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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

#61

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ninkendo wrote: post #40
m_mueller wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: Did it ever happen to you when google actually had this exact combination in their index? For me, so far, getting these kinds of results is just synonymous to 'no match found', so I move on. In some edge cases it might be helpful to get these results, in most cases I just change my query. But if google were actually hiding good results from you this way, they'd be really bad at their job wouldn't the…

> Did it ever happen to you when google actually had this exact combination in their index? Yup! Try searching for "ruby net::ldap search", without the quotes. For me, a CPAN page is the second result. (This is even logged out, in a chrome incognito window, so no cookies are sent to google.) That page doesn't have "ruby" or anything related to "ruby" on it, at all. But even if I was searching for something esoteric l…

I see cpan in 4th postion, but I'm not sure I see the problem?

Net::LDAP is a perl module too, one of the things it does is search, so 3/4 of the words are not just matched literally, but are the right kind of net (not fishing or stockings), the right kind of ldap , the right kind of search.

You claim there is nothing related to ruby on that page, yet how many times must people have linked to both those languages from a webpage, perhaps alongside other related terms like python?

Its not perfect, and it's not magic, but is that really the level we expect from Google, so much so that we're in a huff if we have to scroll past one easily discounted search result?

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

#62

Post by Donna_Conners »

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…

+mars is now a new token not this: + AND mars

and not: ALWAYS mars

search for: +mars -mars

You might expect to always get 0 pages, but that isn't the case. You get pages that never mention mars and pages that contain +mars.

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

#63

Post by ttctciyf »

magicalist wrote: post #57
ttctciyf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google has never given you all 18 million or whatever results that it says it has for a term. If you look at just mars (no quotes), it says (for me, not signed in) there are 211,000,000 results, but the results only go to page 26 with the same kind of message: "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 260 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search…

I suspect you're right in that it's never given you all the results. I'm pretty sure that it's given me many more than 300 or so results in the past, though, whereas that figure seems to be google's idea of the max any user could possibly want now before they refine their term.

I think mars is probably not the ideal term for testing this sort of thing - just too many hits. I tried mars "philip k dick" and found the same thing - 30 or so pages and then it refused to give me more results. Increasing the obscurity level somewhat, devil's vindata vanilla search vs. verbatim search did indeed show a reduced set of results for verbatim (the vanilla search results including hits on devil's vendetta)

Overall though, if you're looking for more fringe results for common search terms, millionshort.com might be worth a try, where you can remove hits from the top 10^n sites for your term it says.

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

#64

Post by notatoad »

userbinator wrote: post #24
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.…

What do they even mean by "it was used incorrectly"? Did they somehow reach out to and ask the user if they found what they were looking for...?

google knows if you found what you're looking for because they observe your behaviour. If you keep going through to page 30, it means your search was unsuccessful. if you search again for a similar term ten seconds later, it means your search was unsuccessful. they don't need to ask.

but in this case, it probably just means that people were using it like "cookies+cream". they aren't using + as an operator, they're using it as a synonym for "and", and they are better served by google parsing their query as native language instead of parsing it as an expression in a rarely used query language.

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

#65

Post by wmeredith »

chris_wot wrote: post #8

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

The only blind study[1] I've heard of on the subject put Bing ahead of Google at almost 2-to-1 (yes, seriously).

>> Conducted by California-based Answers Research, the study queried an online sample of nearly 1,000 people at least 18 years old, all living in the US. None of the participants in the survey knew Microsoft was involved. Participants performed 10 searches of their own choosing, and were shown the results from both Bing and Google, side by side, with all the the branding removed. Additionally, notes Microsoft, “The test did not include ads or content in other parts of the page such as Bing’s Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google’s Knowledge Graph.” For each search, participants chose which side showed better results, or could call it a tie. Of the participants surveyed, 57.4 percent chose Bing more often, 30.2 percent chose Google more often, and 12.4 percent didn’t prefer one over the other.

It was this study that inspired Microsoft's Bing it On campaign in 2012. Unfortunately, the ad campaign mostly consisted of Microsoft recreating the independent study, but cheating to make sure Bing would win even bigger[2].

1) http://www.seochat.com/c/a/msn-optimization-help/microsoft-s...

2) http://www.435digital.com/blog/2012/10/09/bing-it-down-a-not...

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

#66

Post by jacquesm »

magicalist wrote: post #57
ttctciyf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google has never given you all 18 million or whatever results that it says it has for a term. If you look at just mars (no quotes), it says (for me, not signed in) there are 211,000,000 results, but the results only go to page 26 with the same kind of message: "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 260 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search…

It used to give you 1000 results (100 pages). Then it changed because 'nobody' goes to those last pages and it's very expensive to keep those big sets. Then it dropped to 300 or so. Then it became 'some random number between 20 and 300 depending on invisible factors'. Pretty rare to see a resultset with more than 200 pages. Even 'webcams' (of which there are 10's of millions of pages) gives only 323 results.

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

#67

Post by m_mueller »

magicalist wrote: post #55
ninkendo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did it ever happen to you when google actually had this exact combination in their index? Yup! Try searching for "ruby net::ldap search", without the quotes. For me, a CPAN page is the second result. (This is even logged out, in a chrome incognito window, so no cookies are sent to google.) That page doesn't have "ruby" or anything related to "ruby" on it, at all. But even if I was searching for something esoteric l…

FWIW, when I do the same in a chrome incognito window, all of the results are ruby (the language) related. But us seeing two different sets of results may make the problem worse, not better :)

I get GP's result when using DuckDuckGo with g! (which should be the same as incognito), so there is that. However I don't see what's the big deal with that CPAN result - it's not like the useful results are drowning in these links here and you can always use quoted if you don't want that. In fact I think it's sometimes useful information that there are very similarly named things than the one we've searched for.

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

#68

Post by alok-g »

Response from 'thisisnotatest' from Google search team [1]:

"I hear you. How to indicate to the user that we don't think there are any good matches for their query is something we debate and experiment with in search quality at Google."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725958

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

#69

Post by ninkendo »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #61
ninkendo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did it ever happen to you when google actually had this exact combination in their index? Yup! Try searching for "ruby net::ldap search", without the quotes. For me, a CPAN page is the second result. (This is even logged out, in a chrome incognito window, so no cookies are sent to google.) That page doesn't have "ruby" or anything related to "ruby" on it, at all. But even if I was searching for something esoteric l…

I see cpan in 4th postion, but I'm not sure I see the problem? Net::LDAP is a perl module too, one of the things it does is search, so 3/4 of the words are not just matched literally, but are the right kind of net (not fishing or stockings), the right kind of ldap , the right kind of search. You claim there is nothing related to ruby on that page, yet how many times must people have linked to both those languages fro…

I expect that if I use a search term, Google won't ignore it. I used the word ruby in there because I specifically care about ruby-related search results, not perl ones. When google ignores one of my search terms in the name of giving me more results, it gives me less relevant results.

They had to put a lot of effort into a search system that can ignore words that you're searching for. I'm wondering why that's necessary when I can clearly get better search results when all of my search terms are included.

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

#70

Post by ninkendo »

dminor wrote: post #44
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…

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.

My post wasn't really about technical support, it's about the merits of Google's decision to fuzz your search terms in the name of better results. I'm aware of verbatim search and the fact that I can quote words to make them required for the search results. I'm saying that it's a recent phenomenon for Google to intentionally ignore words in my query in order to include more results. I'm not really sure why anyone at Google would ever think that to be a good idea.
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