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

In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

sparktoro.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 412 posts

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#141

Post by SomewhatLikely »

angryasian wrote: post #117
moate wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that time was "a while ago" and they're still running because the US doesn't actually care that much about virtual monopolies.

Monopolies are a barrier to entry. I don't think any of google's products prevent that. As we see in most technology over the last 20 years, the companies at the top can change fast. A company that creates a better search engine, will easily take over search. Next gen of search will be better at providing more relevant / less spam Youtube does have some network effect and high costs but not enough to stop anyone from…

Can you provide examples of better companies replacing the incumbent in a mature market? Most examples I can think of occurred in markets that were a tiny fraction of their mature size. Most of Google's users weren't using search engines when Google was created. Most of facebook's users weren't using social media when Facebook was created. In these cases it's less about converting existing users as it is about capturing new users.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#142

Post by tomxor »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

> Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms

This feels very true... the majority of my searches go like this:

1. Search with all relevant terms with some parts that should be exact combinations in quotes => nothing or BS results

2. Remove words that Google is fixating on without context => no or seemingly unrelated results without search terms at all

3. Reduce specificity to 2 or 3 words, topic and subtopic (trying to locate context only and search the rest myself) => sometimes ends me on sites where I can then just browse for the result i'm after

4. Worst case reduce to single search term to find huge context sites and manually search myself. Sometimes at this point I just give in and manually navigate to other sites where I know I can manually browse and narrow down context myself and then try to find what I'm looking for... it really feels like a curl web scrape and grep would work better than Google at this point (yes I know google "site:", it's doesn't work properly anymore).

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#143

Post by dundarious »

gonehome wrote: post #63
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

I have a cat that is always ravenous for anything edible, even if it's not exactly typical cat fare, e.g., my leftover salad, berries, etc. Trying to search for "can cats eat X" after he manages to get a few sneaky morsels is almost pointless. There are so many spammy sites for every value of X, and I have no idea if it's a sophisticated problem to systematically exclude this type of useless content, but Google's top results are chock-full of sites that all seem to follow the format below, where the question is not answered at all:

Is it safe for cats to eat X?

Cats are mischievous and we love them.

X is not typical cat food. Let's go over some background on X before we answer the question.

Cats are obligate carnivores.

Thanks for reading, make sure to subscribe or buy these products!

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#144

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

I started writing down the search queries for such bad results from different search engines to publish one day a 'Search Engine Wall of Shame'.

But this needs to be public effort to create any meaningful action from search engines.

How many of you would be willing to contribute to such platform by submitting your bad search results?

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#145

Post by tablespoon »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

> Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional.

I thought the main issue here was Google directing searchers to its own services and scraping data from non-Google websites to present on its own pages? It's declining search result quality is certainly an issue, but I don't think this link is about that at all.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#146

Post by throwaway53453 »

ImpressiveWebs wrote: post #119
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

Google doesn’t want people to find alternative sources for news, healthcare, and politics. They now force all the mainstream sources to the top, regardless of whether the search terms entered have any relation to the actual results. And this seems to have carried over to other subjects as well, because I can never find obscure pages any more. This should destroy Google, but for some reason it doesn’t, and it baffles…

Thank the media for slandering the company, accusing it of perpetrating genocides, political strife, Russian election hacking conspiracy, etc... The reason they do this is being scared of liability, not a top-down desire to control.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#147

Post by c7DJTLrn »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

Agreed, I have issues daily with Google:

* shows results despite having zero actual matching results

* ignores parts of the query even if they are surrounded in quotes

* gets completely thrown off by keywords (and, or, etc) and symbols (=, ;, etc)

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#148

Post by reaperducer »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade.

A lot of people say this is because Google is worse at returning the desired search results for various reasons (algos, ads, spam, etc). I've come to suspect it is more deliberate on the part of Google.

I've said it before, so I'll belt out the chant again: "Google doesn't make money from providing the right search results. Google makes money from keeping you searching for the right search results."

This is especially true for the vast majority of people on the internet who do not know there are any (better or worse) alternatives to Google.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#150

Post by Hnrobert42 »

monkeybutton wrote: post #127
gonehome wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

IMO Google Image search has gone down hill significantly too. Getting full pages of pinterest results was bad enough but now on my phone you have to scroll past multiple screens worth of Google Shopping ads or images tagged with the "Product" icon before you see any actual, organic photos of the thing you're looking for.

For my money, yandex.com now has the best search results.

Beware though, yandex allows NSFW by default. You have to enable safe/family search. This is the opposite of Google and Bing, so it could get you in trouble at work. Those crazy Russians.

Post reply on HN