5 ms·

So, your argument is that it's bullshit because it's true?

by qjz 15y ago

yanw 15y ago
It's bullshit because search is filtering and the filtering done by search is being exaggerated by those who peddle this bullshit.
- qjz 15y ago
  I expect my search to be faithful to the terms I enter. If the results aren't satisfactory, I'll narrow the search with additional terms. Withholding information based on some guess at my political leanings is dishonest. I'd be appalled if a librarian did it; why should I expect less from a search engine?
  - yanw 15y ago
    The 'political leaning results' are just a tool the author used to try to explained his (ill-informed) point, there are no evidence to any such degree of personalization specially not to any 'bubble' inducing extent, it's all very sensationalistic. And for the record the political example was about facebook wall.
  - Uchikoma 15y ago
    What does faithful mean? You want German or Chinese results? You want global or local results (in your language of choice). There is always personalization in search.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    If you went to a librarian and said "show me Egypt", she would have nowhere to start. A conversation would then ensue about what you are interested in. Keep going to the library, keep having those conversations, and eventually, the librarian will take you straight to the books you want when you ask for Norway. If you want something different, you'll have to explicitly ask. What Google is doing is no different. It just happens to have a lot more conversations with you.
    - dhimes 15y ago
      What Google is doing is no different only if you can, in your ensuing "conversations," correct a misinterpretation that may have happened somewhere along the way. If your ability to do that is hampered because the only way to do it is by clicking on something, you don't see the thing to click on which will do this, then the filtering is not helping (and actually works against Google's and my mutual interests).
      - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
        In theory, there are two types of corrections, one is blatant, the other is subtle: - You blatantly correct the conversation by adding additional text to the search: "norway government" versus "norway travel". - You subtly correct the conversation over time with more government queries/clicks/likes or more travel queries/clicks/likes. Listening to Matt Cutt's response, it sounds like all of these signals are pretty minor anyway.
        dhimes 15y ago
        Not sure where you are going with your dichotomy- if you are unable to correct in either case (because you don't get the option of clicking on a correct answer) then it fails. I suppose with enough perseverance you could trick the search engine into showing you what you want- if you know it exists in the first place- but then, (1) just enter the very specific term to start with, and (2) this defeats the attempts to become more relevant. I agree with you that these seem to be small changes. So far.
      - chc 15y ago
        That's a good point, but I think it kind of misses the forest for the trees. It's true that personalization might sometimes lead Google to mistakenly show you less relevant results, but it seems pretty certain that the opposite would also be true — a generic page will sometimes show less relevant results than a personalized one. One search result is going to be shown ahead of another either way. If showing a less relevant result ahead of a more relevant one is considered "hampering," I don't see any reason this "hampering" is unique to personalized search.
bad_user 15y ago
I see it as being a straw man argument. The article makes the assumption that personalized search results are bad for you, then goes on exemplifying it, but does not say or demonstrate in any way why personalized search results are bad, especially since it doesn't give any context about the person making those queries. Search ranking is a matter of context. "Egypt" does not mean anything, other than the name of a country, and different people mean different things. When you're searching for "Egypt" and want to get travel tips, if you don't get them you can always expand your query to "Egypt travelling tips". But even that is a pretty shallow request and you can further expand it like "Egypt travel guide to the pyramids". The search engine's job is to find what I'm looking for. And IMHO the current state of the art is a little behind my expectations - I would have expected these personalized results to be far more effective than they are by now.
- _delirium 15y ago
  It's true that sometimes I'm looking for specific things, but other times I'm searching to get an idea of "what's out there", to fill gaps in my knowledge and make sure I'm appraised of what's going on in the world. It'd be nice to at least have some control over what kinds of searches I'm doing. For example, if I search for my own name, what I want to know is something like: what are the most common search results other people get when they search for my name. The same is usually true if I'm doing "related work" type searching for research; I explicitly want to find stuff outside my immediate area of specialization, in order to make sure I'm not missing anything that other people would've expected me to cover.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    I understand that, but if the search results are not personalized for you, then they must be personalized for the common denominator, as in the hive, the majority's opinion, the status quo. For general search queries, the long tail goes out the window anyway, and I haven't done or seen any quality metrics for DDG, but I doubt their search results are better for exploration or getting opinions different from your own.
- cbailey 15y ago

So, your argument is that it's bullshit because it's true?

by qjz 15y ago

So, your argument is that it's bullshit because it's true?

yanw 15y ago

It's bullshit because search is filtering and the filtering done by search is being exaggerated by those who peddle this bullshit.

qjz 15y ago
I expect my search to be faithful to the terms I enter. If the results aren't satisfactory, I'll narrow the search with additional terms. Withholding information based on some guess at my political leanings is dishonest. I'd be appalled if a librarian did it; why should I expect less from a search engine?
- yanw 15y ago
  The 'political leaning results' are just a tool the author used to try to explained his (ill-informed) point, there are no evidence to any such degree of personalization specially not to any 'bubble' inducing extent, it's all very sensationalistic. And for the record the political example was about facebook wall.
- Uchikoma 15y ago
  What does faithful mean? You want German or Chinese results? You want global or local results (in your language of choice). There is always personalization in search.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  If you went to a librarian and said "show me Egypt", she would have nowhere to start. A conversation would then ensue about what you are interested in. Keep going to the library, keep having those conversations, and eventually, the librarian will take you straight to the books you want when you ask for Norway. If you want something different, you'll have to explicitly ask. What Google is doing is no different. It just happens to have a lot more conversations with you.
  - dhimes 15y ago
    What Google is doing is no different only if you can, in your ensuing "conversations," correct a misinterpretation that may have happened somewhere along the way. If your ability to do that is hampered because the only way to do it is by clicking on something, you don't see the thing to click on which will do this, then the filtering is not helping (and actually works against Google's and my mutual interests).
    - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
      In theory, there are two types of corrections, one is blatant, the other is subtle: - You blatantly correct the conversation by adding additional text to the search: "norway government" versus "norway travel". - You subtly correct the conversation over time with more government queries/clicks/likes or more travel queries/clicks/likes. Listening to Matt Cutt's response, it sounds like all of these signals are pretty minor anyway.
      - dhimes 15y ago
        Not sure where you are going with your dichotomy- if you are unable to correct in either case (because you don't get the option of clicking on a correct answer) then it fails. I suppose with enough perseverance you could trick the search engine into showing you what you want- if you know it exists in the first place- but then, (1) just enter the very specific term to start with, and (2) this defeats the attempts to become more relevant. I agree with you that these seem to be small changes. So far.
    - chc 15y ago
      That's a good point, but I think it kind of misses the forest for the trees. It's true that personalization might sometimes lead Google to mistakenly show you less relevant results, but it seems pretty certain that the opposite would also be true — a generic page will sometimes show less relevant results than a personalized one. One search result is going to be shown ahead of another either way. If showing a less relevant result ahead of a more relevant one is considered "hampering," I don't see any reason this "hampering" is unique to personalized search.

bad_user 15y ago

I see it as being a straw man argument. The article makes the assumption that personalized search results are bad for you, then goes on exemplifying it, but does not say or demonstrate in any way why personalized search results are bad, especially since it doesn't give any context about the person making those queries. Search ranking is a matter of context. "Egypt" does not mean anything, other than the name of a country, and different people mean different things. When you're searching for "Egypt" and want to get travel tips, if you don't get them you can always expand your query to "Egypt travelling tips". But even that is a pretty shallow request and you can further expand it like "Egypt travel guide to the pyramids". The search engine's job is to find what I'm looking for. And IMHO the current state of the art is a little behind my expectations - I would have expected these personalized results to be far more effective than they are by now.

_delirium 15y ago
It's true that sometimes I'm looking for specific things, but other times I'm searching to get an idea of "what's out there", to fill gaps in my knowledge and make sure I'm appraised of what's going on in the world. It'd be nice to at least have some control over what kinds of searches I'm doing. For example, if I search for my own name, what I want to know is something like: what are the most common search results other people get when they search for my name. The same is usually true if I'm doing "related work" type searching for research; I explicitly want to find stuff outside my immediate area of specialization, in order to make sure I'm not missing anything that other people would've expected me to cover.
- bad_user 15y ago
  I understand that, but if the search results are not personalized for you, then they must be personalized for the common denominator, as in the hive, the majority's opinion, the status quo. For general search queries, the long tail goes out the window anyway, and I haven't done or seen any quality metrics for DDG, but I doubt their search results are better for exploration or getting opinions different from your own.
cbailey 15y ago