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The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

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Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#41

Post by dublinben »

k__ wrote: post #19
ht_th wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem is that you, as a user, don't have any control over internet search. Not only are you dependent on Google (or another provider) for what search commands you can execute, you also don't have no control about how these commands work nor on what subset of the database. Especially advanced features, complex queries, or power tools for searching are unavailable to the common user. I have no idea about t…

What about p2p search engines? Are they any good?

Yacy is usable right now, and gets better the more people use it.

http://yacy.net/en/

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#42

Post by jeangenie »

ninkendo wrote: post #25
InclinedPlane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shitty thing was that they dropped the + operator at the same time they significantly increased the "fuzziness" of their search algorithm. For some searches it might have helped, but for extremely targeted or highly technical searches it was a disaster. Almost as horrible as the bad old days when search engines tended to use "or" for search queries instead of "and". Still it's very, very difficult to tell google…

Sometimes when I'm searching I get the feeling Google is dropping things I'm asking for in order to give me more results. But there's no way they're dumb enough to think that's helpful, right? They do understand that people want less - but more relevant - results, instead of just having more useless ones? Like just the other day I was searching for "ruby net::ldap " and it decided to put, front and center, results fr…

I believe (but have no evidence) that Google does this to redirect users towards searches which are more likely to serve ads. The more results a search yields --> the more likely it is someone is paying to target it. This likely applies more to general users and not HN users (turns out queries for error messages are hard-to-monetize).

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#43

Post by esbonsa »

ttctciyf wrote: post #20
AshleysBrain wrote: post #4

mars - 197m results "mars" - 228m results +mars - 19k results +"mars" - 197m results Assuming the estimated result count is at all meaningful, it looks like + still does have an effect: it turns ["x"] in to meaning the same thing as [x].

So, I was skeptical that only 19k webpages would contain the actual word mars (as per the +mars query), and curious why "verbatim" search wasn't included for comparison. So I tried verbatim search for mars, to find the estimated results count disappears. However, skipping along the pages got me the counterintuitive result that verbatim search for mars finds only 188 results - I'm pretty sure that google has indexed m…

I seriously think that Google's end-goal is to show you only one sponsored result per search query whether it is relevant or not (there will be no real search results, it will be more like TV)

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#44

Post by dminor »

ninkendo wrote: post #25
InclinedPlane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shitty thing was that they dropped the + operator at the same time they significantly increased the "fuzziness" of their search algorithm. For some searches it might have helped, but for extremely targeted or highly technical searches it was a disaster. Almost as horrible as the bad old days when search engines tended to use "or" for search queries instead of "and". Still it's very, very difficult to tell google…

Sometimes when I'm searching I get the feeling Google is dropping things I'm asking for in order to give me more results. But there's no way they're dumb enough to think that's helpful, right? They do understand that people want less - but more relevant - results, instead of just having more useless ones? Like just the other day I was searching for "ruby net::ldap " and it decided to put, front and center, results fr…

Under their search tools menu they have a "verbatim" option. There's probably a bookmarklet out there somewhere to make it a one click option.

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#45

Post by pasbesoin »

danmaz74 wrote: post #3

I've never been a google+ basher, but I really hated Google dropping the + search operator. It also showed me in a very personal way just how lazy users can be: Wrapping a word in double quotes is "just" 4 keystrokes instead of 1 for the + in front of it, but I effectively stopped using that feature after the change.

It's been a while and I don't feel like digging up the details, but double quoting is not equivalent to what the former plus operator accomplished.

Broadly stated, double quoting permits more fuzziness that the former plus operator did. And there are times -- particularly with all the cruft in search results -- when you -- I, at least -- really don't want that fuzziness.

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#47

Post by bambax »

DanBC wrote: post #11

Matt Cutts gave some numbers about how often the + operator was used - and even then it was mostly used incorrectly. > > In the past, we provided users with the + operator to help you search for specific terms. However, we found that users typed the + operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly. http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your.…

> users typed the + operator in less than half a percent of all searches

Matt Cutts obviously isn't stupid, but that's a very stupid thing to say, or think, or act upon.

Many things are done rarely, that are extremely useful or important.

Hey, most search strings probably represent "less than half a percent" of all possible searches; so by that metric they could drop most of their index, and only answer the most frequent searches...

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#48

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jeangenie wrote: post #42
ninkendo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes when I'm searching I get the feeling Google is dropping things I'm asking for in order to give me more results. But there's no way they're dumb enough to think that's helpful, right? They do understand that people want less - but more relevant - results, instead of just having more useless ones? Like just the other day I was searching for "ruby net::ldap " and it decided to put, front and center, results fr…

I believe (but have no evidence) that Google does this to redirect users towards searches which are more likely to serve ads. The more results a search yields --> the more likely it is someone is paying to target it. This likely applies more to general users and not HN users (turns out queries for error messages are hard-to-monetize).

> turns out queries for error messages are hard-to-monetize

Really? You would think it would be the perfect opportunity for competitors to advertise. Here's the user frustrated with their existing vendor because their computer is emitting some kind of gibberish instead of doing what they paid for it to do, and here you are offering a different product that presumably makes the error go away.

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#49

Post by dredmorbius »

chris_wot wrote: post #8

Is there a search engine that is as accurate as Google? Does Bing really stack up?

I've been using DDG for over a year solid, and for the past couple on and off.

I still run the occasionally !sp or !g bang search (StartPage is a proxied Google, the other hits Google directly). And in almost all cases there's little if any discernable difference.

The main exceptions are:

1. Date-bounded searches. DDG doesn't support this.

2. Special collections. Books and Scholar in particular.

Until recently, I'd have included images, but DDG's added that. Maps can be searched through OSM.

My primary concerns are privacy and search bubbling, but quality is up there as well.

Re: The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead

#50

Post by dredmorbius »

danmaz74 wrote: post #29
DanBC wrote: post #11

Matt Cutts gave some numbers about how often the + operator was used - and even then it was mostly used incorrectly. > > In the past, we provided users with the + operator to help you search for specific terms. However, we found that users typed the + operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly. http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your.…

Just 1 in 600... and that's how many tens of million of queries? Or hundreds? Anyway, losing mindshare among power users is very dangerous in the IT business. Even when you really just care about the average Joe.

losing mindshare among power users is very dangerous in the IT business

Absolutely. And Google have been stumbling hard the past 2-3 years.

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