4 ms·

There was a moment in time where quotes and negeation hyphens were completely ignored. I have no idea why they ever thought that was a good idea.

wetpaws 4y ago
Cause they likely have some internal metrics we are not aware of that has a priority over the search quality.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
  # successful promo packets per quarter
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
colechristensen 4y ago
I still find that they often don’t do what i intend them to
- Thorrez 4y ago
  What do you intend it to do? Do you dislike that it looks in hidden text (e.g. img alt text), or that it ignores punctuation? Or are you saying it returns pages without the text on it at all? I don't think that's the case. Disclosure: I work at Google, but not Search.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    When I quote "two words" in a group I expect to only get results based on those two words, spelled with those characters, exactly as quoted. Not split, not with different spelling or related meanings, not with anything but actually the string of bytes which I have quoted.
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      Google doesn't replace them with split versions (except that it ignores punctuation), nor does it replace them with different spellings or related meanings. The words you search for will be there, in order, the only difference will be all whitespace and punctuation is treated as a space. >string of bytes which I have quoted That's tricky. What if there's a line break? What if you search for "some text" but the html contains "some <b>text</b>"? Punctuation would be a problem too. What if you searched for something with "-" (hyphen-minus, unicode 0x2d), but the page contained a "‐" (hyphen, unicode 0x2010)? What if you searched for something with a dumb quote, but the page contained a smart quote? What if you searched for something with a space but the page contained a non-breaking space?
- metadat 4y ago
  Yes, this. 50% of the time or more I need to flip to the burger "advanced" menu and add the "Verbatim" constraint. Apparently Google search has been optimized for the lowest common denominator of an idiot. Truly shameful. If anything, it's the idiots who should be forced to use the UX of lesser idiots like myself. Let them select the "Hazy" constraint from the advanced menu. If DDG (or any alternative not incentivized to serve dimwits) would do this by default, I'd switch in a heartbeat and never look back.
  - phailhaus 4y ago
    Not a good idea, because it's much easier to figure out "google is treating my query too loosely" than "google is treating my query too strictly and there is such a thing as 'looser'". People would just think the results suck. Instead, it should be possible to set that as a preference so that it persists across your searches.
    - metadat 4y ago
      This is still optimizing for the LCD of an idiot. Ignoring quotes is unforgivable, IMHO. If I could opt out of this shitty Big-G reality by means other than suicide, I gladly would.
      - phailhaus 4y ago
        You are firmly in the minority, probably by an order of magnitude. Sorry, never happening.
    - Noumenon72 4y ago
      I added a search engine called "google verbatim" to Chrome with the URL https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 and the keyword "g". So I just type "g whatever" in the address bar and get verbatim every time.
  - danuker 4y ago
    Thank you for mentioning "Verbatim". As for the "hazy" mode, I suspect it's the defaut because it uses a cheaper, smaller index limited to popular queries.
epistasis 4y ago
It could also be that the quoted term was in the page source, but not visible when doing a ctrl-f search from within a web browser. Whenever I have been frustrated that a term didn't appear in the visible text, it did show up in the source. So my searches were paying attention to the term, but not in a way that I cared about as a user.
- sidibe 4y ago
  What I'm reading again and again in the comments is that people are 100% sure this wasnt happening. But that would suggest they were clicking on the results that weren't what they wanted according to the snippet and Ctrl+F'ing. I'd be surprised so many people do that
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. Are you suggesting that people will discard a result based on the snippet presented? I ignore the snippets entirely, as they are seldom relevant, and click each link in the results. Especially if I have put quotes around a word I really want.
notacoward 4y ago
Somebody got a good review for breaking it (but improving some other metric), somebody will get a good review for fixing it. Net result for users is zero, but all the churn looks like productivity in a "metrics based" GAMMA review process. I've seen worse. (Same problem with GDP as a measure of economic productivity BTW, but that's a topic for another day.)

wetpaws 4y ago

Cause they likely have some internal metrics we are not aware of that has a priority over the search quality.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
# successful promo packets per quarter
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

colechristensen 4y ago

I still find that they often don’t do what i intend them to

Thorrez 4y ago
What do you intend it to do? Do you dislike that it looks in hidden text (e.g. img alt text), or that it ignores punctuation? Or are you saying it returns pages without the text on it at all? I don't think that's the case. Disclosure: I work at Google, but not Search.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  When I quote "two words" in a group I expect to only get results based on those two words, spelled with those characters, exactly as quoted. Not split, not with different spelling or related meanings, not with anything but actually the string of bytes which I have quoted.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    Google doesn't replace them with split versions (except that it ignores punctuation), nor does it replace them with different spellings or related meanings. The words you search for will be there, in order, the only difference will be all whitespace and punctuation is treated as a space. >string of bytes which I have quoted That's tricky. What if there's a line break? What if you search for "some text" but the html contains "some <b>text</b>"? Punctuation would be a problem too. What if you searched for something with "-" (hyphen-minus, unicode 0x2d), but the page contained a "‐" (hyphen, unicode 0x2010)? What if you searched for something with a dumb quote, but the page contained a smart quote? What if you searched for something with a space but the page contained a non-breaking space?
metadat 4y ago
Yes, this. 50% of the time or more I need to flip to the burger "advanced" menu and add the "Verbatim" constraint. Apparently Google search has been optimized for the lowest common denominator of an idiot. Truly shameful. If anything, it's the idiots who should be forced to use the UX of lesser idiots like myself. Let them select the "Hazy" constraint from the advanced menu. If DDG (or any alternative not incentivized to serve dimwits) would do this by default, I'd switch in a heartbeat and never look back.
- phailhaus 4y ago
  Not a good idea, because it's much easier to figure out "google is treating my query too loosely" than "google is treating my query too strictly and there is such a thing as 'looser'". People would just think the results suck. Instead, it should be possible to set that as a preference so that it persists across your searches.
  - metadat 4y ago
    This is still optimizing for the LCD of an idiot. Ignoring quotes is unforgivable, IMHO. If I could opt out of this shitty Big-G reality by means other than suicide, I gladly would.
    - phailhaus 4y ago
      You are firmly in the minority, probably by an order of magnitude. Sorry, never happening.
  - Noumenon72 4y ago
    I added a search engine called "google verbatim" to Chrome with the URL https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 and the keyword "g". So I just type "g whatever" in the address bar and get verbatim every time.
- danuker 4y ago
  Thank you for mentioning "Verbatim". As for the "hazy" mode, I suspect it's the defaut because it uses a cheaper, smaller index limited to popular queries.

epistasis 4y ago

It could also be that the quoted term was in the page source, but not visible when doing a ctrl-f search from within a web browser. Whenever I have been frustrated that a term didn't appear in the visible text, it did show up in the source. So my searches were paying attention to the term, but not in a way that I cared about as a user.

sidibe 4y ago
What I'm reading again and again in the comments is that people are 100% sure this wasnt happening. But that would suggest they were clicking on the results that weren't what they wanted according to the snippet and Ctrl+F'ing. I'd be surprised so many people do that
- epistasis 4y ago
  I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. Are you suggesting that people will discard a result based on the snippet presented? I ignore the snippets entirely, as they are seldom relevant, and click each link in the results. Especially if I have put quotes around a word I really want.

notacoward 4y ago

Somebody got a good review for breaking it (but improving some other metric), somebody will get a good review for fixing it. Net result for users is zero, but all the churn looks like productivity in a "metrics based" GAMMA review process. I've seen worse. (Same problem with GDP as a measure of economic productivity BTW, but that's a topic for another day.)