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Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#31

Post by ceejayoz »

spurgu wrote: post #11
danielfoster wrote: post #4

I’ve been pretty frustrated with Google lately. Maybe it’s me, but they seem to keep skewing their algorithm to ignore precise queries and always show broad matches. For example I recently searched “US ambassador Germany” on Google News and the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings. Google completely ignored “Germany.” Similar things happen to me all the time on Google Search. Perhap…

It's not just you. I find myself increasingly encapsulating words in my queries with quotes because Google outright ignores relevant words in my searches. In some cases it has even lead to queries looking like this: "us" "ambassador" "germany"

I wind up having to add "wiki" to about 25% of queries.

Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#32

Post by thedevil »

bytematic wrote: post #14

This is the full Quality Raters Guidelines that physical people comb through a website with. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...

Out of curiosity, I looked for their policies on misinformation.

I could see some potential risks here but it still seems reasonable to me:

> Demonstrably inaccurate content

> YMYL content that contradicts well-established expert consensus

> Debunked or unsubstantiated conspiracy theories

This part, I imagine, is a bit more controversial:

> pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive users, should receive the Lowest rating.

Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#33

Post by mintplant »

goatinaboat wrote: post #21
danielfoster wrote: post #4

I’ve been pretty frustrated with Google lately. Maybe it’s me, but they seem to keep skewing their algorithm to ignore precise queries and always show broad matches. For example I recently searched “US ambassador Germany” on Google News and the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings. Google completely ignored “Germany.” Similar things happen to me all the time on Google Search. Perhap…

the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings Given what we know about the political leanings of Google it is very hard to see that as anything other than an attempt to direct the narrative. Even if it isn’t, it’s still unclear how an algorithm would make that jump from those keywords. A completely different country, for example.

It's completely clear. "Germany" gets dropped as there are overwhelmingly more recent stories about the "US ambassador" testifying at the impeachment hearings.

Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#34

Post by frandroid »

machbio wrote: post #7
danielfoster wrote: post #4

I’ve been pretty frustrated with Google lately. Maybe it’s me, but they seem to keep skewing their algorithm to ignore precise queries and always show broad matches. For example I recently searched “US ambassador Germany” on Google News and the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings. Google completely ignored “Germany.” Similar things happen to me all the time on Google Search. Perhap…

So much this - you have to go from least popular to most popular terms to get accurate results - there is a weightage penalty of how further the word is from the start of the query. if you search "Javascript issues Rshiny" (this is just an example not the actual query) - you only get javascript results for 4 to 5 pages of results.. when you reverse it to "Rshiny Javascript issues" - the results are better

This is really useful advice, thank you.

Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#35

Post by cinnamonheart »

spurgu wrote: post #11
danielfoster wrote: post #4

I’ve been pretty frustrated with Google lately. Maybe it’s me, but they seem to keep skewing their algorithm to ignore precise queries and always show broad matches. For example I recently searched “US ambassador Germany” on Google News and the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings. Google completely ignored “Germany.” Similar things happen to me all the time on Google Search. Perhap…

It's not just you. I find myself increasingly encapsulating words in my queries with quotes because Google outright ignores relevant words in my searches. In some cases it has even lead to queries looking like this: "us" "ambassador" "germany"

I do this sometimes, and it still ignores the quoted words in favour of giving me whatever results they want. I'm not sure when it was changed to no longer require quoted words in the results, but I usually just give up on the search at that point.

Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#36

Post by spurgu »

zerocrates wrote: post #20
spurgu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just you. I find myself increasingly encapsulating words in my queries with quotes because Google outright ignores relevant words in my searches. In some cases it has even lead to queries looking like this: "us" "ambassador" "germany"

It frequently notifies you that it's ignoring a term in your search to give you a particular result: you see those "Doesn't contain: X" messages associated with a "must contain: X" link to override it... which I think just does the query over again but with that term in quotes.

Yeah but what I meant was that this is becoming increasingly frequent. I mean you would think that Google would try to include pages matching your full query in the top results and then when you keep moving to subpages it could give some less related hits as well. Now I often see these in the top 3 results.

Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#39

Post by justinmchase »

danielfoster wrote: post #4

I’ve been pretty frustrated with Google lately. Maybe it’s me, but they seem to keep skewing their algorithm to ignore precise queries and always show broad matches. For example I recently searched “US ambassador Germany” on Google News and the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings. Google completely ignored “Germany.” Similar things happen to me all the time on Google Search. Perhap…

Just contrast the results with a different engine and you decide who's fault the poor results are:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=US+ambassador+Germany&t=hk&ia=web

Them training you to have low expectations isn't the right way I don't think.

Re: Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds

#40

Post by jonny_eh »

justinmchase wrote: post #39
danielfoster wrote: post #4

I’ve been pretty frustrated with Google lately. Maybe it’s me, but they seem to keep skewing their algorithm to ignore precise queries and always show broad matches. For example I recently searched “US ambassador Germany” on Google News and the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings. Google completely ignored “Germany.” Similar things happen to me all the time on Google Search. Perhap…

Just contrast the results with a different engine and you decide who's fault the poor results are: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=US+ambassador+Germany&t=hk&ia=web Them training you to have low expectations isn't the right way I don't think.

You're comparing a web search to a news search. If you do the same search on google.com (not news!), you get good results. Including a picture of the US ambassador to Germany.

https://www.google.com/?q=US+Ambassador+Germany

And when you search DDG in their news section, most of the results are about the impeachment hearing, just like Google.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=US+ambassador+Germany&t=hk&iar=new...

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