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I agree completely about search quality, as my comment history here and elsewhere might indicate. The majority of my Google searches anymore return very low qua
by cdr 16y ago
I agree completely about search quality, as my comment history here and elsewhere might indicate. The majority of my Google searches anymore return very low quality results without some serious query mangling or heavy filtering. At this point I too skip Google completely as much as possible and go straight to the "niche sources".
People like Matt Cutts at Google unfortunately don't seem to care about the extent low-quality sources have gamed Google - Cutts is still even defending Mahalo as far as I know.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agocdr, we've taken action on Mahalo in the past when we've discovered practices that we would consider spammy. At the same time, given the impact that Google has on the web it's important that we not take action on a site just because we like or dislike it. We try to make sure that we only take action on sites when they violate our quality guidelines.
- nostromo 16y agoHi Matt. I would love an option to blacklist domains from my results. That gets around the issue of Google picking winners and losers and would make pickiest 1% of users (like me) very happy.
- calbear81 16y agoWouldn't you be able to do that with Blekko?
- cdr 16y agoMy issue is the increasingly low quality of Google search results. The problem is not with just one particular site, as distasteful as I find Mahalo, but a class of sites. If you don't consider the SEO practices of the content mills that are infesting the majority of Google results "spammy", IMO you should either reconsider what practices you consider spammy or refine the search algorithm to produce higher quality results. I recall reading a thesis linked on HN that the only technologically knowledgeable users care about search quality - that the average, non-technical google user doesn't care that a result is from low quality content mill, only that they get some sort of information that sort of seems relevant. I think (hope?) that technical users are the leading edge here, and google's reluctance to act on content mills and improve search quality will end up hurting. I appreciate the direct response, though.
- cdr 16y agoAlso, I forgot to mention the amount of outdated forum posts that you get with technical searches - that's the other huge problem with search quality for me aside from content mills and content scrapers. If I go directly to Stack Overflow et al to do a search, I can at least be reasonably sure to get an up-to-date answer. More recent forum results should definitely be weighted higher than older ones, for a start.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoIf you're not happy with the dates of the results we show now, one option is to click on "More search tools" on the left-hand bar on the search result page. Then pick a date option like "Past week" or "Past month" or "Past year."
- waterlesscloud 16y agoThe point of the search engine, at least to me as a user of it, is to get results that are relevant to my needs. Every tweak you require me to apply in order to get the results I want is an area in which someone else can beat you.
- cdr 16y agoI don't feel like I should have to narrow down date ranges, though I end up doing so every time a search returns forum posts. The algorithm ought to know that something posted six weeks ago is much more likely to be relevant than something posted six years ago, but older posts seem to instead have more weight in the unfiltered results rather than less.
- slouch 16y agogoogle's date features (as matt has point out) are one of the reasons i haven't left google for bing completely. sure, getting forum post search results about coding an API from 2006 are usually useless, but in bing i can't even say "within the last month." google wins there, currently.