4 ms·

"I want to see the best results, period - not the best results for me" But aren't you a part of the relevance equation? The ideal results for a search like [bi

"I want to see the best results, period - not the best results for me" But aren't you a part of the relevance equation? The ideal results for a search like [bitcoin crash] should be different for a Japanese-speaking searcher in Tokyo vs. a German-speaking searcher in Munich vs. a bitcoin expert vs. a programmer trying to diagnose why compiling bitcoin is crashing vs. my Mom who has never heard of bitcoin before, right?

sambe 15y ago
But why on earth do you persistently try to present German search results to an English speaker in Munich? This has been peeve #1 for years, across all Google services.
- Matt_Cutts 15y ago
  Good question; one person is annoyed by this endlessly a few offices down from me. It's hard to make sure that things are handled consistently sometimes, but if you use google.com/ncr or the "Google.com in English" link at the bottom of the home page, that should help. The "Language tools" link to the right of the search box should also let you set a cookie with your language preference.
  - roc 15y ago
    And yet for some reason, the search link from Google Toolbar seemed to ignore that cookie and certainly ignored my account preferences, sending me to the localized search page regardless. Short version of long story: I used to bounce my net traffic through an ssh tunnel to a hosted VM. The VM was moved to a new machine in south-east asia. Having Google Toolbar constantly send my searches to the localized engine, despite the cookie selection, my being logged in and my preferences being clearly set, was more of a day-to-day annoyance than having my traffic piped across the Pacific twice.
  - delackner 15y ago
    I appreciate that you went and asked someone for the clarification that this issue is about the preference being set in a cookie and not in user settings, but this doesn't solve the problem for many of us. For YEARS, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, always logged-in, always with preferences set to english, it is infuriating to routinely end up receiving results that conflict with your explicit language settings. What, concretely, do we have to do to get someone at google to push a change from using cookies to a real user-setting to fix this absurdity? You said they did it for speed. Giving me completely incorrect results in a language I can't even read 1 millisecond faster than giving me results that I actually care about is a win? This is over-optimization.
    - sambe 15y ago
      Exactly, and it's cross-device, cross-service. What about browser built-in search? Or mobile? Or not wanting cookies or having to log in? I see my browser having a preferred language setting...
malaka 15y ago
"But aren't you a part of the relevance equation? The ideal results for a search like [bitcoin crash] should be different for a Japanese-speaking searcher in Tokyo vs. a German-speaking searcher in Munich vs. a bitcoin expert vs. a programmer trying to diagnose why compiling bitcoin is crashing vs. my Mom who has never heard of bitcoin before, right?" Maybe, but that is not the point. Besides, you are mixing localization (japanese vs german) with personalization (expert vs naive), and what is worst is that you are assuming that Google knows so well each user so as to be right (and that is either impossible, either extremely creepy), at every single instant of his life (a person can change interests). Furthermore, to grab your example, how can Google know that an expert in bitcoin and expert in bitcoin compilation and crash solver, is not just interested in hearing about the "market" crash of bitcoin? Google CANNOT read the users' mind. And even if it did, there would not be a need for "personalized search", as the "mind reading" would give enough search criteria to nail the results more easily (albeit, most people do not know exactly what they want, so it will still be an iterative process, which is good, as randomness is the seed for evolution). So, back to the point, it is that in the quest for "adequate results" for each person, Google is turning web search into a non-deterministic event ( * ). Imagine the web being a library, and the search being searching for the library's book database, why would the search for a given book return different results to different persons? It should always return the same results, if the person doing the search is not satisfied with the results, then she/he will add more criteria. In other words, let the person do the filtering! Once that Google accepts that in his quest for "better results" (where 'better' is a concept decided by solely Google and whose ranking parameters and algorithm are unknown) there is a potential (probably demonstrable already) for a "filter bubble" with positive feedback loop on user behaviour, which, as with any positive feedback loop, can go out of control, exacerbating certain ideologies and fueling extremisms. And there is a fundamental difference between a "self guided" (as in self controlled) filtering, where users would knowingly filter out results in order to find those that they like, and a "google guided" (as in externally controlled), filtering. ( * ) strictly speaking, search will not be deterministic as the web is a dynamic system and it grows, so search results can vary with time, but they should not vary from person to person at a given time.

sambe 15y ago

But why on earth do you persistently try to present German search results to an English speaker in Munich? This has been peeve #1 for years, across all Google services.

Matt_Cutts 15y ago
Good question; one person is annoyed by this endlessly a few offices down from me. It's hard to make sure that things are handled consistently sometimes, but if you use google.com/ncr or the "Google.com in English" link at the bottom of the home page, that should help. The "Language tools" link to the right of the search box should also let you set a cookie with your language preference.
- roc 15y ago
  And yet for some reason, the search link from Google Toolbar seemed to ignore that cookie and certainly ignored my account preferences, sending me to the localized search page regardless. Short version of long story: I used to bounce my net traffic through an ssh tunnel to a hosted VM. The VM was moved to a new machine in south-east asia. Having Google Toolbar constantly send my searches to the localized engine, despite the cookie selection, my being logged in and my preferences being clearly set, was more of a day-to-day annoyance than having my traffic piped across the Pacific twice.
- delackner 15y ago
  I appreciate that you went and asked someone for the clarification that this issue is about the preference being set in a cookie and not in user settings, but this doesn't solve the problem for many of us. For YEARS, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, always logged-in, always with preferences set to english, it is infuriating to routinely end up receiving results that conflict with your explicit language settings. What, concretely, do we have to do to get someone at google to push a change from using cookies to a real user-setting to fix this absurdity? You said they did it for speed. Giving me completely incorrect results in a language I can't even read 1 millisecond faster than giving me results that I actually care about is a win? This is over-optimization.
  - sambe 15y ago
    Exactly, and it's cross-device, cross-service. What about browser built-in search? Or mobile? Or not wanting cookies or having to log in? I see my browser having a preferred language setting...

malaka 15y ago

"But aren't you a part of the relevance equation? The ideal results for a search like [bitcoin crash] should be different for a Japanese-speaking searcher in Tokyo vs. a German-speaking searcher in Munich vs. a bitcoin expert vs. a programmer trying to diagnose why compiling bitcoin is crashing vs. my Mom who has never heard of bitcoin before, right?" Maybe, but that is not the point. Besides, you are mixing localization (japanese vs german) with personalization (expert vs naive), and what is worst is that you are assuming that Google knows so well each user so as to be right (and that is either impossible, either extremely creepy), at every single instant of his life (a person can change interests). Furthermore, to grab your example, how can Google know that an expert in bitcoin and expert in bitcoin compilation and crash solver, is not just interested in hearing about the "market" crash of bitcoin? Google CANNOT read the users' mind. And even if it did, there would not be a need for "personalized search", as the "mind reading" would give enough search criteria to nail the results more easily (albeit, most people do not know exactly what they want, so it will still be an iterative process, which is good, as randomness is the seed for evolution). So, back to the point, it is that in the quest for "adequate results" for each person, Google is turning web search into a non-deterministic event ( * ). Imagine the web being a library, and the search being searching for the library's book database, why would the search for a given book return different results to different persons? It should always return the same results, if the person doing the search is not satisfied with the results, then she/he will add more criteria. In other words, let the person do the filtering! Once that Google accepts that in his quest for "better results" (where 'better' is a concept decided by solely Google and whose ranking parameters and algorithm are unknown) there is a potential (probably demonstrable already) for a "filter bubble" with positive feedback loop on user behaviour, which, as with any positive feedback loop, can go out of control, exacerbating certain ideologies and fueling extremisms. And there is a fundamental difference between a "self guided" (as in self controlled) filtering, where users would knowingly filter out results in order to find those that they like, and a "google guided" (as in externally controlled), filtering. ( * ) strictly speaking, search will not be deterministic as the web is a dynamic system and it grows, so search results can vary with time, but they should not vary from person to person at a given time.