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Google Memory Loss

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Re: Google Memory Loss

#201

Post by derefr »

gh02t wrote: post #186
derefr wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know; I'm pretty happy that I don't have to type apostrophes any more. I can just go on typing words like "ill" and "wed" and it'll figure out after a few more words that those should be "I'll" and "we'd".

What the parent comment is talking about is something more extreme and I've noticed it too. It sometimes changes prior words that are valid after you have moved on to the next word. It's not correcting the word you just typed, it's correcting a previous word without any sort of feedback like you get for normal corrections- it's going backwards and changing earlier words, and then you try and fix it but the exact same…

No, that's what I was talking about too—it needs the context of the (part of speech of) the next word to figure out in the cases I mentioned whether I actually intended the (correctly-spelled) word "wed" or the (correctly-spelled) word "we'd". It doesn't change it until after you hit space to commit the word that comes after the "wed" input.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#202

Post by gh02t »

derefr wrote: post #201
gh02t wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the parent comment is talking about is something more extreme and I've noticed it too. It sometimes changes prior words that are valid after you have moved on to the next word. It's not correcting the word you just typed, it's correcting a previous word without any sort of feedback like you get for normal corrections- it's going backwards and changing earlier words, and then you try and fix it but the exact same…

No, that's what I was talking about too—it needs the context of the (part of speech of) the next word to figure out in the cases I mentioned whether I actually intended the (correctly-spelled) word "wed" or the (correctly-spelled) word "we'd". It doesn't change it until after you hit space to commit the word that comes after the "wed" input.

Ah, ok. I'm pretty sure I've had it happen with more than just contractions though, like with common phrases. The real problem is that it's really hard to undo the correction. I need to start keeping better track of it so I can file a bug report... it makes it really difficult to type certain combinations of words.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#203

Post by epistasis »

colordrops wrote: post #130
snowwrestler wrote: post #117

I wouldn't be surprised if this issue is as mysterious to Google staff as it is to you. Google Search no longer runs a clearly defined algorithm to find search results. It is a collection of AI systems that are trained continuously on a variety of data. There is probably no human alive who fully understands how Google makes decisions about which results to return and how to rank them. They just understand how to prov…

That's unfortunate, because their simpler system worked better.

We will see more frequently and in more areas since AI has become so hot in MBA buzzword bingo. It's fashionable, so businesses want, or even need, to say "yes we use AI."

Even Google falls into the trap that a worse solution with more fashionable tech gets deployed.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#204

Post by epistasis »

jsnell wrote: post #106
lolc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first sentence is just common sense, and no particular proof is needed. How is this common sense? > The problem is that we don't know how Tim selected these two particular pages as examples. Yes we do know. He was using Google to find his own old stuff over the years. Some content he was referring regularly disappeared from Google's results. These pages had previously been included in the results. > Another rea…

> How is this common sense? Because it's in practice impossible to index every page. Index selection has always been a core quality feature in search engines. (Both re: which pages get included, and re: which pages get included in which layer of index in multi-layered index schemes). > Yes we do know. He was using Google to find his own old stuff over the years. Some content he was referring regularly disappeared fro…

People used to say that Google would always be the best search index because it had the biggest index, and nobody could match Google there. Being more selective about what you include seems like a big change from past practice, or at least past narrative.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#205

Post by toomuchtodo »

tobinfricke wrote: post #32

I just noticed this also, earlier today. I have a blog entry titled "Highest airports in California" that I attempted to find using Google. Even with the double quotes, and restricting the search to the correct site, it doesn't seem to come up in search results. The site's robots.txt seems permissive enough. What's up? link: https://nibot.livejournal.com/1075122.html

I’m surprised this doesn’t exist as a Wikipedia page.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#206

Post by ezekg »

ericmcer wrote: post #191
userbinator wrote: post #93

I've noticed this many times too, particularly recently, and I call it "Google Alzheimer's" --- what was once a very powerful search engine that could give you thousands (yes, I've tried exhausting its result pages many times, and used to have much success finding the perfect site many dozens of pages deep in the results) of pages containing nothing but the exact words and phrase you search for has seemingly degraded…

I think part of this has to do with googles actual customer base: Adwords users. The goal of Adwords is to have every single search be worth the maximum possible value in an advertising sense. So if one person a month searches for "Office desk drawer repairman Concord California" they do not want to service that very detailed long tail search, that would minimize value for themselves and maximize it for the advertise…

You know, that actually makes a lot of sense. Recently, I attempted to bid on some long-tail keywords in AdWords for some targeted ads, but unfortunately they don’t have the “search volume” to qualify.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#207

Post by mc32 »

userbinator wrote: post #144
mc32 wrote: post #141

I hadn't used Bing because Google whenever I would compare the results, it was no match, specially in long-tail results. This article has made me reconsider my assumption. Usually GOOG had best results for technical queries --but fresh results for those tend to be the better results (things go out of date pretty quick because of quicker release cycles) However, on occasion it has been difficult to find very specific…

how many people really make go down to page 20 of the SERP? I'm sure it's a very miniscule number. Unfortunately those people are the ones who are searching the hardest for the most difficult-to-find things, and thus need the services of a search engine the most. It's unfortunate because, for every one of those, there's probably millions of others who just want to search "facebook" and click the first link; a site th…

What's most disappointing is when Google tries to pull fresh content over "stale" content when you know that you exactly want the "stale" content.

This is a contrived example, but say you want to look something up regarding what someone said about drug overdoses back in the 80s. Google would try to insist on brining up information about the most recent overdose studies for example, because people are currently discussing that more, so to Google, obviously I should also be looking the fresher content, so the end result is I get less relevant to virtually irrelevant results.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#208

Post by cromwellian »

dannyw wrote: post #179
derefr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the Google of 10-years-ago on the Internet of 10-years-ago, or using the Google of 10-years-ago on the Internet of today? Because I imagine doing the latter would just result in an endless wasteland of SEO-optimized content leadgen pages.

The good thing is SEO optimized content is relatively trivial to distinguish from the snippet, and other search engines like DuckDuckGo feel far more reliable and consistent without being overrun by SEO junk. You do have a point however.

Not really, not for most people, especially for farm sites like eHow. If you ask how to make a tequila, you'd get an SEO-optimized eHow site instead of say, an authoritative page of the world's top tequila expert.

If DDG was so good, people wouldn't need to use !g for tail queries so much. Too much anecdotal claims every time these issues come up and no objective quality evaluation.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#209

Post by cromwellian »

fixermark wrote: post #136
symmitchry wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it incredible that google can profit from Gmail. (Actually I find it incredible that Google can profit at all.)

Advertising is an incredibly profitable industry.

Gmail doesn't show ads anymore.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#210

Post by mjmahone17 »

fixermark wrote: post #174
sincerely wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this phenomenon has become a lot more important in the last few decades...I think it was fully possible for one person to understand how a car worked, how household appliances worked, etc, until quite recently

Probably depends on how you slice the question / define "fully understand." "How it works" in terms of being able to tell yourself a story that makes sense? Sure. Car burns gas, gas makes engine go, engine turns wheels. But what about the details you'd need to actually make a car (which include but are not limited to thermodynamics and metallurgy)? Probably not.

One difference is that there are parts of the system that, most likely, not a single person understands nor, even with weeks of effort, could understand. At least with cars, you can be reasonably sure somebody understands or can reverse engineer any specific component. With certain software that is a lot less possible.

It would be like if our society couldn’t fully function without Roman concrete, but no one knew how to make it anymore. Which is sort of what happened during medieval times: people continued to use Roman roads and Roman bridges. But if anything degraded, there was no hope of repairing it.

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