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For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

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Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#231

Post by tomatofrank »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #219
tomatofrank wrote: post #201

Last night I watched a YouTube video that had a song in the background that I hadn't heard but really liked. I pulled up Shazam but it didn't recognize the song, so I took to Google. I entered the lyric and added the search terms "lyrics" and "r&b" at the end. Google returned 4 YouTube videos to songs that didn't contain the lyric, a link to a Boyz II Men song on Genius that didn't contain the lyric (good job Google,…

I have the opposite experience most of the time. I’ve been trying to use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine but I end up clicking my Google bookmark a lot of the time because the DDG results are so low quality. I have no doubt there are edge cases where Bing/DDG outperform Google, but most of the time I have better luck with Google.

Yeah, Google is still my default browser, though I haven't used other engines enough to develop a strong opinion here.

I'll add that I could have been more clever with my query. For instance, if I surround the lyric in quotes, Google returns the right result first.

Original query: like you didn't care I don't know why lyrics r&b

Improved query: "like you didn't care I don't know why" lyrics r&b

At the end of the day, I'm not frustrated with Google. I use it every day and it saves me lots of time. It just amuses me that in some cases, other engines that probably use simpler search algorithms are objectively better. And in this case, I think it's fair to expect Google to produce the right result on page 1.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#232

Post by nkurz »

tomatofrank wrote: post #211
gundmc wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the lyric?

"like you didn't care I don't know why lyrics r&b" was my query

It would be nice if this worked, but in Google's defense, this is an odd combination of an exact search phrase of common words and then a couple categorical terms that don't have to actually appear on the page. If you help it by searching for just the quoted phrase you want without the additional terms it puts the result you want both as the top result and in a pullout at the top of the page: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22like+you+didn%27t+care+I+...

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#233

Post by sbierwagen »

tomatofrank wrote: post #201

Last night I watched a YouTube video that had a song in the background that I hadn't heard but really liked. I pulled up Shazam but it didn't recognize the song, so I took to Google. I entered the lyric and added the search terms "lyrics" and "r&b" at the end. Google returned 4 YouTube videos to songs that didn't contain the lyric, a link to a Boyz II Men song on Genius that didn't contain the lyric (good job Google,…

The same thing happened to me! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26544730

Google results for lyrics used to be filled with hundreds of scummy SEOed sites that stole content from each other. I wonder if some SEO-blocking algo change has had the effect of blocking all song lyrics from google results.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#234

Post by nitrogen »

nkurz wrote: post #232
tomatofrank wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"like you didn't care I don't know why lyrics r&b" was my query

It would be nice if this worked, but in Google's defense, this is an odd combination of an exact search phrase of common words and then a couple categorical terms that don't have to actually appear on the page. If you help it by searching for just the quoted phrase you want without the additional terms it puts the result you want both as the top result and in a pullout at the top of the page: https://www.google.com/s…

A simple keyword search wouldn't get so confused.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#235

Post by heavyset_go »

tomatofrank wrote: post #201

Last night I watched a YouTube video that had a song in the background that I hadn't heard but really liked. I pulled up Shazam but it didn't recognize the song, so I took to Google. I entered the lyric and added the search terms "lyrics" and "r&b" at the end. Google returned 4 YouTube videos to songs that didn't contain the lyric, a link to a Boyz II Men song on Genius that didn't contain the lyric (good job Google,…

I'm still bitter that they've deprioritized results from SongMeanings.net in favor of garbage like Genius. The former is one of the only sources for lyrics from smaller acts, especially from the 90's to early 2010's. Since it's from the pre-Web 2.0 era, it's disappeared from Google's search results.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#236

Post by tomatofrank »

nkurz wrote: post #232
tomatofrank wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"like you didn't care I don't know why lyrics r&b" was my query

It would be nice if this worked, but in Google's defense, this is an odd combination of an exact search phrase of common words and then a couple categorical terms that don't have to actually appear on the page. If you help it by searching for just the quoted phrase you want without the additional terms it puts the result you want both as the top result and in a pullout at the top of the page: https://www.google.com/s…

Haha yeah, I was wondering when someone would suggest this. Last night, after I got the result back immediately from DuckDuckGo and Bing, I returned to Google and added quotes around the lyric itself, and it returned the right result immediately.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#239

Post by tomatofrank »

heavyset_go wrote: post #237
tomatofrank wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"like you didn't care I don't know why lyrics r&b" was my query

Was it Save Your Tears by The Weeknd?

Yup! The version I was looking for was a slowed & reverb version that I later found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkXCAKgqD3M
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