6 ms·

Tdlr: Googling “Powered by” seems to cause google to take excessive time to return results.

by d-sc 7y ago

natrik 7y ago
"amex platinum powered by mastercard" as well takes > 5 seconds
- _kbh_ 7y ago
  "a powered by b" takes >5 seconds "x powered by header" takes >5 seconds "x-powered by header" takes >5 seconds "x-powered-by header" takes ~0.5/0.3 seconds what.
  - petra 7y ago
    The last one may be from cache.
    - _kbh_ 7y ago
      b-cache-busting-powered-by b ~0.4 seconds.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    They're not the same query. They don't return the same results. I seem to recall a dash links words together somehow. So that probably narrows down the search space more.
  - tru3_power 7y ago
    “powered by” a popular term used in a lot of footers for a lot of different web forums/cmses, I wonder if that has something to do with it?
    - robjan 7y ago
      I had the theory that maybe they are trying to filter it out to frustrate searches for vulnerable CMS
      - tru3_power 7y ago
        Yea, I was thinking along the same lines. You’ll often see publicly disclosed vulns include google dorks to find vulnerable sites, ex: a google dork to find forums running a vulnerable version of phpbb or something
  - tus88 7y ago
    > x-powered-by header Is that a thing?
    - _kbh_ 7y ago
      Yeah, it generally returns some variant of information about the technology that is powering a web application such as ASP.Net or express.
misterman0 7y ago
Google doesn‘t use stopwords because if they did I wouldn't be able to search accurately for information regarding the group "The The". But because we can find the occasional slow-running query they might be using "stop phrases" but weren't aware "powered by" should be one.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  There is probably a small special index for things like "the the", and then the regular big index filters out such common words.
xurukefi 7y ago
2.64 seconds for me (i guess it's cached now?). Honestly, the mentality in this twitter thread is a joke. Google handles insane amounts of data beyond what 99.99% of engineers have ever dealt with. The fact that their search works at all is a miracle. But I guess people like to ignore that and much rather complain on Twitter that it takes a few seconds to query a database of trillions of records.
- calcifer 7y ago
  Well, thankfully you were here to defend one of the largest corporations on the planet from these Twitter meanies who dare discuss a slow responding page.
  - xurukefi 7y ago
    I don't see any factual objective discussion in the twitter thread. Btw, I'm not a big fan of Google, which I guess is what you were implying. In fact, I think Google is the most dangerous tech company currently in existence and I consider it a severe threat to our society. But that doesn't mean I cannot objectively judge the technical quality of their products and put things into perspective.
    - calcifer 7y ago
      > I don't see any factual objective discussion in the twitter thread. What do you mean? People are seeing slow queries for "powered by". Unless you think they are lying, I don't see how that isn't factual?
      - xurukefi 7y ago
        It's not what you say, but how you say it. This is just mindless disproportional bashing. "Come on Google I don't have all day!" "This is actually one of those crazy "facts from the future" to go back in time and tell people 10 years ago: Google has the dominant browser and mobile operating system, but their search sometimes takes 7 seconds." "@Google have you tried implementing these recommendations? https://developers.google.com/speed/" https://developers.google.com/speed/"
lgeorget 7y ago
Since a lot of pages contain these exact words (WordPress, github.io, etc.), maybe it's actually the sorting of the result that takes time?
louwrentius 7y ago
About 7.780.000.000 results (4,14 seconds)
- propogandist 7y ago
  I've found that if you go past page 2x on most of these results, Google just stops presenting pages and will tell you that it's omitted the results. The number of results may represent number of hits in a database, but it's not actually accessible to the end user. After you get into the last few pages, it'll also just cap the result count to the number of pages they've decided to show you.
lostlogin 7y ago
It’s really weird. If you add “powered by” to a query it’s really slow, but if you add a minor typo (eg “powere by”) it finds the same results, but faster.
- JayXon 7y ago
  According to https://twitter.com/syndk8/status/1157930276208750593 https://twitter.com/syndk8/status/1157930276208750593 > Powered by is a footprint that black hats/hackers and spammers use to find targets. So maybe Google isn't being slow, it's just sleeping intentionally to avoid abuse?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- testplzignore 7y ago
  It looks like it is the exact substring that is slow. "asdfpowered byasdf" is slow, too. I bet it's happening at some layer that doesn't even know how to parse the query.

Tdlr: Googling “Powered by” seems to cause google to take excessive time to return results.

by d-sc 7y ago

Tdlr: Googling “Powered by” seems to cause google to take excessive time to return results.

natrik 7y ago

"amex platinum powered by mastercard" as well takes > 5 seconds

_kbh_ 7y ago
"a powered by b" takes >5 seconds "x powered by header" takes >5 seconds "x-powered by header" takes >5 seconds "x-powered-by header" takes ~0.5/0.3 seconds what.
- petra 7y ago
  The last one may be from cache.
  - _kbh_ 7y ago
    b-cache-busting-powered-by b ~0.4 seconds.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  They're not the same query. They don't return the same results. I seem to recall a dash links words together somehow. So that probably narrows down the search space more.
- tru3_power 7y ago
  “powered by” a popular term used in a lot of footers for a lot of different web forums/cmses, I wonder if that has something to do with it?
  - robjan 7y ago
    I had the theory that maybe they are trying to filter it out to frustrate searches for vulnerable CMS
    - tru3_power 7y ago
      Yea, I was thinking along the same lines. You’ll often see publicly disclosed vulns include google dorks to find vulnerable sites, ex: a google dork to find forums running a vulnerable version of phpbb or something
- tus88 7y ago
  > x-powered-by header Is that a thing?
  - _kbh_ 7y ago
    Yeah, it generally returns some variant of information about the technology that is powering a web application such as ASP.Net or express.

misterman0 7y ago

Google doesn‘t use stopwords because if they did I wouldn't be able to search accurately for information regarding the group "The The". But because we can find the occasional slow-running query they might be using "stop phrases" but weren't aware "powered by" should be one.

londons_explore 7y ago
There is probably a small special index for things like "the the", and then the regular big index filters out such common words.

xurukefi 7y ago

2.64 seconds for me (i guess it's cached now?). Honestly, the mentality in this twitter thread is a joke. Google handles insane amounts of data beyond what 99.99% of engineers have ever dealt with. The fact that their search works at all is a miracle. But I guess people like to ignore that and much rather complain on Twitter that it takes a few seconds to query a database of trillions of records.

calcifer 7y ago
Well, thankfully you were here to defend one of the largest corporations on the planet from these Twitter meanies who dare discuss a slow responding page.
- xurukefi 7y ago
  I don't see any factual objective discussion in the twitter thread. Btw, I'm not a big fan of Google, which I guess is what you were implying. In fact, I think Google is the most dangerous tech company currently in existence and I consider it a severe threat to our society. But that doesn't mean I cannot objectively judge the technical quality of their products and put things into perspective.
  - calcifer 7y ago
    > I don't see any factual objective discussion in the twitter thread. What do you mean? People are seeing slow queries for "powered by". Unless you think they are lying, I don't see how that isn't factual?
    - xurukefi 7y ago
      It's not what you say, but how you say it. This is just mindless disproportional bashing. "Come on Google I don't have all day!" "This is actually one of those crazy "facts from the future" to go back in time and tell people 10 years ago: Google has the dominant browser and mobile operating system, but their search sometimes takes 7 seconds." "@Google have you tried implementing these recommendations? https://developers.google.com/speed/" https://developers.google.com/speed/"

lgeorget 7y ago

Since a lot of pages contain these exact words (WordPress, github.io, etc.), maybe it's actually the sorting of the result that takes time?

louwrentius 7y ago

About 7.780.000.000 results (4,14 seconds)

propogandist 7y ago
I've found that if you go past page 2x on most of these results, Google just stops presenting pages and will tell you that it's omitted the results. The number of results may represent number of hits in a database, but it's not actually accessible to the end user. After you get into the last few pages, it'll also just cap the result count to the number of pages they've decided to show you.

lostlogin 7y ago

It’s really weird. If you add “powered by” to a query it’s really slow, but if you add a minor typo (eg “powere by”) it finds the same results, but faster.

JayXon 7y ago
According to https://twitter.com/syndk8/status/1157930276208750593 https://twitter.com/syndk8/status/1157930276208750593 > Powered by is a footprint that black hats/hackers and spammers use to find targets. So maybe Google isn't being slow, it's just sleeping intentionally to avoid abuse?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
testplzignore 7y ago
It looks like it is the exact substring that is slow. "asdfpowered byasdf" is slow, too. I bet it's happening at some layer that doesn't even know how to parse the query.