6 ms·

I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences)

I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences) Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of the data they have to ingest to an adequate user experience.

itp 8y ago
I suspect it's a reflection of the way the majority of their audience interacts with search. For a large number of people, Google's ability to answer the underlying question, rather than explicitly identify pages where all search terms appear, means it works better. If you think of Google as a way to get answers, this is good. If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experience with (and expectations of) search engines, this is very frustrating. And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience. As a personal anecdote, I was an early adopter of smartphones (particularly relative to a non-technical audience). So I was excited when I could speak to my phone, then disappointed when I discovered that I had to structure my queries and instructions very carefully. A few years ago I was on a road trip with a very non-technical friend. We decided to stop for Chipotle. Had it been up to me, I would probably have pulled out my phone, opened Google Assistant (or perhaps Maps directly), and told my phone (speaking as clearly as possible) "navigate to the closest Chipotle" or something similar. But I was driving, so she just pulled out her iPhone and half-shouted "I want a burrito!" at it. And that worked just fine. Point being, I had expectations for how things should work based on interactions with earlier iterations of an interface. She didn't.
- afandian 8y ago
  I totally take your point, but I don't think it's inconsistent with mine. Search engines being 'about' a concept isn't a new thing. Bewlew's book from 2008 is called "Finding Out About". The dream is that the search engine can work out what a document is about, and what I'm thinking about based on the content of the document / query, and match them up. The new thing in your example is that Google has gone beyond documents into burrito restauraunts, but it's not such a huge leap. Maybe new adavances have brought new algorithms that are somehow better at finding and modelling those abstractions so the search engine is no longer a recognisable vector space model with predictable proxies. Even if that _is_ the case, they should be able to answer a query I have made, on my own terms.
- abruzzi 8y ago
  While there is some truth that we are trained by the search paradigm we learned on, Google has a habit of ignoring key parts of my query just to show results. If I search for something like: spotmatic f schematic (which I did just recently), I don't want it to ignore "schematic" just because there are no matching results. It is far more useful to me to know that there are no matching hits that to make me click several links before I realize none will have what I want (in this case Google doesn't even do me the courtesy of telling me that it is dropping "schematic" from the search, or at least changing it into a word that doesn't return schematics.)
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experience with (and expectations of) search engines, this is very frustrating. And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience. Google really needs to develop a "pro mode" search engine that works for this use case. I get the need for an "answers engine" for less savvy users and more casual use cases, but it's a massive company. It can afford to execute two products in its core competency (rather than umpteen messaging apps that it will kill, along with a lot of other useless and/or doomed stuff).
  - sitkack 8y ago
    All I can think of is the courtesy of a 404. No can be a powerful, yet welcome signal. The reticence to say No causes more harm that good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2vkiLHiTcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2vkiLHiTcY
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    "Google really needs to" in the sense that it would be useful, or that it would be a good investment for them? Sure it can afford to do it, but how would it help them make more money?
    - sumedh 8y ago
      > Sure it can afford to do it, but how would it help them make more money? reply It keeps the power users on the site so they wont have to look for an alternative. Power users if they find something better might influence no power users to the other site
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience. Plus, they're inadequate.
- tannhaeuser 8y ago
  "Google knows better than you" gives way too much credit IMHO. Google Search is nearly useless for my most searched topics today, and even dangerous in that it gives you a very wrong perception of what is out there.
  - mda 8y ago
    Any examples? I find it hard to believe it is "nearly useless for most searched topics". It is easy to check, go to your search history and look at your last 10-20 queries and count how many them useless.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      Today I searched for TPUG, which is the Toronto PET Users Group. Google returned exactly ZERO results about TPUG. All of the results were about dogs.
      - itp 8y ago
        I just searched for TPUG on Google in both my logged in profile, as well as an incognito window. Both searches returned primarily results about the Toronto PET Users Group, including a knowledge panel specifically about the Toronto PET Users Group (founded in 1978 by Lyman Duggan). That's either very quick turnaround to fix, or a deeper mystery!
        reaperducer 8y ago
        No mystery at all. Google tailors the results to what it thinks you want, rather than what you asked for. Two people sitting at machines next to each other can perform the same search and get different results. It's what Google's spent billions of dollars on.
        mda 8y ago
        I expect it to change results, it would be a terrible experience if it did not
luckylion 8y ago
Interesting idea. I figured it was due to the user base of 2019 being very different than that of 2010, and Google adapting to the fact that most of their users aren't technology literate and cannot formulate clear search queries, so they just try to guess what might be of interest to them.
- afandian 8y ago
  Absolutely. Scale and diversity applies not only to ingested documents but users. I'm under no illusions that Google has said "here are a chunk of users who may want precise search, at a cost of X, but this other demographic can bring us revenue Y". That's fine, it's their business, but it makes the virtual monopoly even more painful.
  - wolco 8y ago
    It provides an opening for dgg users or a smaller search engine. Google has to cover all users which means not everyone will be happy.
    - mhb 8y ago
      Sure but it would be nice to see DDG add a trivial usability feature like limiting search to the recent year before expecting them to address more challenging initiatives.
- groestl 8y ago
  It's also that after bootstrapping with text search and page rank, they can incorporate a lot more useful signals in there ranking algorithm: the clickstream on the search results, and page visit time after the click. If the majority of their user base would actually want precise search, this clickstream would not reorder the results, but it does. So most users are happier with imprecise ranking. The wealth of user traffic is also what no other search engine can replicate, due to Google's market share in web searches.
  - luckylion 8y ago
koube 8y ago
does it work well if you put the individual words in quotes? It seems to rank popularity above exact match, and a word in quotes forces it to be present.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Words in quotes aren't always present IME, nor even if you click the "must include" link below the individual result (which rewrites the search statement by adding quotes).
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > does it work well if you put the individual words in quotes No.
bonyt 8y ago
There are products that do a precise search on large datasets, like Westlaw and LexisNexis searches for legal research. Of course, services like these can charge around $100 per query or more, though I’m not sure of their specific rates.
rsync 8y ago
"Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of the data they have to ingest to an adequate user experience." That is awfully generous of you ... Google shows us what it shows us to maximize advertising revenue. They need you to keep clicking and generate hits on adwords-encumbered websites. Showing you zero (or one or a handful of) results for your search query is counter to this goal. Showing you a batch of results with no adwords-encumbered sites in it is also counter to this goal. I don't think they're struggling with anything at all - they are optimizing for paid clicks and precise search results is, at best, a very distant second priority...
anyfoo 8y ago
Click on "Tools" on the results page, then "Verbatim". It's annoying, but it works.

itp 8y ago

I suspect it's a reflection of the way the majority of their audience interacts with search. For a large number of people, Google's ability to answer the underlying question, rather than explicitly identify pages where all search terms appear, means it works better. If you think of Google as a way to get answers, this is good. If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experience with (and expectations of) search engines, this is very frustrating. And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience. As a personal anecdote, I was an early adopter of smartphones (particularly relative to a non-technical audience). So I was excited when I could speak to my phone, then disappointed when I discovered that I had to structure my queries and instructions very carefully. A few years ago I was on a road trip with a very non-technical friend. We decided to stop for Chipotle. Had it been up to me, I would probably have pulled out my phone, opened Google Assistant (or perhaps Maps directly), and told my phone (speaking as clearly as possible) "navigate to the closest Chipotle" or something similar. But I was driving, so she just pulled out her iPhone and half-shouted "I want a burrito!" at it. And that worked just fine. Point being, I had expectations for how things should work based on interactions with earlier iterations of an interface. She didn't.

afandian 8y ago
I totally take your point, but I don't think it's inconsistent with mine. Search engines being 'about' a concept isn't a new thing. Bewlew's book from 2008 is called "Finding Out About". The dream is that the search engine can work out what a document is about, and what I'm thinking about based on the content of the document / query, and match them up. The new thing in your example is that Google has gone beyond documents into burrito restauraunts, but it's not such a huge leap. Maybe new adavances have brought new algorithms that are somehow better at finding and modelling those abstractions so the search engine is no longer a recognisable vector space model with predictable proxies. Even if that _is_ the case, they should be able to answer a query I have made, on my own terms.
abruzzi 8y ago
While there is some truth that we are trained by the search paradigm we learned on, Google has a habit of ignoring key parts of my query just to show results. If I search for something like: spotmatic f schematic (which I did just recently), I don't want it to ignore "schematic" just because there are no matching results. It is far more useful to me to know that there are no matching hits that to make me click several links before I realize none will have what I want (in this case Google doesn't even do me the courtesy of telling me that it is dropping "schematic" from the search, or at least changing it into a word that doesn't return schematics.)
CharlesColeman 8y ago
> If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experience with (and expectations of) search engines, this is very frustrating. And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience. Google really needs to develop a "pro mode" search engine that works for this use case. I get the need for an "answers engine" for less savvy users and more casual use cases, but it's a massive company. It can afford to execute two products in its core competency (rather than umpteen messaging apps that it will kill, along with a lot of other useless and/or doomed stuff).
- sitkack 8y ago
  All I can think of is the courtesy of a 404. No can be a powerful, yet welcome signal. The reticence to say No causes more harm that good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2vkiLHiTcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2vkiLHiTcY
- cortesoft 8y ago
  "Google really needs to" in the sense that it would be useful, or that it would be a good investment for them? Sure it can afford to do it, but how would it help them make more money?
  - sumedh 8y ago
    > Sure it can afford to do it, but how would it help them make more money? reply It keeps the power users on the site so they wont have to look for an alternative. Power users if they find something better might influence no power users to the other site
JohnFen 8y ago
> And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience. Plus, they're inadequate.
tannhaeuser 8y ago
"Google knows better than you" gives way too much credit IMHO. Google Search is nearly useless for my most searched topics today, and even dangerous in that it gives you a very wrong perception of what is out there.
- mda 8y ago
  Any examples? I find it hard to believe it is "nearly useless for most searched topics". It is easy to check, go to your search history and look at your last 10-20 queries and count how many them useless.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Today I searched for TPUG, which is the Toronto PET Users Group. Google returned exactly ZERO results about TPUG. All of the results were about dogs.
    - itp 8y ago
      I just searched for TPUG on Google in both my logged in profile, as well as an incognito window. Both searches returned primarily results about the Toronto PET Users Group, including a knowledge panel specifically about the Toronto PET Users Group (founded in 1978 by Lyman Duggan). That's either very quick turnaround to fix, or a deeper mystery!
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        No mystery at all. Google tailors the results to what it thinks you want, rather than what you asked for. Two people sitting at machines next to each other can perform the same search and get different results. It's what Google's spent billions of dollars on.
        mda 8y ago
        I expect it to change results, it would be a terrible experience if it did not

luckylion 8y ago

Interesting idea. I figured it was due to the user base of 2019 being very different than that of 2010, and Google adapting to the fact that most of their users aren't technology literate and cannot formulate clear search queries, so they just try to guess what might be of interest to them.

afandian 8y ago
Absolutely. Scale and diversity applies not only to ingested documents but users. I'm under no illusions that Google has said "here are a chunk of users who may want precise search, at a cost of X, but this other demographic can bring us revenue Y". That's fine, it's their business, but it makes the virtual monopoly even more painful.
- wolco 8y ago
  It provides an opening for dgg users or a smaller search engine. Google has to cover all users which means not everyone will be happy.
  - mhb 8y ago
    Sure but it would be nice to see DDG add a trivial usability feature like limiting search to the recent year before expecting them to address more challenging initiatives.
groestl 8y ago
It's also that after bootstrapping with text search and page rank, they can incorporate a lot more useful signals in there ranking algorithm: the clickstream on the search results, and page visit time after the click. If the majority of their user base would actually want precise search, this clickstream would not reorder the results, but it does. So most users are happier with imprecise ranking. The wealth of user traffic is also what no other search engine can replicate, due to Google's market share in web searches.
- luckylion 8y ago

koube 8y ago

does it work well if you put the individual words in quotes? It seems to rank popularity above exact match, and a word in quotes forces it to be present.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Words in quotes aren't always present IME, nor even if you click the "must include" link below the individual result (which rewrites the search statement by adding quotes).
JohnFen 8y ago
> does it work well if you put the individual words in quotes No.

bonyt 8y ago

There are products that do a precise search on large datasets, like Westlaw and LexisNexis searches for legal research. Of course, services like these can charge around $100 per query or more, though I’m not sure of their specific rates.

rsync 8y ago

"Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of the data they have to ingest to an adequate user experience." That is awfully generous of you ... Google shows us what it shows us to maximize advertising revenue. They need you to keep clicking and generate hits on adwords-encumbered websites. Showing you zero (or one or a handful of) results for your search query is counter to this goal. Showing you a batch of results with no adwords-encumbered sites in it is also counter to this goal. I don't think they're struggling with anything at all - they are optimizing for paid clicks and precise search results is, at best, a very distant second priority...

anyfoo 8y ago

Click on "Tools" on the results page, then "Verbatim". It's annoying, but it works.