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>Should I simply accept that this site is the correct top result for my users' queries, Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the tr

by moltke 5y ago

>Should I simply accept that this site is the correct top result for my users' queries, Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. It's their job (and specifically not yours) to determine how well the text they find corresponds with reality. Perhaps they're even aware the site is factually incorrect and enjoy reading it for the novelty, perhaps they want to cite it to warn others that sometimes things online are wrong. You have no idea what the people are doing with the information. Google has started censoring their results because they decided people should use their search engine as a truth oracle (with the results you would expect, lets not forget the "when did George Washington go to the moon" thing from a year or so ago.) I think that's a mistake and is a large part of the reason I use DuckDuckGo. You may have caught this one instance but there are likely an unlimited number of others. You're not going to catch everything and you make your search engine worse with every exception you make to the algorithm.

helen___keller 5y ago
> Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. I’m confident this is factually incorrect for a very very large subset of searches. Probably a majority.
- moltke 5y ago
  It's never going to work for that though. This is like changing a hammer design because some people are hurting themselves using it as a comb.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    It does work for that. For a large number of searches, on relatively uncontroversial topics, search engines have effectively become oracles of truth. This is how google ended up with their modern design that discourages website clicks, they did research into their users and realized most people searching “Abraham Lincoln’s birthday” want to see the top result “February 12, 1809” and not the top result “https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” Obviously I’m aware that not all data is uncontroversial and agreed upon, but it’s a fact that a large percentage of searches are quite literally treating search engines as oracles of truth
    - moltke 5y ago
      >It does work for that. It does not. I used the moon thing from last year as an example. Here[1] is a very noncontroversial query that still yields factually incorrect results in the box at the top. Yes if you read the results carefully and think about it you'll realize it's wrong but then you're doing the same thing you would be doing otherwise. [1] https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APq-WBv0RNgr6Q3zUOjDc1lMbInSIGGS6Q:1646943616605&q=when+did+dennis+ritchie+invented+the+computer&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizke6Jr7z2AhUOrHIEHQP0D_kQBSgAegQIARAy&biw=1110&bih=857&dpr=1 https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APq-WBv0RNgr6Q3zUOjDc1lM...
      - Arnavion 5y ago
        And this example https://i.imgur.com/UkcR945.png https://i.imgur.com/UkcR945.png that's still broken as it was half a year ago. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622613 )
      - stale2002 5y ago
        > It does not. In the "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday" example that the person gave, it absolutely does work that way in regards to the user's motivations. When a user googles for "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday" They are almost certainly attempting to use a search engine as an oracle of truth. > that still yields factually incorrect results Search engines aren't perfect. That does not change the fact that the oracle of truth model, is a good model to describe a user's motivations. Such as when they google "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday".
        Arnavion 5y ago
        helen___keller wrote: >This is how google ended up with their modern design that discourages website clicks, they did research into their users and realized most people searching “Abraham Lincoln’s birthday” want to see the top result “February 12, 1809” and not the top result “https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” But this is a false dichotomy. There are more options than either an infobox that says "February 12, 1809" and a "February 12 in history" page. I think you can agree that a link to the Wikipedia article on Abraham Lincoln will be a fine search result. At most the search engine needs to be smart enough to match "birthday" in the search query against variations of "born on" that are present in the article.
- spoils19 5y ago
  Could you source what you're basing your facts on? I know many people like myself are just looking to expand on the text we're searching for, and letting the free market decide what's a good search result.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    The best supporting data is the rise in no-click searches. See https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-sear... No-click searches continue to grow in share while google continues to adopt design that presents information outside a traditional link, like a weather widget or the fact you were looking for presented at the top in large text outside the scope of a link. This suggests a growing share of searches weren’t looking for links in the first place, they were looking for information and when the search engine provided that information, the user left without clicking a link
awb 5y ago
I’m rarely an expert on the broad keywords I search for. That’s why I’m searching: to learn. I would use a search engine that makes some attempt to rank higher quality, more accurate information higher than others.
Imnimo 5y ago
>they're using it to find pages with similar text. This is one vision of what a search engine's job is, but I'm not sure it's what most users are looking for. Even barebones pagerank goes far beyond just finding similar text - it uses structure of the web's link graph to estimate the quality of a page. Now obviously pagerank is not directly trying to ascertain which pages are truthful and which are not, but it is arguably using connectedness as a proxy - the assumption is that people tend to link to reliable, useful pages and tend not to link to incorrect, harmful ones. Does vanilla pagerank also violate your boundaries for what a search engine should do?
colinmhayes 5y ago
> Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. The reason google removes factually incorrect results is because this is actually exactly what the vast majority of people use search engines for.
snth 5y ago
Your view is completely opposed to all of the recent "Google search is totally broken due to garbage SEO sites" HN articles.

by moltke 5y ago

helen___keller 5y ago

> Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. I’m confident this is factually incorrect for a very very large subset of searches. Probably a majority.

moltke 5y ago
It's never going to work for that though. This is like changing a hammer design because some people are hurting themselves using it as a comb.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  It does work for that. For a large number of searches, on relatively uncontroversial topics, search engines have effectively become oracles of truth. This is how google ended up with their modern design that discourages website clicks, they did research into their users and realized most people searching “Abraham Lincoln’s birthday” want to see the top result “February 12, 1809” and not the top result “https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” Obviously I’m aware that not all data is uncontroversial and agreed upon, but it’s a fact that a large percentage of searches are quite literally treating search engines as oracles of truth
  - moltke 5y ago
    >It does work for that. It does not. I used the moon thing from last year as an example. Here[1] is a very noncontroversial query that still yields factually incorrect results in the box at the top. Yes if you read the results carefully and think about it you'll realize it's wrong but then you're doing the same thing you would be doing otherwise. [1] https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APq-WBv0RNgr6Q3zUOjDc1lMbInSIGGS6Q:1646943616605&q=when+did+dennis+ritchie+invented+the+computer&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizke6Jr7z2AhUOrHIEHQP0D_kQBSgAegQIARAy&biw=1110&bih=857&dpr=1 https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APq-WBv0RNgr6Q3zUOjDc1lM...
    - Arnavion 5y ago
      And this example https://i.imgur.com/UkcR945.png https://i.imgur.com/UkcR945.png that's still broken as it was half a year ago. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622613 )
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > It does not. In the "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday" example that the person gave, it absolutely does work that way in regards to the user's motivations. When a user googles for "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday" They are almost certainly attempting to use a search engine as an oracle of truth. > that still yields factually incorrect results Search engines aren't perfect. That does not change the fact that the oracle of truth model, is a good model to describe a user's motivations. Such as when they google "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday".
      - Arnavion 5y ago
        helen___keller wrote: >This is how google ended up with their modern design that discourages website clicks, they did research into their users and realized most people searching “Abraham Lincoln’s birthday” want to see the top result “February 12, 1809” and not the top result “https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” But this is a false dichotomy. There are more options than either an infobox that says "February 12, 1809" and a "February 12 in history" page. I think you can agree that a link to the Wikipedia article on Abraham Lincoln will be a fine search result. At most the search engine needs to be smart enough to match "birthday" in the search query against variations of "born on" that are present in the article.
spoils19 5y ago
Could you source what you're basing your facts on? I know many people like myself are just looking to expand on the text we're searching for, and letting the free market decide what's a good search result.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  The best supporting data is the rise in no-click searches. See https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-sear... No-click searches continue to grow in share while google continues to adopt design that presents information outside a traditional link, like a weather widget or the fact you were looking for presented at the top in large text outside the scope of a link. This suggests a growing share of searches weren’t looking for links in the first place, they were looking for information and when the search engine provided that information, the user left without clicking a link

awb 5y ago

I’m rarely an expert on the broad keywords I search for. That’s why I’m searching: to learn. I would use a search engine that makes some attempt to rank higher quality, more accurate information higher than others.

Imnimo 5y ago

>they're using it to find pages with similar text. This is one vision of what a search engine's job is, but I'm not sure it's what most users are looking for. Even barebones pagerank goes far beyond just finding similar text - it uses structure of the web's link graph to estimate the quality of a page. Now obviously pagerank is not directly trying to ascertain which pages are truthful and which are not, but it is arguably using connectedness as a proxy - the assumption is that people tend to link to reliable, useful pages and tend not to link to incorrect, harmful ones. Does vanilla pagerank also violate your boundaries for what a search engine should do?

colinmhayes 5y ago

> Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. The reason google removes factually incorrect results is because this is actually exactly what the vast majority of people use search engines for.

snth 5y ago

Your view is completely opposed to all of the recent "Google search is totally broken due to garbage SEO sites" HN articles.