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Google’s top search result is Google

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Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#271

Post by jsjohnst »

andrepd wrote: post #107
hrktb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. I think the point is that some are convenient, others aren’t, but they all have prominent positioning. Google is not the best flight search service, yet it’s on top. As you say, it wouldn’t matter if Google was the best at everything all the time. The issue is that of course it isn’t, and will never be.

Out of curiosity which flight search is better than flights.google?

This is arguably significantly better (if you know how to use it that is) than flights.google, but Google bought them a few years ago:

https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#272

Post by jdashg »

edoceo wrote: post #142
athenot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, increasingly I'm catching it returning wrong answers. A few days I was looking up the approximate weight of a cup of flour to do a recipe conversion, and the "helpful answer" was pulled from some random site and was about 15% off-base compared to the median from a handful of other sites, including from flour companies. I've observed similar bad results when looking up information about medications… I fe…

Well, one cup (volume) of flour can vary pretty widely in weight (108-138g in my notebook). Bleached, whole, Rye, AP, etc and even same type across brands. A variance of 15% is not too odd from my baking experience.

Yeah that's flour's perennial problem, and 15% is enough to really throw a bake off. Avoid any baking recipe that doesn't have a nice round number for grams of flour, and even then be suspicious. (baker's percents are always welcome though!)

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#274

Post by vbezhenar »

chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

Deepl works better than translate. Yandex and 2Gis works better than Google maps for my region. Google search is superb, can't really argue with that.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#275

Post by slmjkdbtl »

Good read! Also impressed by how the article page is designed/engineered. I wonder for a site like this how much of the content is hard coded and how much is made by tools / frameworks (the interactive scrolling box really looks like a hard-coded component for this article specifically)

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#276

Post by the_other »

dmoy wrote: post #246
xapata wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care about speed, mobile optimization, and malware. Generalizing from my observation of myself, I expect others do as well.

And spam. Don't forget that with just base pagerank, all you'd get today is spam.

With the first page of results being mostly Google or paid ads, spam is roughly what we have today, too.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#277

Post by NoodleIncident »

umaar wrote: post #92

Generally, I like the 'rich snippets' feature, but I think they've gotten worse. For example here's a reddit post I made from 6 years ago showcasing a search for 'mac shortcut screenshot' https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1ou4i0/a_search_for... It's extremely clear, and results in minimal cognitive effort in parsing the result. Here's the result now: https://i.imgur.com/A726Dhw.png There's so much more cruft:…

I can think of two reasons that they might think the new version is better:

- The new snippet might be more useful to a majority of the people searching. It shows you the keys on the keyboard, it explains how to input it instead of relying on knowing the shortened notation, and it tells you where the screenshot will go. Since I don't use a mac myself, I feel like I've learned more from the latter than from the former.

- As you can see in the other reply to this comment, the new info box can pull info from any page with a numbered list of instructions. I don't know how the earlier info was extracted, but if you're going to pull out instructions like this for more queries about more complicated tasks, then it's better to be consistent, even if it could be expressed in a single bullet point.

I also find it funny that the source link is far more prominent in the newer rich snippet, even though a lot of people in this thread are saying they've made it harder to find.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#278

Post by hu3 »

speedgoose wrote: post #253
drusepth wrote: post #230

Makes sense to me. Google Flights is amazing, Google Stocks is better than my broker (and way easier/faster), Translate doesn't even have a decent competitor, and Restaurants isn't perfect but just makes it easier to get to Google Maps. As a consumer, this is great. As a small business owner, I'm not very concerned about Google usurping pieces of my site into a widget. If the entirety of a business/site can be replac…

Deepl is better than Google translate for the few languages it supports.

That might be true but bear in mind that Deepl supports 11 languages while Google Translate supports 108.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#280

Post by pb7 »

boogies wrote: post #165
gfxgirl wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's flight service is not a booking service. It's flight search. It just redirects you to the airline in question. Personally I love it. It's so much faster than all the competitors. Further it not covered in ads. I just went to SkyScanner and there's an ad for fried chicken. Seriously WTF!

Edited to remove “booking”. But as "“a partnership with Google is required” to appear in Google Flights", (and it hides the best flights, likely because of lack of such a “partnership”), I would consider the entire service an infomercial-like advertisement.

Google Flights' list of booking options is much more reliable and trustworthy than the sketchy OTAs that offer slightly discounted flights and then conveniently disappear with your money if you ever need customer support, or worse, levy bullshit fees to do things that would otherwise be free if you booked through official channels.

If you want to screw yourself over for $20 savings, use another flight search engine. I'm quite happy with Google Flights myself and don't need it ruined.

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