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Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

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Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#71

Post by jakejarvis »

vasco wrote: post #45
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"if there are not many good results, maybe I'm not asking the right questions" I used to think this way too, but I've come to realize that Google has turned from a search engine that returns results based on my input to an answer engine that actively tries to reframe whatever I enter into some other more generic query - usually with the intent of selling me something or returning SEO spam. I've also found that the o…

Nowadays you should google using what in 2005 would be considered "the wrong way to search". Back then it was all about keywords, quotes and so on. For example if you wanted to know if dogs could eat apples you'd search: > dog apple dangerous Today you should search: > can dogs eat apples And you get way better results with the second form. I've noticed that people who are stuck thinking that the right way to google…

I've noticed the same, and it's an incredibly hard habit to break!

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#72

Post by drpixie »

blahyawnblah wrote: post #34

Quotes around words have basically stopped working on Google. Which makes all three of those searches even more difficult.

And google hasn't handled complex queries for quite a while. A long time ago, you could get sensible answers to boolean queries - not so much now. A useful search engine would understand meaning, rather than just an index lookup.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#73

Post by savanaly »

vasco wrote: post #45
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"if there are not many good results, maybe I'm not asking the right questions" I used to think this way too, but I've come to realize that Google has turned from a search engine that returns results based on my input to an answer engine that actively tries to reframe whatever I enter into some other more generic query - usually with the intent of selling me something or returning SEO spam. I've also found that the o…

Nowadays you should google using what in 2005 would be considered "the wrong way to search". Back then it was all about keywords, quotes and so on. For example if you wanted to know if dogs could eat apples you'd search: > dog apple dangerous Today you should search: > can dogs eat apples And you get way better results with the second form. I've noticed that people who are stuck thinking that the right way to google…

I'm in the awkward middle area I think where I'm almost a digital native, and what you said maps perfectly to my experience. In middle school and high school I got pretty good at the first type of search you mentioned. I was young enough that I was almost learning how to "speak" google and it came easily, I was fluent. Throughout the end of high school and into college I had more and more issues finding what I wanted and one day after I had failed to search several times I thought to myself "Fuck it. I'm just going to type in exactly what I want in plain English, as if I was a moron, and see what happens." And it worked, and that day a lightbulb went off in my head.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#74

Post by stingraycharles »

vasco wrote: post #45
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"if there are not many good results, maybe I'm not asking the right questions" I used to think this way too, but I've come to realize that Google has turned from a search engine that returns results based on my input to an answer engine that actively tries to reframe whatever I enter into some other more generic query - usually with the intent of selling me something or returning SEO spam. I've also found that the o…

Nowadays you should google using what in 2005 would be considered "the wrong way to search". Back then it was all about keywords, quotes and so on. For example if you wanted to know if dogs could eat apples you'd search: > dog apple dangerous Today you should search: > can dogs eat apples And you get way better results with the second form. I've noticed that people who are stuck thinking that the right way to google…

I’d argue that it’s not a “better way”, but rather a regression: I assume Google genuinely wants to understand my query, and I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t still be obvious to Google what kind of results it should return.

Otherwise, it there truly is a “right way of asking Google questions”, why doesn’t Google release and promote a guide about it so people can be more successful in their search?

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#75

Post by cryptoz »

jsnell wrote: post #70
cryptoz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I googled a phone number recently. It was the first result, got my answer. The rest of the results were websites for physical locations I had been recently, including a hospital, none of which had any relationship to the phone number. Google is _not_ a good guideline for asking the right questions. It is trying to make as much money as possible and it will scramble anything it can think of to do that. Don't use that…

1. Show visited locations in search results 2. ??? 3. Make as much money as possible

> 2. ???

oh Haha, funny old meme. Step 2 though is very clearly to show more ads and more content, to show more 'full results pages', etc, rather than just show me the 1 thing I needed and be on my way.

I should include that Google said next to each result ('"555-555-555" is not on this page') and then show the page. Totally knows that the results are unrelated to my query, but shows them anyway. Why?

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#76

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

vasco wrote: post #45
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"if there are not many good results, maybe I'm not asking the right questions" I used to think this way too, but I've come to realize that Google has turned from a search engine that returns results based on my input to an answer engine that actively tries to reframe whatever I enter into some other more generic query - usually with the intent of selling me something or returning SEO spam. I've also found that the o…

Nowadays you should google using what in 2005 would be considered "the wrong way to search". Back then it was all about keywords, quotes and so on. For example if you wanted to know if dogs could eat apples you'd search: > dog apple dangerous Today you should search: > can dogs eat apples And you get way better results with the second form. I've noticed that people who are stuck thinking that the right way to google…

If “you’re doing it wrong” didn’t fly with Apple. It doesn’t fly with Google.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#77

Post by cerved »

aendruk wrote: post #43

> I already know what an Exception is, so I don't want to scroll halfway down the page to find what I'm looking for. I can’t relate to this. That example, of the first result being the canonical documentation on the subject, is a search engine working exactly the way I want.

I thought the same thing but in the past I've also found the official python documentation to be somewhat verbose. Maybe these days I'd appreciate it more.

I always found the MDN documentation striking a better balance of being in-depth but not an essay.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#78

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

dekhn wrote: post #20
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it's interesting to note that two presumably human commenters in this thread got that wrong. Maybe the Google results are more human than we would have guessed.

it's more showing that the search engine isn't much better than bag-of-words model, and doesn't seem to "know" enough logic/reasoning to parse a sentence and determine that it's false because it says mars instead of the moon. BTW, a big reason for this is the search quality folks at Google left the building and got replaced with growth marketers.

This narrative doesn't really ring true to me. In any case, if you're saying that this result indicates that the system is no better than a bag of words model, doesn't that indicate that humans are equally no better, considering the errors made by the two commenters in this thread?

To me it just seems like a query that is likely to trip any imperfect entity up, since a "when" question usually implies that the event in question is known to have happened.

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#79

Post by [deleted] »

DancesWTurtles wrote: post #53
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #11

An interesting observation is that over the years, I've sort of found that if there are not many good results, maybe I'm not asking the right questions, or I'm not thinking about the problem the right way. For example, you come up with some weird programming idea to solve a problem and no results are found -- I'm almost always headed down the wrong path. This has been proved to me over and over again as sort of a can…

> For example, you come up with some (...) idea (...) and no results are found -- I'm almost always headed down the wrong path. And by that you mean, Google is telling you how to think, and that you should think in some way and not in some other way. I'm quite sure I am not comfortable with that.

[deleted]

Re: Three areas where Google Search lags behind competitors: code, cooking, travel

#80

Post by simsla »

One Google feature that I miss terribly is hard filtering.

Used to be if you included "term" or -"term" you'd only get results that did/n't include those terms. But it seems Google has gone all in on the "I don't think you really meant that" approach [], and the hard filters have become suggestions at best.

--

[] Ok, I know it's probably because they're switching more and more to semantic search and ML, but they could retain the hard filters on top.

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