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Elevating original reporting in Search

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Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#91

Post by icebraining »

bogdanoff_2 wrote: post #71
daniel_reetz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same behavior. I think it's time to assemble a list of examples.

"thesaurus that organizes words by category" - gives a bunch of online dictionary pages. I was trying to find a specific physical book I remember using in high-school. "techniques for interpreting statically typed languages" - gives a bunch of super basic articles/questions about statically vs dynamically typed and compiled vs interpreted languages. DuckDuckGo actually gave better results for this. I feel what's happ…

> "techniques for interpreting statically typed languages" - gives a bunch of super basic articles/questions about statically vs dynamically typed and compiled vs interpreted languages. DuckDuckGo actually gave better results for this.

But is there any good result that includes all those words and which Google failed to find?

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#92

Post by kikokikokiko »

helloguillecl wrote: post #69
enlyth wrote: post #32

Has anyone found that recently Google search is becoming more and more useless? Google tends to ignore what I actually type in, and tries to search according to some weird NLP machine learning inference on what it thinks I'm actually trying to ask. Top results will include maybe 50-75% of the words I actually typed in, and it will treat the rest as mere hints or related words. My queries end up looking like this afte…

I just noticed the same problem. Searching for "lithium" wont let me find the wikipedia article for the metal. News and youtube song from Nirvana are showed instead. PD: Google knows I'm very interested in renewable energy, they constantly suggesting me news regarding the said matter.

It's probably because of "personalized results". If Google knows that you listen to Nirvana it will assume you want to hear the song, instead of showing you the MOST RELEVANT RESULT, that is the freaking Wikipedia article about the metal. They lost the plot, sometimes things just work and you should not overthink it, the original Google page rank algorithm is a beautiful insight into how distributed knowledge graphs work and self organize. Now they destroyed it's usefulness.

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#93

Post by jayd16 »

fareesh wrote: post #57

Okay let's give this a try news.google.com -> Democratic debate Websites: BBC, Vox, Guardian, NYT, WaPo, CNN, Slate (wow), The New Yorker, USA Today Absent: National Review, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, reason, Forbes, RT So basically the news algorithm considers these kinds of stories high quality: 1) Stephen Colbert plays Democrat Drinking Game (NYT) No Greg Gutfeld sketch ? 2) Funniest one-liners at the Democrat…

I think you're just pushing an agenda. Where does the blog say anything about opinion being ranked down.

In terms of what the blog actually talks about, "Democratic debate" is a terrible example. This seems to focus on boosting older articles that break the news and down rank low effort follow up stories. I don't think a consistent topic like "Democractic debate" is a good test bed.

Maybe search for a scandal?

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#94

Post by rjf72 »

outime wrote: post #58
enlyth wrote: post #32

Has anyone found that recently Google search is becoming more and more useless? Google tends to ignore what I actually type in, and tries to search according to some weird NLP machine learning inference on what it thinks I'm actually trying to ask. Top results will include maybe 50-75% of the words I actually typed in, and it will treat the rest as mere hints or related words. My queries end up looking like this afte…

Almost every thread that's somehow related to Google Search has this same question (which often goes to the top) and the same answers. It's difficult to imagine that most of the people haven't seen this a bunch of times as well. And while I agree with this, I'd love to know why people keep asking and/or upvoting this same question over and over. Is it for the sole purpose of bashing Google or what is it? Honest quest…

Hacker News has a pretty cool archive feature. I'm certain if you go back about a decade you'd see a similar response on anything regarding Internet Explorer. It was the most dominant browser, by a wide margin, even when there were browsers many felt had long since improved beyond Internet Explorer. And those alternatives came from companies that didn't have the reputational issues of Microsoft, somewhat ironically Google was one of them.

Yet today it's become the same thing with Google. They had a phenomenal search engine, but it's gradually gotten worse while other engines have taken some big strides forward. Its marketshare is just completely out of wack with its capability, and so I think that motivates people pretty strongly since it indicates a knowledge gap in the market. This is also a pretty new thing which further adds motivation - a few years ago Google search was, without doubt, king. Now, it's not. And, again similar to Microsoft, Google is increasingly destroying its reputation so it feels good to swap, let alone when other services are now also arguably superior!

To see some degree of evidence of this look at posts related to Google, but not their search. Posted just today (so there's going to be a large overlap in users) was this [1] post where a sunken car (found to contain a corpse) was visible via Google Maps. Nobody decrying Google Maps because it's still the clearly best service for satellite/street imagery. Gotta give the devil his due.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954545

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#95

Post by gumby »

wtallis wrote: post #45
enlyth wrote: post #32

Has anyone found that recently Google search is becoming more and more useless? Google tends to ignore what I actually type in, and tries to search according to some weird NLP machine learning inference on what it thinks I'm actually trying to ask. Top results will include maybe 50-75% of the words I actually typed in, and it will treat the rest as mere hints or related words. My queries end up looking like this afte…

I've noticed over the past year that a Google search for almost any medical term will bury the wikipedia article on the third or fourth page of search results. The first three pages are all sites with extremely watered-down content and little to none of the cross-referencing links that make wikipedia a good exploratory tool (and a natural fit to PageRank). Google has obviously decided that anyone searching for a medi…

> Sure, those WebMD pages are probably going to be a bit more accurate than the wikipedia article...

Not necessarily: https://www.vox.com/2016/4/5/11358268/webmd-accuracy-trustwo...

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#96

Post by icebraining »

brlewis wrote: post #50
CDSlice wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you mean by that? When I search it up I get a SO answer saying what the max packet size is and another (closed) SuperUser answer that says that their is no average tcp packet size because that depends on the specific application. Both of those seem pretty good to me, but I'm not a low level networking guy.

I definitely wasn't asking for maximum packet size, which a search feature showed in huge print as the answer to my question. I don't expect the search algorithm to know my precise intent, but I'd like it to weigh the word "typical" highly. Between google, bing and duckduckgo, only duckduckgo presented this above the fold: https://etherealmind.com/average-ip-packet-size/

In Google, after that card, I get their "People also ask", and the second question is "What is the average packet size?", which links to https://superuser.com/questions/964682/what-is-the-average-s...

Seems ok to me.

It should also be noted that the etherealmind.com link doesn't actually contain the word "typical", so if you think Google should try to outsmart users less, it's not reasonable to blame it for not showing that link.

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#97

Post by xxxpupugo »

outime wrote: post #58
enlyth wrote: post #32

Has anyone found that recently Google search is becoming more and more useless? Google tends to ignore what I actually type in, and tries to search according to some weird NLP machine learning inference on what it thinks I'm actually trying to ask. Top results will include maybe 50-75% of the words I actually typed in, and it will treat the rest as mere hints or related words. My queries end up looking like this afte…

Almost every thread that's somehow related to Google Search has this same question (which often goes to the top) and the same answers. It's difficult to imagine that most of the people haven't seen this a bunch of times as well. And while I agree with this, I'd love to know why people keep asking and/or upvoting this same question over and over. Is it for the sole purpose of bashing Google or what is it? Honest quest…

Yep. Not sure what do these questions try to go after...If Google stops being useful, just quit using it.

Apparently, Google's search algorithm is one of the most hidden secret in the world, and has insanely complex evaluation mechanism in place, any anecdote feedback is not going to cause a ripple in shaping this algorithm.

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#98

Post by blackbrokkoli »

Medicalidiot wrote: post #54
wtallis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed over the past year that a Google search for almost any medical term will bury the wikipedia article on the third or fourth page of search results. The first three pages are all sites with extremely watered-down content and little to none of the cross-referencing links that make wikipedia a good exploratory tool (and a natural fit to PageRank). Google has obviously decided that anyone searching for a medi…

As someone in medicine, this drive me up the wall. I don't want to go to uptodate every time I have a question and want the basics of a disease or drug. Where Wikipedia fits my requirements perfectly, Google constantly feeds me nonsense WebMD, blogs, and hospital systems. Now, whenever I search for anything medically related I add wiki at the end.

Set Duckduckgo as your default search engine and add "!w" anywhere into your search query. This will take you directly to the corresponding wiki article. It is a breeze to actually work with a search engine instead of against it!

There are >10k of these bangs, so I'm pretty sure you can even use this tool to directly search at other medicine related sites and portals (check here https://duckduckgo.com/bang) if necessary .

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#99

Post by icebraining »

jedberg wrote: post #75
enlyth wrote: post #32

Has anyone found that recently Google search is becoming more and more useless? Google tends to ignore what I actually type in, and tries to search according to some weird NLP machine learning inference on what it thinks I'm actually trying to ask. Top results will include maybe 50-75% of the words I actually typed in, and it will treat the rest as mere hints or related words. My queries end up looking like this afte…

Try using verbatim search. It’s under “Search tools -> All Results”. Sadly I can’t figure out how to direct link it.

Add &tbs=li:1 to the URL. Example:

https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=search+my+exact+wor...

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#100

Post by snazz »

andrewvc wrote: post #73
outime wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every thread that's somehow related to Google Search has this same question (which often goes to the top) and the same answers. It's difficult to imagine that most of the people haven't seen this a bunch of times as well. And while I agree with this, I'd love to know why people keep asking and/or upvoting this same question over and over. Is it for the sole purpose of bashing Google or what is it? Honest quest…

Yes, people have been switching to DDG for years now, yet still google is utterly dominant. Candidly, I'm mystified by the complaints. Google's search works great, and has for years for myself and everyone I know IRL. Any post about any product that isn't brand new on HN is going to get comments along the line of "Company X? Their product is garbage, it used to be great! I've been using and once I got it going it was…

I won’t argue about your experience, but DDG isn’t any harder to use than Google aside from the fact that you need to change your default search engine. That’s not a “ton of extra effort to setup”.
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