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I want to share a recent search I did through Google -- at work I wanted to look up how to implement conditionals in Microsoft Forms (i.e. the next question in

by amanzi 6y ago

I want to share a recent search I did through Google -- at work I wanted to look up how to implement conditionals in Microsoft Forms (i.e. the next question in the form is based on the previous answer). I searched for "microsoft forms conditional" (without quotes) and the first search result on Google was this page on how to "use branching in Microsoft Forms" - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-branching-in-microsoft-forms-16634fda-eddb-44da-856d-6a8213f0d8bb https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-branching-in-... That page doesn't contain the word "conditional" at all - the word that Microsoft uses is "branching" but Google deduced that it was the best result, which was perfect. The same search in either Bing or DDG produces results that all have the words "microsoft", "forms", and "conditional" in them and none of them link to the page I mentioned above, which I consider to be the best result. Moral of the story? Search is hard, but Google does it better than everyone else. Also, I learned via this thread that DDG is just a wrapper around Bing, which explains why the search results between DDG and Bing were near identical - they even have the matching video suggestions.

dunefox 6y ago
I never understand why people seem to like the DDG results so much. I often have to go back to Google.
sshagent 6y ago
I was moaning about this elsewhere on this site, how searching for exact phrases in quotes seems to now be a dead thing. Google and Amazon both just pick a couple of the words and shows you that. Dammit, if i put multiple words in a quote search for that phrase. If you don't find much, then sure show the other thing.
popinman322 6y ago
Just a comment: Sounds like the results of a neural network: roughly approximating your intent and searching around that intent, in continuous space, to find other viable search terms and phrases. (This is one possible approach, given in broad strokes.) That's a massive barrier to entry. You need enough data and compute to train a massive language model, more compute to run the model against all incoming queries, and then even more compute to handle the extra search load precipitated by use of the language model. Not to mention the years of R&D that go into these models and their associated tooling.
- eitland 6y ago
  > That's a massive barrier to entry. You need enough data and compute to train a massive language model, more compute to run the model against all incoming queries, and then even more compute to handle the extra search load precipitated by use of the language model. Luckily, most of the time you could improve my user experience by removing that cr*p and give me my 2007-2009 Google back. From there you would only need to allow users to make personal blacklists, share personal blacklists (this was about the time when auto-generated content started to become popular) and maybe also aggregate some popular blacklists for a default blacklist and it would be better than anything we have seen since. (I remember having a txt-file with -spammydomain.com -anotherspammer.com etc etc that I pasted in at the end of certain searches to take care of sites that had either had - auto-generated content - or stuffed their pages with black/black or white on white keywords )
  - bananaface 6y ago
    Giving you 2007 Google might not work because people are using 2020 strategies to game it. But I'm definitely skeptical that that's all there is to it.
    - eitland 6y ago
      I hear this a lot. But in all honesty it is not the SEO scammers fault that Google serves me pages that doesn't contain the words I searched for after I have chosen the verbatim option. It also isn't SEO scammers fault that when I search for Angular mat-table[0] I get a number of pictures of tables with mats on. That is probably the result of someone playing with some cool AI tools while othwrs are busy trying to make more efficient ways to ignore customer feedback ;-) We must manage to keep those two thoughts in our head simultaneously: - Black hat SEO have changed - Google has adapted to another audience and has ditched us power users hoping we wouldn't notice. [0]: screenshots of that and some other clear examples of Google and Amazon testing out AI in production here: https://erik.itland.no/tag:aifails https://erik.itland.no/tag:aifails
      - 6y ago
ur-whale 6y ago
>Moral of the story? Search is hard, but Google does it better than everyone else. True, but they do it worse and worse. Google still has some margin before their usability declines to the level of their competitors, but they're headed there quite fast.
BLanen 6y ago
No, it's deliberately made worse the last couple years. They have put way too much confidence in their semantics-ai and it seem way overfit. I used to be able to learn how to effectively search but lately it's just so terrible. It's made for 99% of people's dumb searched, but try to get specific and it fails hard.

by amanzi 6y ago

dunefox 6y ago

I never understand why people seem to like the DDG results so much. I often have to go back to Google.

sshagent 6y ago

I was moaning about this elsewhere on this site, how searching for exact phrases in quotes seems to now be a dead thing. Google and Amazon both just pick a couple of the words and shows you that. Dammit, if i put multiple words in a quote search for that phrase. If you don't find much, then sure show the other thing.

popinman322 6y ago

Just a comment: Sounds like the results of a neural network: roughly approximating your intent and searching around that intent, in continuous space, to find other viable search terms and phrases. (This is one possible approach, given in broad strokes.) That's a massive barrier to entry. You need enough data and compute to train a massive language model, more compute to run the model against all incoming queries, and then even more compute to handle the extra search load precipitated by use of the language model. Not to mention the years of R&D that go into these models and their associated tooling.

eitland 6y ago
> That's a massive barrier to entry. You need enough data and compute to train a massive language model, more compute to run the model against all incoming queries, and then even more compute to handle the extra search load precipitated by use of the language model. Luckily, most of the time you could improve my user experience by removing that cr*p and give me my 2007-2009 Google back. From there you would only need to allow users to make personal blacklists, share personal blacklists (this was about the time when auto-generated content started to become popular) and maybe also aggregate some popular blacklists for a default blacklist and it would be better than anything we have seen since. (I remember having a txt-file with -spammydomain.com -anotherspammer.com etc etc that I pasted in at the end of certain searches to take care of sites that had either had - auto-generated content - or stuffed their pages with black/black or white on white keywords )
- bananaface 6y ago
  Giving you 2007 Google might not work because people are using 2020 strategies to game it. But I'm definitely skeptical that that's all there is to it.
  - eitland 6y ago
    I hear this a lot. But in all honesty it is not the SEO scammers fault that Google serves me pages that doesn't contain the words I searched for after I have chosen the verbatim option. It also isn't SEO scammers fault that when I search for Angular mat-table[0] I get a number of pictures of tables with mats on. That is probably the result of someone playing with some cool AI tools while othwrs are busy trying to make more efficient ways to ignore customer feedback ;-) We must manage to keep those two thoughts in our head simultaneously: - Black hat SEO have changed - Google has adapted to another audience and has ditched us power users hoping we wouldn't notice. [0]: screenshots of that and some other clear examples of Google and Amazon testing out AI in production here: https://erik.itland.no/tag:aifails https://erik.itland.no/tag:aifails
    - 6y ago

ur-whale 6y ago

>Moral of the story? Search is hard, but Google does it better than everyone else. True, but they do it worse and worse. Google still has some margin before their usability declines to the level of their competitors, but they're headed there quite fast.

BLanen 6y ago

No, it's deliberately made worse the last couple years. They have put way too much confidence in their semantics-ai and it seem way overfit. I used to be able to learn how to effectively search but lately it's just so terrible. It's made for 99% of people's dumb searched, but try to get specific and it fails hard.