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In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

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Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#281

Post by Shared404 »

rurp wrote: post #267
Shared404 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always happy to help! I try to "collect" search engines, so I'm always interested in finding more/sharing the ones I've found.

One I just recently discovered is symbolhound.com. It's nice because it lets you search for characters that google absolutely refuses to treat as search terms. I needed to debug some makefiles and bash scripts the other day (not my strong suit!) and it helped me understand some of the weird syntax I was seeing. As others have mentioned, Google no longer respecting literal search terms has made it much worse for many…

Ooh thanks! I'll throw that on the list!

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#282

Post by visarga »

dougb5 wrote: post #177
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

It's infuriating when Google prefers the documents that ignore some of my keywords even when there are plainly pages that include them all. I get the sense that there's an over-weighting of broad semantic match, to the detriment of lexical match, in their current ML model, whatever form it is now. It's harming quality for a segment of technical users like ourselves but might be "better" in the aggregate over all user…

They are missing the mark on excellence. Apparently having thousands of PhD's and product managers does not make for a better search experience.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#284

Post by neolog »

thephyber wrote: post #249
mnd999 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to see how this isn’t anticompetitive. Using their market power in search to show their own ads but prevent anyone navigating to view any others seems like something that should end up in court.

Google has always respected robots.txt and has well documented how to restrict crawling. I don’t see it as anticompetitive so much as copyright violations. The fact that Google makes advert revenue using this strategy just contributes to damages. Anticompetitive would likely require Alphabet (and potentially other companies) from preventing users from accessing the original web page (which might be possible but more…

IIRC you can't copyright facts

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#285

Post by visarga »

cmckn wrote: post #248
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

I don't think the "problem" here is bad search results -- I think the lack of clicks is thanks to search results becoming much richer. The "card" style answers that show up more and more often mean I don't have to actually visit the site where the information originated (which publishers despise, for good reason). Take a common search I made last year as an example, "covid king county" -- I almost never ended up visi…

It sucks at searching for exact things, it would often subtly by essentially change the meaning of the search. Like confusing searches for the desired "weight of scooter" with the max "weight of rider" on the scooter. What a shame, it was even a shopping related search, where the money are. They could have led me to a sale.

When people are trying variations on a search it's a clear sign of failure. They should do something about it, like use a verbose natural language interface or select a different strategy for ranking or enable the exact in-depth mode. Apparently the NLP community can do natural language Q&A in papers, but Google can't do it in search.

Other pain points: searching in depth all results on a query, not just the top skim and remembering context between searches.

And Google Assistant itself is too poorly integrated and dumb. Where's the GPT-3 like language skill? So many TPUs what are they doing all day long? They have more text and images than any other entity on the internet, Google bot has been sucking it up for so long (not to mention links, keywords and clicks). It should show in the quality of their AI. It's a shame to have OpenAI steal their thunder like this.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#286

Post by mjrpes »

typon wrote: post #199
londons_explore wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new UI is great! It keeps the programmers occupied so they stop messing with the old UI that I actually want to use.

Till one day they pull the old UI and theres nothing you can do about it

That might begin the next major exodus. Digg -> Reddit -> ???

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#287

Post by hntrader »

londons_explore wrote: post #184
Spivak wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This in no way absolves their god awful mobile experience but if you're logged into Reddit with the new UI turned off or use the Old Reddit Redirect add-on it's basically as if nothing on Reddit changed since 2011.

The new UI is great! It keeps the programmers occupied so they stop messing with the old UI that I actually want to use.

This was one of the few UI changes that I never got accustomed to over time. It's still just as bad, irritating and ugly as the first day I used it.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#288

Post by cambalache »

90% of my Google queries is "Search terms + Reddit".Usually I end up with better quality info. Reddit is missing a great opportunity there, especially because its search engine sucks (They should use algolia or something). If they were more visionary they could use their internal search as a starting point for a generic web searcher.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#289

Post by dougb5 »

cmckn wrote: post #248
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

I don't think the "problem" here is bad search results -- I think the lack of clicks is thanks to search results becoming much richer. The "card" style answers that show up more and more often mean I don't have to actually visit the site where the information originated (which publishers despise, for good reason). Take a common search I made last year as an example, "covid king county" -- I almost never ended up visi…

It can be simultaneously true that Google's gotten better at displaying results pages that fully satisfy the user without the need for a click, and worse at other kinds of queries. The latter case -- searches which I have to rephrase, or that cause me to give up on the search entirely -- adds to the total number of searches that do not lead to clicks.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#290

Post by zuhayeer »

What's disappointing about this is how inaccurate some of the information is. For example, we even go the extra step of adding the OccupationSchema meta tag on Levels.fyi for salary data to be shown on queries. However, Google only uses the base salary component and not the total key, which highly misleads people into taking what's shown as 'per year' as the total compensation, especially since there isn't even a clarification for it on the salary cards.

Still think it does make for a better user experience overall, just wish they'd add these details to some of these Search schemas they themselves adopted for the purpose of getting more pinpointed info.

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