Yahoo tops Google in US traffic • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#141

Post by AznHisoka » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 4:42 PM UTC

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

pasbesoin wrote: post #15

I "Google" less and less for search results, as they become increasingly crap. They are mostly best for "big name" items; also, the prominence of StackOverflow means that some computer technology queries still work pretty well. These days, I'm fortunate when I know specifically enough what I want that I can jump straight into Wikipedia and hopefully find an adequate page. Whatever you are and aren't doing about it, G…

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

Tip for you guys: Stop pushing "We couldn't find results. Here are results similar to these" whenever I type in a very long-tail semi-obscure query. it makes you guys look bad. Just display all the results you find, even the ones that aren't super relevant.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#142

Post by AznHisoka » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 4:49 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #109

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

What it might come down to is whether making one query worse to make others better is actually a good thing. If they were all acceptable to begin with, it might not be. Are you permitted to share the types of metrics that Google uses to determine whether an algorithm change is producing better results? Is bounce rate the primary metric that is used?

They look at metrics such as whether an user immediately returns to the search results after going to a page, how long they stay at a page (relatively to other results, etc). That's the primary metric, according to a search engineer who told me during an interview.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#143

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 4:52 PM UTC

dmpk2k wrote: post #54

codex wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quote" the search term. That's the replacement for +.

I'm not sure if my memory is playing tricks on my, but I've found quotes unreliable. Google will spit out "close" suggestions that have nothing to do with what I requested, despite using quotes. Google also happily returns results which do not fulfill even the "close" suggestions: e.g. I ask for three words, Google searches for those three words, and returns a bunch of pages that contain only two or one of those word…

For what it's worth, I assure you that putting a "query" "term" in "quotes" is identical to the retired +plus +sign +operator.

I would be very curious, if you set up Verbatim search as your default search engine in your browser, how often you have to "fix" it, and if you ever find it easier to see what Google makes of your non-verbatim query. I'd especially be interested in how often the thing you're searching for doesn't really exist on the web, and so Google is replacing "no results" with "off-topic results."

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#144

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #83

codex wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quote" the search term. That's the replacement for +.

"Quote" does not work these days, it still presents results you with alternatives to the "Quote".

I think the only time that Google changes a word in quotes is if the spelling algorithm is very confident. For example, if you searched for [barack obama "autobiolgraphy"], you are going to get results for "autobiography" with the option to really search for "autobiolgraphy".

Other than that, I'm pretty sure that a word in "quotes" must appear in the result to be retrieved, without any alternatives. If you have a counter-example, I would love to see it! (I work on that code.)

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#145

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 4:57 PM UTC

jimrandomh wrote: post #136

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

No. Your metrics are deceiving you, because your test suite under-weights or fails to include sophisticated searchers and programmers, and fails to include highly-specific queries with only a few results. For technical people, Google search has gotten so much worse it's hard to ignore. Google fails for more than half of programming-related queries, because it splits up multi-word identifiers, and spelling-corrects va…

This is great feedback. Thanks.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#146

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 5:02 PM UTC

cynwoody wrote: post #82

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

The old mode was, you put a + before a required term, and you quoted exact (multi-word) phrases. That worked reasonably well and was easy to understand. A + could apply to a single word or to a single phrase, as could a -. Verbatim was a regression, given it requires you to use the UI instead of typing inline, and it seems to interact with other search options in hard to predict ways.

Putting an "word" in "quotes" is the inline way of exactly matching an individual word. It's conceptually similar to putting a phrase in "quotation marks," so personally I think it makes sense that we have one operator for literal searches.

> A + could apply to a single word or to a single phrase

I don't think a + could apply to a phrase. That was one problem with the + operator; it was not clear to users how it actually worked. In fact, though there were many searches whose results were helped by their use of + (many of whom made by users who are commenting here on HN), there were many searches whose results were largely made worse by their use of +, whether it was inadvertent or overzealously applied.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#147

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #69

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

I would very much like an expandable section below the search text where I could turn very specific portions of the google magic on and off. I also wish you would remove the multitude of sites that scrape content from the original sites and SEO the hell out of it to get to the top of search results. I assume the advertising revenue is too lucrative to do so.

We're working on the scraped sites. Also, advertising revenue has nothing to do with it. We don't even talk about revenue in our search quality meetings, just the utility and speed of our search results page.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#148

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 5:07 PM UTC

eterm wrote: post #81

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

You're obviously not vb6 programmers at Google, it kept changing vb6 to 'visual basic' making trying to fix obscure behaviours in vb6 really hard to do because all it would find are vb .net results after the switch. I had a couple of very unproductive days before working out how to force it to stop changing my search terms.

Guilty as charged. :-)

I could see how vb6/"visual basic" would cause some irrelevant results to come up. It's probably good sometimes, but also really bad sometimes. I've recorded it in our list of motivational examples that we use to try to come up with improvements to our algorithm. Thanks, and sorry for your wasted productivity.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#149

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 5:13 PM UTC

ronaldx wrote: post #89

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

> there were several times where we got you the right result... and you didn't even notice. 1) If I don't notice, then it's not the right result. 2) If I put a + in front of a search term, there's only one reason for that: I explicitly want results containing that word. If you return something not containing that word, then it's not the right result plus I'm going to be annoyed about it .

1) No, I mean, if you search for [nutrition information gm corn] and click on the "right result" for you, you might not even notice that the "right result" didn't have the exact words "nutrition" "information" "gm" but instead had the words "nutritional" "facts" "genetically modified".

2) Do you mean putting a search term in "quotes"? The + operator was retired a while ago. And putting the term in quotes should do what you want, except maybe for high confidence spelling corrections or extremely long tail cases where there are just about no search result to show.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#150

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #69

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

I would very much like an expandable section below the search text where I could turn very specific portions of the google magic on and off. I also wish you would remove the multitude of sites that scrape content from the original sites and SEO the hell out of it to get to the top of search results. I assume the advertising revenue is too lucrative to do so.

Personally I would be a fan of giving users more "knobs" to turn in their search results. For example, we have the toggle switch to include personal results and personalized ranking, vs. showing un-personalized search results. However, it's a complicated product design problem whenever you want to add complexity to something used by a billion people.

Remember that the thing that made Google so popular and iconic originally was the plain search box.