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On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

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Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#121

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

michaelwww wrote: post #120

I've developed the habit of just asking Google questions instead of crafting something to feed how I think the algorithm works. I also don't worry about ranking, just as long as something is in the top 10. Does deluge bittorrent support retina display? The 7th link result for that question has the text "Deluge has updated their program to support the Retina Display" in it's text summary. That's good enough for me.

I think that some of this reaction is just resistance to 'relearning' how to search. Whereas before you developed techniques to make your queries more 'computer like', now you can revert to something more like natural language.

It would still be nice to have an 'advanced' search mode that was more strict, allowed advanced features, and still took advantage of Google's talent and infrastructure.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#122

Post by rsync »

fixermark wrote: post #118
rsync wrote: post #63

Yes, yes, yes. I have been meaning to write this very blog post for years with examples just like this. There is not a single day that goes by that I am not searching for something specific and particular in google and am treated to pages and pages of search results that are missing at least one of the terms, thus rendering the results useless. The worst part is, the strikethrough "missing: search term" identifier do…

Can you give some examples of searches that don't work for you? I'm also a professional and an engineer and generally find a quick Google search to point me in the right direction every time.

Search for:

rsync version freebsd 9.2

First, note that the first four results (for me, anyway) do not contain the string "9.2" at all.

Second, note that google does not give you the "missing: 9.2" notifier on those in the results page.

Later results (for me, 6 and onward) do contain all of the terms. Google decided that search results that did NOT contain all of my terms were more "relevant" than ones that did.

Bonus laughs: changing the search to:

allinsite:rsync version freebsd 9.2

does change things up a bit, but results 1,3,4 and 5 still don't contain the string "9.2".

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#123

Post by [deleted] »

adevine wrote: post #119
hexagonc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how they arrive at it. If they create true AI with lots of spare capacity then maybe Google is threatened, but what seems more likely to me is that true AI is achieved in some hodgepodge system that wasn't well architected to scale. An example of this would be a true AI that came about as a result of embodiment in a robot. Yes, it is true AI but that doesn't mean it knows how to read, let alone read and un…

And, more likely, if a small company does come up with a great AI, they're going to get bought be Google, not compete. Reason being you are still going to need the sheer hardware capacity (a LOT of it) to process so much data. I remember a good article about how YouTube would have likely hit serious trouble had Google not bought them. YouTube was starting to crumble under the exponential growth in load, and Google wa…

[deleted]

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#124

Post by fixermark »

rsync wrote: post #122
fixermark wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of searches that don't work for you? I'm also a professional and an engineer and generally find a quick Google search to point me in the right direction every time.

Search for: rsync version freebsd 9.2 First, note that the first four results (for me, anyway) do not contain the string "9.2" at all. Second, note that google does not give you the "missing: 9.2" notifier on those in the results page. Later results (for me, 6 and onward) do contain all of the terms. Google decided that search results that did NOT contain all of my terms were more "relevant" than ones that did. Bonus…

I see what you mean. Yeah, write that blog post.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#125

Post by soared »

swe wrote: post #81
soared wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in 99% of cases, Google is correct. The pure volume of people mistyping Amazon is good enough reason to autocorrect "Amazone." You know what you want to search for. So tell google what you want, "Amazone." I don't see how you can complain when you have the solution to the problem, don't use it, and are an incredibly niche (<1%) case.

Love to see where you found that 99% figure

Look it up on adwords if you want more specific data, but this chart showsit https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=amazon%2C%20amazone&...

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#126

Post by tamana »

rsync wrote: post #122
fixermark wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of searches that don't work for you? I'm also a professional and an engineer and generally find a quick Google search to point me in the right direction every time.

Search for: rsync version freebsd 9.2 First, note that the first four results (for me, anyway) do not contain the string "9.2" at all. Second, note that google does not give you the "missing: 9.2" notifier on those in the results page. Later results (for me, 6 and onward) do contain all of the terms. Google decided that search results that did NOT contain all of my terms were more "relevant" than ones that did. Bonus…

So, 5 exact matches and 5 related pages is considered poor result quality?

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#127

Post by vonklaus »

solveforall wrote: post #80
vonklaus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11134798 Trying to find time to continue work on something a bit more polished but it is not ready. This is my response in another thread, either ctrl+f my un or "-2" and you will see response to similar query. Idea is "so obviously crazy", mentioning it publicly for several months and begging people to consider it and work on it has been met with down votes or completely ignoring…

Can you explain the image and what it's trying to show? That the number of text links should be more than the number of image links to well known sites? I'm asking because I do something similar on my site, solveforall.com, but to a much lesser degree of course.

I am going to hack on this and see how it works, but first glance looks cool.

The image (really confusingly) illustrates the searchflow model:

Broweser ==> Google

Goolge ==> Results

results ===> Hacker news or another aggregator

aggregator ===> your fav. sub community (because gooigle discovery sucks)

subreddit helps you find links you want

in those links you find information

==============================

that is what a manual crawl feels like, and how many people use the web.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#128

Post by rsync »

tamana wrote: post #126
rsync wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search for: rsync version freebsd 9.2 First, note that the first four results (for me, anyway) do not contain the string "9.2" at all. Second, note that google does not give you the "missing: 9.2" notifier on those in the results page. Later results (for me, 6 and onward) do contain all of the terms. Google decided that search results that did NOT contain all of my terms were more "relevant" than ones that did. Bonus…

So, 5 exact matches and 5 related pages is considered poor result quality?

I have no idea why I would ever want "related pages".

I am not waiting in line with my girlfriends and searching for Britney Spears Songs. Related pages do nothing for me.

They are bad results.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#129

Post by [deleted] »

solveforall wrote: post #80
vonklaus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11134798 Trying to find time to continue work on something a bit more polished but it is not ready. This is my response in another thread, either ctrl+f my un or "-2" and you will see response to similar query. Idea is "so obviously crazy", mentioning it publicly for several months and begging people to consider it and work on it has been met with down votes or completely ignoring…

Can you explain the image and what it's trying to show? That the number of text links should be more than the number of image links to well known sites? I'm asking because I do something similar on my site, solveforall.com, but to a much lesser degree of course.

[deleted]

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#130

Post by AlexTes »

I disagree with you. In the query "deluge retina", "deluge" is definitely the more important bit. After all you're looking for deluge and are hoping to find it with support for retina. Otherwise you would've written something like "torrent client retina".

Now this is where a bit of guess work comes in but I'd say Google correctly deduces there is no such thing. Even the best result for both terms just talks about some app not supporting retina, and from the looks of it does help with what other client you might want to use if switching to OSX when you were previously a deluge user on Linux (possibly when dealing with retina). But that's not deluge. That's a useless result considering your primary intent was finding deluge. So Google chooses to give you results that might get you what you want over results that (correctly) only disappoint explaining there is no such thing. So in the first three results Google correctly decides that, to get you a relevant result at all it needs to omit the "retina" to get you results that might possibly get you what you want - deluge despite not having retina support - over just giving you the results that are relevant but definitely won't get you what you want. Your query had no results that would get you what you wanted so Google tried to alter the query and see if it could get you something useful anyway.

I think Google trying to give you results that might be hits instead of giving you disappointment in the first place is very sensible behavior.

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