5 ms·

Falsehoods Google, Microsoft, JIRA, and others seem to believe about search: That, when searching for a string, I don't want exact matches to appear in the res

Falsehoods Google, Microsoft, JIRA, and others seem to believe about search: That, when searching for a string, I don't want exact matches to appear in the results. If your search ever DOESN'T return exact matches (barring common misspelling correction), you're doing something seriously wrong.

yread 7y ago
No kidding. The other day I searched for a gas station on google maps and got bus station instead
- ryanisnan 7y ago
  Quit thinking you know what you want better than the machines.
- koala_man 7y ago
  Google pushing its liberal agenda! /s
ineedasername 7y ago
it seems like it used to be much easier to get Google to return exact matches. Just my subjective experience of course, but as accuracy for word-sense-disambiguation significantly improved it seems like Google has become much more comfortable returning what it believes are close or related matches. Overall it's probably better search, but I find myself having to put things in quotes more than I used to when looking for a very precise result.
rq1 7y ago
This.
VikingCoder 7y ago
I'm not sure I understand you. If I search for "restaurants", I want search results that ARE restaurants, not search results which have the word "restaurants" in them. What do you want to have happen?
- OJFord 7y ago
  It depends what you're looking for. If it's an error message, you probably want that exact string, not results that are errors but don't include the string. It used to be that searching literally "restaurants" (i.e. with quotes) would search for an exact match (particularly useful for multi-word searches in those days), but no more. It's taken as a 'hint' or something, I believe, but not an absolute instruction.
  - joseluis 7y ago
    And this is how it began the AI takeover.
- ashelmire 7y ago
  If I’m doing a google search, you’re probably right. If I’m searching my gmail account, you’re probably wrong. I’ve searched for exact phrases that occur in my email (for both gmail and outlook) and failed to get the matches anywhere in the results (and had to find them by other means). Same with Jira. It’s very frustrating to have to sort through hundreds or thousands of messages for the result you wanted.
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    The gmail one in particular drives me absolutely bonkers. Like, I don’t care if the search needs to take 15 seconds to do, just find the email with the phrase that I know is there! This is even more frustrating when you do a date constrained search and google tells you there are no emails from that date, but if you page through manually, it’s there. I feel like gmail is constantly gaslighting me.
- MereInterest 7y ago
  If I search for "python lea", I want information about the python package "lea". I do not want general information about "learn python".
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
OJFord 7y ago
Amazon. As in the shop - I can do one search and get a result, even a 'featured' result, and then change it to something more generic that's an exact match for the _title_, sort in a way that will make me easily see it again, (e.g. by ascending price) and it not show (e.g. first result is more expensive than the product I just saw). It's infuriating, because presumably I don't always happen to see the unknowingly hidden option.
amdsn 7y ago
Another frustrating thing with google search is when it translates (or attempts to translate) queries for you and then fails to show you any results in the language of what you typed in. Even with languages specified in my google account I can't get it to stop without quoting part of search. I've switched to using yandex for a lot of searches just to avoid it.
djakjxnanjak 7y ago
Does Google get false positives (incorrectly detecting a mistake and “fixing” it?) or false negatives (failing to detect a mistake you make) more often? Is it possible that cognitive biases prevent you from giving Google credit when it fixes your mistakes? Is it possible Google has done extensive studies to find the preferred trade-off? Is it possible that your preferences are different than the average person because you’re an engineer?
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  I once was curious about this so I kept track of my Google searches for a week, and it was overwhelmingly the case that what it returned was what I wanted but not what I asked vs the other way around.
GordonS 7y ago
This drives me crazy - and it happens far too often! Even worse, Google sometimes shows results that don't even contain text you've specified an exact match for with double quotes, e.g. "find me"
- gatherhunterer 7y ago
  DuckDuckGo for search results, Google for “Google Search” results.
- xorcist 7y ago
  This is a misfeature that Google started using some years ago. There is a tab-style link directly below the search box called "Tools" in the search results page. Once clicked it displays a few settings and one of them can be set to "Verbatim". Choose that and your search terms will actually be what is searched for, as opposed to some arbitrary subset of it. I wish this was better documented.
  - ashelmire 7y ago
    It looks like that resets with each search, but thanks for the tip.
Terr_ 7y ago
It's all part of their attempt to de-commoditize their stuff, changing from an indexing-and-keyword-tool to invasive "assistant" that Knows What You Meant To Say. However, as someone who already learned to translate my desires into keywords, it's freaking annoying.

yread 7y ago

No kidding. The other day I searched for a gas station on google maps and got bus station instead

ryanisnan 7y ago
Quit thinking you know what you want better than the machines.
koala_man 7y ago
Google pushing its liberal agenda! /s

ineedasername 7y ago

it seems like it used to be much easier to get Google to return exact matches. Just my subjective experience of course, but as accuracy for word-sense-disambiguation significantly improved it seems like Google has become much more comfortable returning what it believes are close or related matches. Overall it's probably better search, but I find myself having to put things in quotes more than I used to when looking for a very precise result.

rq1 7y ago

This.

VikingCoder 7y ago

I'm not sure I understand you. If I search for "restaurants", I want search results that ARE restaurants, not search results which have the word "restaurants" in them. What do you want to have happen?

OJFord 7y ago
It depends what you're looking for. If it's an error message, you probably want that exact string, not results that are errors but don't include the string. It used to be that searching literally "restaurants" (i.e. with quotes) would search for an exact match (particularly useful for multi-word searches in those days), but no more. It's taken as a 'hint' or something, I believe, but not an absolute instruction.
- joseluis 7y ago
  And this is how it began the AI takeover.
ashelmire 7y ago
If I’m doing a google search, you’re probably right. If I’m searching my gmail account, you’re probably wrong. I’ve searched for exact phrases that occur in my email (for both gmail and outlook) and failed to get the matches anywhere in the results (and had to find them by other means). Same with Jira. It’s very frustrating to have to sort through hundreds or thousands of messages for the result you wanted.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  The gmail one in particular drives me absolutely bonkers. Like, I don’t care if the search needs to take 15 seconds to do, just find the email with the phrase that I know is there! This is even more frustrating when you do a date constrained search and google tells you there are no emails from that date, but if you page through manually, it’s there. I feel like gmail is constantly gaslighting me.
MereInterest 7y ago
If I search for "python lea", I want information about the python package "lea". I do not want general information about "learn python".
- Godel_unicode 7y ago

OJFord 7y ago

Amazon. As in the shop - I can do one search and get a result, even a 'featured' result, and then change it to something more generic that's an exact match for the _title_, sort in a way that will make me easily see it again, (e.g. by ascending price) and it not show (e.g. first result is more expensive than the product I just saw). It's infuriating, because presumably I don't always happen to see the unknowingly hidden option.

amdsn 7y ago

Another frustrating thing with google search is when it translates (or attempts to translate) queries for you and then fails to show you any results in the language of what you typed in. Even with languages specified in my google account I can't get it to stop without quoting part of search. I've switched to using yandex for a lot of searches just to avoid it.

djakjxnanjak 7y ago

Does Google get false positives (incorrectly detecting a mistake and “fixing” it?) or false negatives (failing to detect a mistake you make) more often? Is it possible that cognitive biases prevent you from giving Google credit when it fixes your mistakes? Is it possible Google has done extensive studies to find the preferred trade-off? Is it possible that your preferences are different than the average person because you’re an engineer?

Godel_unicode 7y ago
I once was curious about this so I kept track of my Google searches for a week, and it was overwhelmingly the case that what it returned was what I wanted but not what I asked vs the other way around.

GordonS 7y ago

This drives me crazy - and it happens far too often! Even worse, Google sometimes shows results that don't even contain text you've specified an exact match for with double quotes, e.g. "find me"

gatherhunterer 7y ago
DuckDuckGo for search results, Google for “Google Search” results.
xorcist 7y ago
This is a misfeature that Google started using some years ago. There is a tab-style link directly below the search box called "Tools" in the search results page. Once clicked it displays a few settings and one of them can be set to "Verbatim". Choose that and your search terms will actually be what is searched for, as opposed to some arbitrary subset of it. I wish this was better documented.
- ashelmire 7y ago
  It looks like that resets with each search, but thanks for the tip.

Terr_ 7y ago

It's all part of their attempt to de-commoditize their stuff, changing from an indexing-and-keyword-tool to invasive "assistant" that Knows What You Meant To Say. However, as someone who already learned to translate my desires into keywords, it's freaking annoying.