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Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

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Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#341

Post by nabakin »

monkpit wrote: post #330
nabakin wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case quotes still work but they aren't as good as they once were

Quotes haven’t worked for about 10 years now. For my job in 2012 I very often had to google obscure part numbers to find documentation. Even if you added quotes to the part number (such as “foo123-x”, google would return results for “foo234-x” or “foo123-y” and bold them as if they had matched. The real part numbers could be 10-20 characters long, so it was more difficult to spot discrepancies. I learned very quickly…

What I mean is that quotes still improve looking up specific strings, but yeah, not as good as they once were and getting progressively worse.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#342

Post by shortformblog »

This title bothers me because he’s clearly going after the wrong target. It’s not that Google is unbearable. It’s that people with money are more likely to invest on ranking high in Google than those who don’t have money.

This would be the case with any commercial service with financial goals, given enough time and the right motivations.

If commercial content is your problem, say it. Leave Google out of it.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#343

Post by corrral »

rg111 wrote: post #214
baxuz wrote: post #77

It's not a Google problem, it's a web problem. Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website. This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content. These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewh…

> It's not a Google problem Oh it is definitelt a Google problem. I was in mood yesterday and I tried Google versus Kagi and You Code. Results of N out of N queries in other search engines were miles better in other search engines than Google. I have now switched completely to code.you.com and Kagi from Google. They are ready.

Kinda OT, but goddamn is it ballsy of Kagi to make their logo a G.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#344

Post by WalterBright »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #321
makecheck wrote: post #138

Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL . Just thrown into the list, as if they have any business being there (oh wait, they do have business: Google’s business). Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value and I can’t believe it has come to this. Imagine if every time you ran…

Unfortunately the fuzzy search thing is in a kind of feedback loop in terms of user expectation. Because of Google users are used to typing the wrong thing and getting the right answer. If I search for "how old is Roger Redford" Google tells me that Robert Redford was born in 1936 (it doesn't even display the "Did you mean...?" correction). And to be fair, in 99% of cases the person probably did mean Robert Redford.…

> the word you want

I was watching a new movie yesterday (The Lost City) with closed captioning on. The character said "synonym". The cc text said "cinnamon".

I see a lot of homonyms in the cc, but that one was the funniest.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#345

Post by WalterBright »

the_snooze wrote: post #294
makecheck wrote: post #138

Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL . Just thrown into the list, as if they have any business being there (oh wait, they do have business: Google’s business). Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value and I can’t believe it has come to this. Imagine if every time you ran…

It's not just search. It's so much user-facing interactivity online. Stop black-box-inserting irrelevant search results. Stop black-box-modifying what I type in the document. Stop black-box-suggesting-as-I-type. Stop black-box-second-guessing what I meant. I'm a perfectly capable human who can communicate my intent, and make corrections on my own if needed. What kind of deranged hubris must these engineers have to bu…

Given that chat texts are used in court as evidence, I wonder what happens to this when the text is not what you typed, but what the AI system "corrected" for you.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#346

Post by kempbellt »

bobsomers wrote: post #300
stickfigure wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be willing to bet substantial sums of money that Google tracks metrics for these alternative results and has concluded that they add value to the user. Maybe not to you, but to most people. Personally, I'm ok with a bit of "oh, this is what I think you meant" rather than a literal interpretation of my query. It's not perfect but neither are my queries.

> I would be willing to bet substantial sums of money that Google tracks metrics for these alternative results and has concluded that they add value to the user. And I would be willing to be substantial sums of money that any metrics Google has with respect to "adding value to the user" are actually more directly track "adding value to the business".

I would imagine that "adding value to the user" translates to "adding value to the business" in a lot of ways for Google.

If, on average, users perceive more value from Google, they use Google more, and Google earns more ad rev. Even if this lowers value substantially for the "relative few".

It's basic utilitarianism, and it sucks to be in the "relative few"...

I too, wish that quotes were respected, and Google would stop giving results for what it thinks I meant to search for like it knows what I meant better than I do - even if that is the case...sometimes.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#347

Post by WalterBright »

stickfigure wrote: post #285
makecheck wrote: post #138

Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL . Just thrown into the list, as if they have any business being there (oh wait, they do have business: Google’s business). Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value and I can’t believe it has come to this. Imagine if every time you ran…

I would be willing to bet substantial sums of money that Google tracks metrics for these alternative results and has concluded that they add value to the user. Maybe not to you, but to most people. Personally, I'm ok with a bit of "oh, this is what I think you meant" rather than a literal interpretation of my query. It's not perfect but neither are my queries.

I'm ok with fuzzy searches, but there should be a switch for verbatim.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#348

Post by freediver »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #291
makecheck wrote: post #138

Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL . Just thrown into the list, as if they have any business being there (oh wait, they do have business: Google’s business). Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value and I can’t believe it has come to this. Imagine if every time you ran…

> Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL There used to be a 'verbatim' mode that would do exactly that. The quotes symbol were also a way to enforce verbatim mode. Sadly this behaviour of "let me assume what you want" is not exclusive of google as I also now experience this on ddg.

As an anecdote, we have implemented a really strict exact match at Kagi (meaning quotes do exactly what they are supposed to do). We did receive some feedback that we should relax it a bit mostly because non-alphanum character matching (some users wanted them ignored) and occasional empty results page (some users were not used to getting an empty result page as Google almost always returns something, even if it is not what they searched for).

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#349

Post by tome »

more_corn wrote: post #284
tome wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi is jaw-droppingly amazing. With Google search quality declining, Bing being on average 95% as good as Google, and DuckDuckGo being 90% as good, I was doubting there was any way that search engines would ever improve. Kagi has removed that doubt completely. I ask for stuff and it finds it. I couldn't believe there could be such a useful product.

Doesn’t DuckDuckGo use bing for the search backend?

Apparently it uses Bing plus some secret sauce although in my experience the results are a bit worse than pure Bing. Having said that I have not performed a rigorous study, this is just my guess from using all these search engines over a prolonged period.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#350

Post by freediver »

colordrops wrote: post #261
baxuz wrote: post #77

It's not a Google problem, it's a web problem. Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website. This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content. These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewh…

I keep seeing this excuse but it doesn't explain why google doesn't downrank obvious bad actors that have been showing up at the top for years, or returning results that don't have the most important word in your search terms, or why they don't offer settings to permanently filter some sites. It's a problem with incentives, not SEO spam.

Most likely because the only reliable on-page indicator for detecting low quality content is the amount of ads/trackers on page which is probably the only thing that they can not directly punish a site for.
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