Yahoo tops Google in US traffic • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#81

Post by eterm » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 7:44 AM UTC

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

pasbesoin wrote: post #15

I "Google" less and less for search results, as they become increasingly crap. They are mostly best for "big name" items; also, the prominence of StackOverflow means that some computer technology queries still work pretty well. These days, I'm fortunate when I know specifically enough what I want that I can jump straight into Wikipedia and hopefully find an adequate page. Whatever you are and aren't doing about it, G…

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

You're obviously not vb6 programmers at Google, it kept changing vb6 to 'visual basic' making trying to fix obscure behaviours in vb6 really hard to do because all it would find are vb .net results after the switch.

I had a couple of very unproductive days before working out how to force it to stop changing my search terms.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#82

Post by cynwoody » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 7:48 AM UTC

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

pasbesoin wrote: post #15

I "Google" less and less for search results, as they become increasingly crap. They are mostly best for "big name" items; also, the prominence of StackOverflow means that some computer technology queries still work pretty well. These days, I'm fortunate when I know specifically enough what I want that I can jump straight into Wikipedia and hopefully find an adequate page. Whatever you are and aren't doing about it, G…

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

The old mode was, you put a + before a required term, and you quoted exact (multi-word) phrases. That worked reasonably well and was easy to understand. A + could apply to a single word or to a single phrase, as could a -.

Verbatim was a regression, given it requires you to use the UI instead of typing inline, and it seems to interact with other search options in hard to predict ways.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#83

Post by conradfr » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 7:58 AM UTC

codex wrote: post #35

espeed wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P.S. Your (Google, again) elimination of the + operator in your search queries was, again anecdotally, another factor in the declining performance of your searches for me. +1 to that. At the least Google should have added a ++ operator to replace the co-opted +.

"Quote" the search term. That's the replacement for +.

"Quote" does not work these days, it still presents results you with alternatives to the "Quote".

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#84

Post by eksith » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 7:58 AM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #66

eksith wrote: post #19

I've been experimenting with DuckDuckGo and I must say, I'm finding what I'm looking for pretty quickly (minus junk results) in the first few results. Their WolframAlpha results are actually pretty good too. I hope they can move into image searching that isn't dependent on Google or Bing though. I'm still curious as to what criteria they used to differentiate Yahoo traffic under "Yahoo! Sites" though. Did they also i…

It's not just their image searching that is dependent on Google and Bing. The site is basically just a skin on top of Bing's index. They do have their own spider but I highly doubt you see many results crawled by it.

It's a bit unfair to call it a skin on top of Bing etc... DDG isn't another HotBot.

There's quite a bit more happening in the background : https://dukgo.com

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#85

Post by IanCal » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 8:11 AM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #83

codex wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quote" the search term. That's the replacement for +.

"Quote" does not work these days, it still presents results you with alternatives to the "Quote".

You need to use "verbatim" mode. It's under "Search tools" and then in the dropdown starting with "All results".

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#86

Post by kbart » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 8:27 AM UTC

pasbesoin wrote: post #15

I "Google" less and less for search results, as they become increasingly crap. They are mostly best for "big name" items; also, the prominence of StackOverflow means that some computer technology queries still work pretty well. These days, I'm fortunate when I know specifically enough what I want that I can jump straight into Wikipedia and hopefully find an adequate page. Whatever you are and aren't doing about it, G…

Heh, I find myself in the same situation. Recently I use Google mainly as a shortcut to Wiki, Ebay, Amazon, SO etc. For a "real" search I prefer DuckDuckGo (that doesn't modify search results based on my browsing, search history and big names) and symbolhound.com (that is very useful for programming related searches as it includes symbols).

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#87

Post by dylangs1030 » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 8:31 AM UTC

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

pasbesoin wrote: post #15

I "Google" less and less for search results, as they become increasingly crap. They are mostly best for "big name" items; also, the prominence of StackOverflow means that some computer technology queries still work pretty well. These days, I'm fortunate when I know specifically enough what I want that I can jump straight into Wikipedia and hopefully find an adequate page. Whatever you are and aren't doing about it, G…

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

I think you guys are doing a great job. Thanks!

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#88

Post by mh- » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 8:38 AM UTC

eterm wrote: post #81

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

You're obviously not vb6 programmers at Google, it kept changing vb6 to 'visual basic' making trying to fix obscure behaviours in vb6 really hard to do because all it would find are vb .net results after the switch. I had a couple of very unproductive days before working out how to force it to stop changing my search terms.

You're obviously not vb6 programmers at Google

ouch.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#89

Post by ronaldx » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 8:39 AM UTC

thisisnotatest wrote: post #56

pasbesoin wrote: post #15

I "Google" less and less for search results, as they become increasingly crap. They are mostly best for "big name" items; also, the prominence of StackOverflow means that some computer technology queries still work pretty well. These days, I'm fortunate when I know specifically enough what I want that I can jump straight into Wikipedia and hopefully find an adequate page. Whatever you are and aren't doing about it, G…

Google engineer here. We run experiments that show ranking improvements before launching changes to how we interpret query words. I would guess that for every time you notice Google "ignoring the word you asked for," there were several times where we got you the right result even though it didn't have the exact words you asked for, and you didn't even notice. We're not perfect but we're always working on improvements…

> there were several times where we got you the right result... and you didn't even notice.

1) If I don't notice, then it's not the right result.

2) If I put a + in front of a search term, there's only one reason for that: I explicitly want results containing that word. If you return something not containing that word, then it's not the right result plus I'm going to be annoyed about it.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#90

Post by anonymoushn » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 8:46 AM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #85

conradfr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quote" does not work these days, it still presents results you with alternatives to the "Quote".

You need to use "verbatim" mode. It's under "Search tools" and then in the dropdown starting with "All results".

This applies to the whole query, so there's not really any analogue to "foo bar +baz".