#11

Post by Matt_Cutts »

I'm happy to give more context on this. Some people don't put all their information needs into a single query. For example, instead of searching for [iphone wikipedia] to find the iPhone page on Wikipedia, they'll do one search for [iphone] and then their next search will be [wikipedia].

Google tries to help with those sorts of search sessions. For 0.3% of queries, if we see a search for a query A and then another search for query B, and there appear to be good results related to both A and B, then we may surface those results.

For example, I just did the search [iphone] and then the search [wikipedia]. In addition to the regular results for Wikipedia, Google also surfaces the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone . A good way to see that Google is doing this is to look for a phrase like "You recently searched for iphone" under the newly-surfaced results. Go ahead and try it with the search [twilight] and then the search [wikipedia] for example.

Between Gabriel's article and the WSJ article, words that are reported to provide this behavior include iphone, nexus, obama (but not romney, because there wasn't enough information for this word at the time the data was generated), tablet, twilight, computer, health, speech, iraq, sports, social security, and stock.

Just to reiterate, this algorithm affects 0.3% of searches on Google. Most Hacker News readers are savvy enough to search for [iphone wikipedia] instead of breaking that search into multiple queries. However, if you don't want Google to surface additional results that might help with your current query, Google has a support page telling how to turn off search history personalization: https://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

As an aside, I wrote a blog post ~4 years ago to preemptively debunk the idea that Google skews our search results for political reasons: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-search-and-politics/ We simply don't do that.

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#12

Post by tomp »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #11

I'm happy to give more context on this. Some people don't put all their information needs into a single query. For example, instead of searching for [iphone wikipedia] to find the iPhone page on Wikipedia, they'll do one search for [iphone] and then their next search will be [wikipedia]. Google tries to help with those sorts of search sessions. For 0.3% of queries, if we see a search for a query A and then another se…

You really could have made it more obvious and opt-out. As in, have a list of keywords that google also considered somewhere on the top, along with smal "x"s next to them.

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#13

Post by [deleted] »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #3

I'm trying to decide how concerned I should be about Obama being a magic keyword and Romney not. On the one hand, Obama has been president for nearly four years; the number of searches for him will have been high and consistent. On the other hand, Google is so central to information flow today, having it decide which candidate should get special treatment is disturbing. I'm mollified somewhat that the Obama magic res…

[deleted]

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#14

Post by davemel37 »

I ran the search and I am not concerned at all... Google shows poll results with bright red and blue colors drawing the eye... News stories show up first, and pictures of Romney, and his website outrank these related results.

The "you recently searched for obama" results appeared below the fold and the story was quite frankly very unlikely to be noticed unless it was something I was looking for specifically, which is probably google's algorithm's intent.

I tried running the search in battleground states and the same results showed up and I tried a bunch of searches like "Romneys plan" "why vote for romney" "who should I vote for" "vote for romney" and none of them showed obama results...

P.S. I am a libertarian who voted for Romney and I approve this message.

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#16

Post by oddjob »

jmillikin wrote: post #8
dsr_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the effect times out? If so, it could be reasonably construed as an attempt to present more relevant results across a session. If, on the other hand, Google accumulates history until you sink into a morass of similar results, it's clearly harmful.

In the original WSJ article (yc: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4741394 ), it's confirmed that this effect has a limited duration. > A Google spokesman said: "We aim to get users the best > answers as fast as possible" using techniques such as > examining "related searches." He said the goal for the > feature is to provide better results in a situation > where, for instance, a person who searches for "Harry > Po…

That's not confirmation, that's a public relations response. Confirmation of limited duration would be actually running the experiment until the effect actually disappears.

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#17

Post by icebraining »

kevingadd wrote: post #2

Most of the stuff discussed in this post didn't bug me, but then I got to this part: As the Wall Street Journal confirmed in its own study, Google has been significantly altering its search results to highlight Obama-related results, but not Romney-related results (more on that later). These Obama-related results are being inserted because obama is a magic keyword on Google. A magic keyword is a search that can trans…

Changing the results of later searches based on things I searched for in the past is the complete opposite of what I want a search engine to do.

Really? If I search for Python stuff, I want it to learn that I mean the language and not the animal. I want it to learn that when I type "Socrates", I mean the Greek philosopher and not my ex-Prime Minister.

Learning from the the user is all about changing the results based on past searches, and I think it can be very useful. Just not always.

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#18

Post by anonymous »

tomp wrote: post #12
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #11

I'm happy to give more context on this. Some people don't put all their information needs into a single query. For example, instead of searching for [iphone wikipedia] to find the iPhone page on Wikipedia, they'll do one search for [iphone] and then their next search will be [wikipedia]. Google tries to help with those sorts of search sessions. For 0.3% of queries, if we see a search for a query A and then another se…

You really could have made it more obvious and opt-out. As in, have a list of keywords that google also considered somewhere on the top, along with smal "x"s next to them.

> google

> obvious and opt-out

I'd tell you to pick one, but that implies choice. You can only pick google.

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#19

Post by [deleted] »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #11

I'm happy to give more context on this. Some people don't put all their information needs into a single query. For example, instead of searching for [iphone wikipedia] to find the iPhone page on Wikipedia, they'll do one search for [iphone] and then their next search will be [wikipedia]. Google tries to help with those sorts of search sessions. For 0.3% of queries, if we see a search for a query A and then another se…

[deleted]

Re: Magic keywords on Google and the consequences of tailoring results

#20

Post by donkeydong »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #11

I'm happy to give more context on this. Some people don't put all their information needs into a single query. For example, instead of searching for [iphone wikipedia] to find the iPhone page on Wikipedia, they'll do one search for [iphone] and then their next search will be [wikipedia]. Google tries to help with those sorts of search sessions. For 0.3% of queries, if we see a search for a query A and then another se…

What you're saying, though, is that Google is making an inference. DuckDuckGo does not want to infer anything and I tend to agree. Also, why aren't all of the inserted links highlighted with the, "you recently search for" line? Why wouldn't Romney be a magic keyword? I appreciate your explanation but it doesn't really explain anything.
Post reply on HN