6 ms·

On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. They can be (and almost certainly are) gamed. Users that don't click

by sli 7y ago

On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. They can be (and almost certainly are) gamed. Users that don't click through open themselves up to carrying on being misinformed.

pbiggar 7y ago
For a recent search "report amex card stolen", google showed a phone number for a scam who asked for a social security number as soon as you called.
minor3rd 7y ago
People on the web take the risk of being misinformed, clicking or not.
concert-gilled 7y ago
The websites that the results aren't curated either. Clicking through to the site could provide the same incorrect information.
- buboard 7y ago
  sometimes the blurb just has an answer to a different question. Websites are curated, unless its spam.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Websites are curated, unless its spam. Yes, but even when they are curated the curators are usually unreliable and sometimes malicious.
    - buboard 7y ago
      snippets are just a reflection of that. how is google faring better in that respect?
- mcv 7y ago
  But that's the responsibility of that website. Of course it's bad if Google lists a site with wrong information as the first hit, but I think it's worse when Google blindly copies that false info and lists it as their own zero-click result. By doing that, Google itself takes responsibility for the information. Although sometimes the site is actually correct and Google still gets it wrong by copying the info incorrectly or losing some context or qualifiers. I loved zero-click results back when DucfDuckGo first introduced them, but I'm less enthusiastic about Google's implementation of them.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  The point is that Google frequently adds another level of incorrectness, that may not be identifiable without checking the source. This is pretty common on Wikipedia, and when people link to things in discussion forums, as well. And anything Google does, is done at vast scale, which makes me, at least, think it might be substantially affecting society.
- wolco 7y ago
  Those are sites google chooses are correct.
squeaky-clean 7y ago
I've found them to be incorrect so often on things when I would click through to the actual page or find a better link. I don't trust just the blurb for any answers any more.
- ribosometronome 7y ago
  They can get it painfully wrong last time. I came down with something like optic neuritis a few years ago. It's often one of the first signs of MS in many folk. When I googled something like "MS life expectancy", the blurb said something like "3-7 years" -- with subtext indicating it's 3-7 years LESS than average rather than "you're kicking it in 3 years". Turns out I didn't have optic neuritis.
- mtgx 7y ago
  Let's hope Google doesn't intend to enable the feature for the 2020 elections (or any election), because this one thing could single-handedly do to Google PR-wise and politics-wise what the trending topics did to Facebook in 2016/2017.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I don't trust just the blurb for any answers any more. I don't, either. A site I used to own had a discussion forum on it. It contained a message along the lines of "Real Estate Agent X is a great guy. Real Estate Agent Y is a complete sleazebag." The blurb that Google displayed for it was "Real Estate Agent X... is a sleazebag." And that was the first result for anyone who searched for that agent's name. As you can imagine, I received many angry e-mails, phone calls, and legal threats. No, you can't explain to angry people that it's "just" an algorithm that told the world that they're a sleazebag. I ended up editing the post so that Google would display a different version after its next scrape.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    I think there's more to this... Google use lots of fancy Natural Language Processing stuff to extract that data, and unless the wording was very tortuous, I doubt it could make such a big mistake by chance.
rhizome 7y ago
This is especially true where the answer is time-bound, which happens a lot in technical topics. Many times the snippet is for an earlier version of the language (but still with a high PageRank), or the Operating System (especially Android settings), and the most annoying at all: an ancient answer in an undated blog post.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Google is good at dating undated content. They keep track of the first time they've ever seen a bit of text, and assume it was composed then, even if it later gets copied to other sites.
sameers 7y ago
For example, this WaPo story, about YouTube videos for some medical queries that go to videos featuring quack remedies and anti-vaxxer misinformation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/they-turn-to-facebook-and-youtube-to-find-a-cure-for-cancer--and-get-sucked-into-a-world-of-bogus-medicine/2019/06/25/6df3ddae-7cdc-11e9-a5b3-34f3edf1351e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/they-turn-to-...
dragonwriter 7y ago
> On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. The “therefore” is misplaced; curated snippets aren't always correct, either.

by sli 7y ago

pbiggar 7y ago

For a recent search "report amex card stolen", google showed a phone number for a scam who asked for a social security number as soon as you called.

minor3rd 7y ago

People on the web take the risk of being misinformed, clicking or not.

concert-gilled 7y ago

The websites that the results aren't curated either. Clicking through to the site could provide the same incorrect information.

buboard 7y ago
sometimes the blurb just has an answer to a different question. Websites are curated, unless its spam.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Websites are curated, unless its spam. Yes, but even when they are curated the curators are usually unreliable and sometimes malicious.
  - buboard 7y ago
    snippets are just a reflection of that. how is google faring better in that respect?
mcv 7y ago
But that's the responsibility of that website. Of course it's bad if Google lists a site with wrong information as the first hit, but I think it's worse when Google blindly copies that false info and lists it as their own zero-click result. By doing that, Google itself takes responsibility for the information. Although sometimes the site is actually correct and Google still gets it wrong by copying the info incorrectly or losing some context or qualifiers. I loved zero-click results back when DucfDuckGo first introduced them, but I'm less enthusiastic about Google's implementation of them.
perl4ever 7y ago
The point is that Google frequently adds another level of incorrectness, that may not be identifiable without checking the source. This is pretty common on Wikipedia, and when people link to things in discussion forums, as well. And anything Google does, is done at vast scale, which makes me, at least, think it might be substantially affecting society.
wolco 7y ago
Those are sites google chooses are correct.

squeaky-clean 7y ago

I've found them to be incorrect so often on things when I would click through to the actual page or find a better link. I don't trust just the blurb for any answers any more.

ribosometronome 7y ago
They can get it painfully wrong last time. I came down with something like optic neuritis a few years ago. It's often one of the first signs of MS in many folk. When I googled something like "MS life expectancy", the blurb said something like "3-7 years" -- with subtext indicating it's 3-7 years LESS than average rather than "you're kicking it in 3 years". Turns out I didn't have optic neuritis.
mtgx 7y ago
Let's hope Google doesn't intend to enable the feature for the 2020 elections (or any election), because this one thing could single-handedly do to Google PR-wise and politics-wise what the trending topics did to Facebook in 2016/2017.
reaperducer 7y ago
I don't trust just the blurb for any answers any more. I don't, either. A site I used to own had a discussion forum on it. It contained a message along the lines of "Real Estate Agent X is a great guy. Real Estate Agent Y is a complete sleazebag." The blurb that Google displayed for it was "Real Estate Agent X... is a sleazebag." And that was the first result for anyone who searched for that agent's name. As you can imagine, I received many angry e-mails, phone calls, and legal threats. No, you can't explain to angry people that it's "just" an algorithm that told the world that they're a sleazebag. I ended up editing the post so that Google would display a different version after its next scrape.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  I think there's more to this... Google use lots of fancy Natural Language Processing stuff to extract that data, and unless the wording was very tortuous, I doubt it could make such a big mistake by chance.

rhizome 7y ago

This is especially true where the answer is time-bound, which happens a lot in technical topics. Many times the snippet is for an earlier version of the language (but still with a high PageRank), or the Operating System (especially Android settings), and the most annoying at all: an ancient answer in an undated blog post.

londons_explore 7y ago
Google is good at dating undated content. They keep track of the first time they've ever seen a bit of text, and assume it was composed then, even if it later gets copied to other sites.

sameers 7y ago

For example, this WaPo story, about YouTube videos for some medical queries that go to videos featuring quack remedies and anti-vaxxer misinformation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/they-turn-to-facebook-and-youtube-to-find-a-cure-for-cancer--and-get-sucked-into-a-world-of-bogus-medicine/2019/06/25/6df3ddae-7cdc-11e9-a5b3-34f3edf1351e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/they-turn-to-...

dragonwriter 7y ago

> On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. The “therefore” is misplaced; curated snippets aren't always correct, either.