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Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

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Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#191

Post by Jyaif »

greyman wrote: post #172

I don't know if search is deteriorating as a whole, but certain searches seems to be manipulated for political reasons. The famous example is an Image search of "white couple" - really, try it, it is like only 50% correct. But I don't believe the image search itself would be that bad, rather certain queries are given manipulated results.

FWIW I did the same search on Bing and Yandex and got similar results: https://imgur.com/a/Nd9QCH2

Either your theory is wrong, or the other search engines are also manipulating results for political reasons, or they are copying the results from Google.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#192

Post by ghusto »

Gigachad wrote: post #70
klondike_ wrote: post #54

I think that Google is optimizing for the "average user" to the detriment of power users such as the HN crowd. Most people treat Google as an internet oracle and send queries like "how do I do X" while power users will search for keywords. One example of this optimization is the automatic answer boxes that show up for certain questions, which are wrong disturbingly often or don't include important details.

I think this is overall a good thing. Power users have trained their behaviour to work in the way that simple systems can deal with. While average users ask the question exactly how they would ask another human. Google has now reached a level where it works best when you deal with it in a natural and human level. There is nothing actually better about the way we originally used search engines, it was just required at…

I was ridiculed by my Natural Language Processing professor twenty years ago for exactly this.

P: "Pfft. So, what? You think the current state of search is good?! Having to type in keywords instead of just asking a question in normal language?"

Me: "... is this a trick question?"

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#193

Post by ghosty141 »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #123

search for clam antivirus: Google first link: https://alternativeto.net/software/clam-antivirus/ DuckDuckGo first link: http://www.clamav.net/ i don't understand why the search result, first link is alternativeto instead of clamav home page

your history/profile seems to do this. I don't get any alternativeto links or similar on the first page.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#194

Post by Schroedingersat »

zmachinaz wrote: post #159

The article totally misses the point. Yes, for the digital morons (their turks) google may work perfectly fine. However, for people who actually look for real content google gets worse and worse. All the good material gets far lower ranking than the repetitive low quality medium posts with identical and non-existing content.

Far worse than this is it is destroying the quality of content produced by well meaning creators.

Every review (and almost every site now) has to have the word 'best' wedged in 1000 times and text descriptions of what would be far better communicated by graphs or diagrams. The vocabulary and grammar has to he reduced to duck speak (which becomes more verbose, less clear, harder to read, and more ambiguous). There need to be a hundred repetitions of whatever key words are popular. And there needs to be 50MB of javascript and anti-responsive nonsense for what would more legible, more attractive, more accessible, and actually usable on a phone if it were plain HTML with no styling.

Then you need further 20MB js libraries to progressively or dynamically load 100kB images.

It's not just highlighting terrible content, it's actively destroying good content.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#195

Post by nullc »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #23

One theory is that Google has made a substantial change to a neural network based search, and they are still working out the kinks in getting it to work. How could it not be A/B tested such that we wouldn't notice the bad searches? The answer to that I am not sure. I read their research publications, and the NLP research coming out of Google is far beyond any other company. I can only imagine what they aren't publish…

A/B testing with the decision criteria being search ad revenue will prefer lower quality search results ... since you have to search more (and see more ads) to get what you're looking for. :(

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#196

Post by soco »

zmachinaz wrote: post #159

The article totally misses the point. Yes, for the digital morons (their turks) google may work perfectly fine. However, for people who actually look for real content google gets worse and worse. All the good material gets far lower ranking than the repetitive low quality medium posts with identical and non-existing content.

And all those Pinterest hits oh my...

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#198

Post by cookiengineer »

mrjin wrote: post #197

Why only 2022 really? Put all other subtle things aside, myself feel it's getting harder and harder to distinguish Ads and genuine results without reading the contents carefully.

> myself feel it's getting harder and harder to distinguish Ads and genuine results without reading the contents carefully.

But isn't that the goal of google? I mean, it's an advertisement company after all. Despite common assumptions, google is not a search company.

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#199

Post by nullc »

otherotherchris wrote: post #149
kelnos wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four and a half years is quite enough time for search results to get worse that I wouldn't call it "sudden".

I didn't notice a rapid decline until early 2019, when the search results stopped containing the keywords I used. Before then there was a blend of synonyms and actual keyword matches. This was roughly when Google's new AI began "interpreting" the "meaning" of the specific jargon and product serial numbers I was inputting, and then decided what I actually needed was song lyrics.

Your post exactly.

> decided what I actually needed was song lyrics

Or random gossip about media celebs. I'm searching for SCSI cable stuff and getting Kim Kardashian (whoever the #@$%@ that is).

Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022

#200

Post by nullc »

echen wrote: post #62
AlbertCory wrote: post #14

I've been gone from G for 4 1/2 years now. When I was there, the weekly meetings often featured "search quality" measurements that were rigorous in their objectivity (I thought). They bent over backwards to be non-self-deluding. I distinctly remember Udi Manber saying "if the web is slow, it's our fault" (actually, the speech was that everything is "our fault"), meaning, really, "take responsibility for problems and…

Yeah, when I was at Google, the SERP (and caring about users) was a shrine at all levels. Here's an example of one of the weekly Search meetings AlbertCory is talking about: https://search.googleblog.com/2012/03/video-search-quality-m... For example, my first week at Google/YouTube, I was in a New Hire meeting with our VP. Someone asked about profitability, and he responded that Larry said we didn't have to worry abo…

I believe that would have been during the time that google broke the ability to + words (without initially providing another verbatim alternative) in order to use + for google plus somehow.

I can't square that change with the claimed commitment to search engine quality.

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