4 ms·

Wait. Is thst true though? I'm a technical person, with a lot of very specific searches. Around 70% of the time, I don't actually get the results that answer wh

by usui 5y ago

Wait. Is thst true though? I'm a technical person, with a lot of very specific searches. Around 70% of the time, I don't actually get the results that answer what I'm looking for, no matter how many quotation marks I surround my strings and no matter if I use site:x.com, and various other Google hacks I've had to come up with to try and find my relevant results. The reason this happens is because the Google result shows my words in the excerpt, but when I click in, there's zero percent of the content to be found. That feels like a bait-and-switch akin to the taxi analogy. My relevant results now either don't exist, or is in an absolute sea of mind-bogglingly bad results that it wears me out such that I would rather have had no results to begin with. In this sense, I feel like Google is absolutely purposefully showing me results that I didn't want to go to.

kbenson 5y ago
It is. If you want a more accurate analogy, it's like getting into a cab and asking to go to Morton's Meats and the cab driver saying "are you sure? I know this really great place called Shelley's Steaks that's better and cheaper! What do you say?" and then you get to make a call as to whether to trust the cab driver (google) has your best interests at heart or not, and whether to go where you originally wanted or to where you were recommended. This happens in real life all the time. Cab drivers get kick backs from specific places they have relationships with if they deliver people there, so you have to wonder whether they're actually recommending a better place for you or a better place for them, just like you do with Google. And yes, I've been referred to a place by a cab driver when asking for a recommendation and found it didn't actually serve my needs at all, and in retrospect it was obvious from the conversation I was steered there without care for what I really wanted.
- diffeomorphism 5y ago
  Your analogy is much more transparent about it. Google is more like the following. "Hi, I would like to go to Morton's meats" "Sure, I can take you to Shelly's" "No, I said Morton's" "Oh, the steak house downtown. Sure, I can take you to Billy's" "What? No! Morton, you hear me" "Ah, yeah, Morton, here you go.... by the way, the other places paid for ads" Much less transparent, much more obnoxious.
  - winternett 5y ago
    And then Billy's and Shelly's actually make terrible steaks with all kinds of hidden costs and cheap side dishes because they cut corners in order to make up for the loss on their annual advertising spend.... Google helping business... Yeah. :L
  - mbg721 5y ago
    "Yep, headed to Moron's Meats, it's really popular...(mumbles) let me know if you really meant to go to Morton's Meats..."
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    Don't forget the real-time bidding market. If you're wearing an expensive watch, Shelly's will give the driver a 10% bonus, or if you have a nice pocket square, then Morton's will offer you a window table.
fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
> The reason this happens is because the Google result shows my words in the excerpt, but when I click in, there's zero percent of the content to be found. I’ve seen this too, but I’ve always assumed it has to do with meta tags or something.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  No, it's due to illegal SEO practices where they serve Googlebot a plate of GPT3 meets keyword spam, and then serve you a page full of advertising and phishing links.
  - usui 5y ago
    I've been wondering for a long time what's been going on. This makes a lot of sense! So if the User Agent is Google, the website produces relevant-sounding content with no JavaScript spam? I never realized GPT-3 could be used for this. The next time I see a bait-and-switch website in my search, I'll try changing my User Agent to Google.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      I wonder if Google indexes with browser user agents sometimes: unless the site used source IP tricks, it’d let Google detect this sort of thing.
      - IX-103 5y ago
        Supposedly the Chrome safe browsing service crawls the web looking for malware. Since that's focused on finding malware they likely make it look like a normal user in terms of user agent and IP address, so it can probably detect these pages. I believe the signals from the safe browsing service are used to affect search result ranking, but I have no idea if they look for different content being served to the Google crawler.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      GPT3-alike, not GPT3 specifically. Google’s bot can’t detect when it’s being fed plausible gibberish, or worse, stolen content with random keywords injected. I’m very curious if your Googlebot surfing comes up with any interesting outcomes!

by usui 5y ago

kbenson 5y ago

It is. If you want a more accurate analogy, it's like getting into a cab and asking to go to Morton's Meats and the cab driver saying "are you sure? I know this really great place called Shelley's Steaks that's better and cheaper! What do you say?" and then you get to make a call as to whether to trust the cab driver (google) has your best interests at heart or not, and whether to go where you originally wanted or to where you were recommended. This happens in real life all the time. Cab drivers get kick backs from specific places they have relationships with if they deliver people there, so you have to wonder whether they're actually recommending a better place for you or a better place for them, just like you do with Google. And yes, I've been referred to a place by a cab driver when asking for a recommendation and found it didn't actually serve my needs at all, and in retrospect it was obvious from the conversation I was steered there without care for what I really wanted.

diffeomorphism 5y ago
Your analogy is much more transparent about it. Google is more like the following. "Hi, I would like to go to Morton's meats" "Sure, I can take you to Shelly's" "No, I said Morton's" "Oh, the steak house downtown. Sure, I can take you to Billy's" "What? No! Morton, you hear me" "Ah, yeah, Morton, here you go.... by the way, the other places paid for ads" Much less transparent, much more obnoxious.
- winternett 5y ago
  And then Billy's and Shelly's actually make terrible steaks with all kinds of hidden costs and cheap side dishes because they cut corners in order to make up for the loss on their annual advertising spend.... Google helping business... Yeah. :L
- mbg721 5y ago
  "Yep, headed to Moron's Meats, it's really popular...(mumbles) let me know if you really meant to go to Morton's Meats..."
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Don't forget the real-time bidding market. If you're wearing an expensive watch, Shelly's will give the driver a 10% bonus, or if you have a nice pocket square, then Morton's will offer you a window table.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago

> The reason this happens is because the Google result shows my words in the excerpt, but when I click in, there's zero percent of the content to be found. I’ve seen this too, but I’ve always assumed it has to do with meta tags or something.

floatingatoll 5y ago
No, it's due to illegal SEO practices where they serve Googlebot a plate of GPT3 meets keyword spam, and then serve you a page full of advertising and phishing links.
- usui 5y ago
  I've been wondering for a long time what's been going on. This makes a lot of sense! So if the User Agent is Google, the website produces relevant-sounding content with no JavaScript spam? I never realized GPT-3 could be used for this. The next time I see a bait-and-switch website in my search, I'll try changing my User Agent to Google.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    I wonder if Google indexes with browser user agents sometimes: unless the site used source IP tricks, it’d let Google detect this sort of thing.
    - IX-103 5y ago
      Supposedly the Chrome safe browsing service crawls the web looking for malware. Since that's focused on finding malware they likely make it look like a normal user in terms of user agent and IP address, so it can probably detect these pages. I believe the signals from the safe browsing service are used to affect search result ranking, but I have no idea if they look for different content being served to the Google crawler.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    GPT3-alike, not GPT3 specifically. Google’s bot can’t detect when it’s being fed plausible gibberish, or worse, stolen content with random keywords injected. I’m very curious if your Googlebot surfing comes up with any interesting outcomes!