5 ms·

Just as an example: a controversial political figure's popular website is buried on page 5 of Google results (underneath a mountain of criticism) when you searc

Just as an example: a controversial political figure's popular website is buried on page 5 of Google results (underneath a mountain of criticism) when you search for his name, despite being in the top 3 results of page 1 for all of Qwant, DDG, Bing, Mojeek, and Yandex. Obviously, the website is being downranked for being full of "conspiracy theories and fake news" (I wouldn't completely disagree that it is). But who decided all this? Is this not "political"?

moultano 7y ago
I'd be happy to pass it along to debug if you have a specific query in mind. In the cases of this I've seen in the past, there's been a specific actionable bug that we were able to fix. (Lots of other search engines use each other as backends, so don't be too surprised when they return consistent results.)
- word-reader 7y ago
  I think DDG and Qwant basically use Bing as a backend, potentially augmenting with their own crawlers. Yandex and Mojeek use all their own stuff, as far as I can tell. The query is "alex jones". At least put the garbage website at the bottom of page 1 where most people who aren't already looking for it still won't click it, page 5 is just lacking in subtlety.
  - moultano 7y ago
    Thanks, I'll pass it along.
- bhk 7y ago
  Infowars being buried so deeply in the "Alex Jones" results is highly suspicious. How can Google's results be so ineffective compared to other search engines? The "Pelosi drunk" results are also markedly different from DDG. I just now tried this one because the results were being manually short-circuited the day after the video went viral, both by DDG and Google (but not Bing). It appears that DDG has reverted to delivering actual results for that query while Google's appear curated. During the election some fuss was made over auto-completion for "Hillary" vs. "Trump" searches ... apparently embarrassing for Google because these were soon "fixed". I could go on and on. Do you at least admit that Google restricts searches for the Christchurch shooting video? Maybe your definition of "political reasons" is very narrow. I don't actually have a problem with burying Alex Jones. The only reason I have enough interest to engage in this discussion is that Google continues to deny these things.
  - moultano 7y ago
    Google does not curate web results, ever. The results for [pelosi drunk] are different certainly, but in what sense are DDG's better? Google has a policy about "sensitive and disparaging terms associated with named individuals" in autocomplete https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7368877?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7368877?hl=en which is often why you sometimes may not see the queries in autocomplete that you expect. It also has a policy about "violent or gory predictions" so it wouldn't surprise me if you aren't seeing autocomplete suggesting the Christchurch video, if that's what you mean.
    - oska 7y ago
      > Google does not curate web results, ever. Where is the transparency or independent third party oversight to back up this statement? Or do we just have to take it on faith?
    - bhk 7y ago
      I'm sure search results are not curated in the sense that a stock answer is provided for a given query, but I would expect that filtering and ranking of search results involves lists that are curated -- for example, "offensive" words or "disparaging terms", etc.. Since you work on search at Google, maybe you could explain how typing "hillary clinton cri" stopped suggesting the common search term "hillary clinton crimes" and instead suggested "hillary clinton criminal reform". https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=hillary%20clinton%20crimes,hillary%20clinton%20criminal%20reform https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... Apparently "crimes" a disparaging term when associated with "hillary clinton", but not when associated with, say, "jared kushner"?
      - moultano 7y ago
        Isn't it explained by the policy I just linked? "Jared kushner cr" yields [jared kushner credentials] as a suggestion for me.
        7y ago
perl4ever 7y ago
What if it's downranked because most of the people who search for him aren't looking for his site, but for commentary about him? I mean, maybe this sounds implausible to you, but I think you should be conscious of whether you're discarding it as a possibility and why.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

moultano 7y ago

I'd be happy to pass it along to debug if you have a specific query in mind. In the cases of this I've seen in the past, there's been a specific actionable bug that we were able to fix. (Lots of other search engines use each other as backends, so don't be too surprised when they return consistent results.)

word-reader 7y ago
I think DDG and Qwant basically use Bing as a backend, potentially augmenting with their own crawlers. Yandex and Mojeek use all their own stuff, as far as I can tell. The query is "alex jones". At least put the garbage website at the bottom of page 1 where most people who aren't already looking for it still won't click it, page 5 is just lacking in subtlety.
- moultano 7y ago
  Thanks, I'll pass it along.
bhk 7y ago
Infowars being buried so deeply in the "Alex Jones" results is highly suspicious. How can Google's results be so ineffective compared to other search engines? The "Pelosi drunk" results are also markedly different from DDG. I just now tried this one because the results were being manually short-circuited the day after the video went viral, both by DDG and Google (but not Bing). It appears that DDG has reverted to delivering actual results for that query while Google's appear curated. During the election some fuss was made over auto-completion for "Hillary" vs. "Trump" searches ... apparently embarrassing for Google because these were soon "fixed". I could go on and on. Do you at least admit that Google restricts searches for the Christchurch shooting video? Maybe your definition of "political reasons" is very narrow. I don't actually have a problem with burying Alex Jones. The only reason I have enough interest to engage in this discussion is that Google continues to deny these things.
- moultano 7y ago
  Google does not curate web results, ever. The results for [pelosi drunk] are different certainly, but in what sense are DDG's better? Google has a policy about "sensitive and disparaging terms associated with named individuals" in autocomplete https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7368877?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7368877?hl=en which is often why you sometimes may not see the queries in autocomplete that you expect. It also has a policy about "violent or gory predictions" so it wouldn't surprise me if you aren't seeing autocomplete suggesting the Christchurch video, if that's what you mean.
  - oska 7y ago
    > Google does not curate web results, ever. Where is the transparency or independent third party oversight to back up this statement? Or do we just have to take it on faith?
  - bhk 7y ago
    I'm sure search results are not curated in the sense that a stock answer is provided for a given query, but I would expect that filtering and ranking of search results involves lists that are curated -- for example, "offensive" words or "disparaging terms", etc.. Since you work on search at Google, maybe you could explain how typing "hillary clinton cri" stopped suggesting the common search term "hillary clinton crimes" and instead suggested "hillary clinton criminal reform". https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=hillary%20clinton%20crimes,hillary%20clinton%20criminal%20reform https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... Apparently "crimes" a disparaging term when associated with "hillary clinton", but not when associated with, say, "jared kushner"?
    - moultano 7y ago
      Isn't it explained by the policy I just linked? "Jared kushner cr" yields [jared kushner credentials] as a suggestion for me.
      - 7y ago

perl4ever 7y ago

What if it's downranked because most of the people who search for him aren't looking for his site, but for commentary about him? I mean, maybe this sounds implausible to you, but I think you should be conscious of whether you're discarding it as a possibility and why.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]