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This is fascinating. Not because of the content of this article, but because it's the first glimpse behind the Google Search curtain that I've ever seen in an o

This is fascinating. Not because of the content of this article, but because it's the first glimpse behind the Google Search curtain that I've ever seen in an official Google post. You rarely see details about search explained. Or maybe I'm just ignorant. Even that bit about "don't" being turned into "don t" was interesting. Again, not because I was amazed in any way. More so because Search has been so mysterious for many years.

JacobThreeThree 4y ago
There is interesting information about Google Search on their blog and YouTube channels: https://developers.google.com/search/blog https://developers.google.com/search/blog https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWf2ZlNsCGDS89VBF_awNvA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWf2ZlNsCGDS89VBF_awNvA
ma2rten 4y ago
There was an excellent talk from Jeff Dean a while back which went into a lot of detail.
- plq 4y ago
  Can you share a link to this specific one? He seems to be a pretty active speaker.
  - mrazomor 4y ago
    Probably this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-3Ahy7Fxsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-3Ahy7Fxsc Or this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=modXC5IWTJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=modXC5IWTJI (terrible audio) Both are very old, but extremely well aged. IMO, the secret behind Google Search is not the smartness of the algorithms, but how much of it is baked in those O(100ms) which takes Google machines to answer your query. That's why the links above are the true reason Google Search performs well. Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval state of the art is far beyond what Google/Bing/Yahoo/Yandex/Baidu employ. But, it's far too expensive to serve it at QPS & latency required for decent UX.
    - 12907835202 4y ago
      I'd be super interested in a higher quality delayed search. Just each day you could go and look at your search queries from the day before and it would list any better results it found with more time. Then again maybe i'm underestimating how often I don't know exactly what I'm looking for and just grab the first result.
    - supernova87a 4y ago
      Hi, would you know if there are any good explanations on whether Google searches (or in general the search strategy) say, creates a general search result for any given query, which is then tweaked with customizations specific to individuals / locations / languages? I.e. they've "saved" the basic search output in advance so that core doesn't have to be run each time, and only adjust around the edges specific to a user? Or is that not how it's done, and each search, for a given person, follows the same process? I've always been curious about that.
      - dannysullivan 4y ago
        There's a lot of information on how Google Search Works on our site by that name here: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/ While there's some very short caching of results, to my understanding, there's generally still going to be a lot of hitting the index because there's just a lot of new information coming in all the time. We can't somehow store a set of results for say "cars" and figure it's going to be the same info from one minute to the next. And results don't really have a lot of personalization for individuals. When you see differences, it's usually due to language and location.
mr-pink 4y ago
the key thing is they call it "search" and not "find" because they don't care if you actually find anything. at least it's not "bing"
- traes 4y ago
  Or maybe because it's impossible to guarantee that you'll find what you're looking for and you may not even be looking for anything specific, making "search" a more honest and literal term? I'm not saying Google results haven't been getting worse, but blaming that on Google entirely instead of rampant SEO (which is mostly used by people who want to make money, not people who want to provide useful information) and the lack of hand curated directories to steal relevant results from are likely just as detrimental to good search results as Google's ad prioritization. While Google certainly hasn't been helping, the web has been falling apart (in terms of usability at least) for at least a decade. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetency.
- bergenty 4y ago
  Your comment is asinine but that’s a great gimmicky perspective for a competitor to distinguish themselves. “Don’t search, find”
  - boesboes 4y ago
    I had a customer once that wanted a 'find' feature instead of a 'search' feature. Which was not a bad idea, it makes sense, you want to find something not just search for it. However, they also insisted the 'find' button would fall and bounce a few times after you click it. You win some, you lose some ;)
    - soco 4y ago
      Actually, often you must first "search" (aka go to some search page to enter search terms) and only then you can click the button "find" - unless the search controls are already on the page you're on.
- tapanjk 4y ago
joelthelion 4y ago
I also find it very interesting to hear them say that they're listening to user feedback. Perhaps the years of outrage are finally paying off.
- yccs27 4y ago
  Or maybe they realize people are starting to leave for DuckDuckGo etc. because Google no longer has better results.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - russellbeattie 4y ago
    Google defines what good search results are. Any company trying to compete with them is just tilting at windmills. They'll always be a step behind, forever. "Hey, why does Google show me x and DDG doesn't?", "Why is it so hard to find x on DDG, it's on the first page of Google." Etc. It will never be the reverse for 99% of users. And face it, for all its flaws, Google's index is larger, it has more servers, has way more signals to use - including its own web browser, DNS and ads - more money to spend and actual computer scientists who've been banging away at the problem for decades. Bing is just Microsoft's way of siphoning off some search revenues from the most technically illiterate users who don't know better and never change their defaults on their Windows box they bought at Walmart. MS has zero incentive to improve the results. DDG is a cute little boutique web site. Good for them. But their impact on Google Search is so small as to be non-existent.
    - joelthelion 4y ago
      Disagree. I use DDG because I'm frustrated with Google search results. And granted, sometimes Google is better, so I just add "!g" to my query and let DDG redirect me to Google.
      - permo-w 4y ago
        for me I’d be very happy to just use google through a proxy service. google now hides images and maps behind a cookie consent page, so if you’ve got their cookies blocked, you can’t access then
mingusrude 4y ago
I love this old video from their "weekly search meeting": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A
londons_explore 4y ago
"don't" being turned into "don t" is due to the way search indexes work. It's a computer science problem, not Google specific. The index is like a dictionary - you look things up by word. But you need to find some way to split up every page on the internet to decide what is a 'word' and what isn't. If you decide that quote marks are part of a word, then you'll end up with apple and apple' making different entries in the index which you probably didn't want.
- josu 4y ago
  Why not just map "don't" to "dont"? I can't really see too many false positives.
  - hugh-avherald 4y ago
    Won't work for wont, cant, well, and probably more. It's also possible that Dont might appear as a proper noun (say, as a new company).
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      Homonyms are a thing in language, though. Language models need to account for a sentence like > Will Will have enough will to see this through?
    - Izkata 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Dont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Dont
      - JacobThreeThree 4y ago
        Don't Do What Donny Don't Does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRvaR4fqrYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRvaR4fqrYY
  - lloydatkinson 4y ago
rob_c 4y ago
It's only "myseterious" because google will have everyone believe so. They certainly have some of (if not the) best tuned algorithms for indexing and querying on the planet, but there's no angel dust or dark magic at work. (And frankly given how unreliable search in gmail is I'm amazed they keep their head above water)

JacobThreeThree 4y ago

There is interesting information about Google Search on their blog and YouTube channels: https://developers.google.com/search/blog https://developers.google.com/search/blog https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWf2ZlNsCGDS89VBF_awNvA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWf2ZlNsCGDS89VBF_awNvA

ma2rten 4y ago

There was an excellent talk from Jeff Dean a while back which went into a lot of detail.

plq 4y ago
Can you share a link to this specific one? He seems to be a pretty active speaker.
- mrazomor 4y ago
  Probably this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-3Ahy7Fxsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-3Ahy7Fxsc Or this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=modXC5IWTJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=modXC5IWTJI (terrible audio) Both are very old, but extremely well aged. IMO, the secret behind Google Search is not the smartness of the algorithms, but how much of it is baked in those O(100ms) which takes Google machines to answer your query. That's why the links above are the true reason Google Search performs well. Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval state of the art is far beyond what Google/Bing/Yahoo/Yandex/Baidu employ. But, it's far too expensive to serve it at QPS & latency required for decent UX.
  - 12907835202 4y ago
    I'd be super interested in a higher quality delayed search. Just each day you could go and look at your search queries from the day before and it would list any better results it found with more time. Then again maybe i'm underestimating how often I don't know exactly what I'm looking for and just grab the first result.
  - supernova87a 4y ago
    Hi, would you know if there are any good explanations on whether Google searches (or in general the search strategy) say, creates a general search result for any given query, which is then tweaked with customizations specific to individuals / locations / languages? I.e. they've "saved" the basic search output in advance so that core doesn't have to be run each time, and only adjust around the edges specific to a user? Or is that not how it's done, and each search, for a given person, follows the same process? I've always been curious about that.
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      There's a lot of information on how Google Search Works on our site by that name here: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/ While there's some very short caching of results, to my understanding, there's generally still going to be a lot of hitting the index because there's just a lot of new information coming in all the time. We can't somehow store a set of results for say "cars" and figure it's going to be the same info from one minute to the next. And results don't really have a lot of personalization for individuals. When you see differences, it's usually due to language and location.

mr-pink 4y ago

the key thing is they call it "search" and not "find" because they don't care if you actually find anything. at least it's not "bing"

traes 4y ago
Or maybe because it's impossible to guarantee that you'll find what you're looking for and you may not even be looking for anything specific, making "search" a more honest and literal term? I'm not saying Google results haven't been getting worse, but blaming that on Google entirely instead of rampant SEO (which is mostly used by people who want to make money, not people who want to provide useful information) and the lack of hand curated directories to steal relevant results from are likely just as detrimental to good search results as Google's ad prioritization. While Google certainly hasn't been helping, the web has been falling apart (in terms of usability at least) for at least a decade. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetency.
bergenty 4y ago
Your comment is asinine but that’s a great gimmicky perspective for a competitor to distinguish themselves. “Don’t search, find”
- boesboes 4y ago
  I had a customer once that wanted a 'find' feature instead of a 'search' feature. Which was not a bad idea, it makes sense, you want to find something not just search for it. However, they also insisted the 'find' button would fall and bounce a few times after you click it. You win some, you lose some ;)
  - soco 4y ago
    Actually, often you must first "search" (aka go to some search page to enter search terms) and only then you can click the button "find" - unless the search controls are already on the page you're on.
tapanjk 4y ago

joelthelion 4y ago

I also find it very interesting to hear them say that they're listening to user feedback. Perhaps the years of outrage are finally paying off.

yccs27 4y ago
Or maybe they realize people are starting to leave for DuckDuckGo etc. because Google no longer has better results.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- russellbeattie 4y ago
  Google defines what good search results are. Any company trying to compete with them is just tilting at windmills. They'll always be a step behind, forever. "Hey, why does Google show me x and DDG doesn't?", "Why is it so hard to find x on DDG, it's on the first page of Google." Etc. It will never be the reverse for 99% of users. And face it, for all its flaws, Google's index is larger, it has more servers, has way more signals to use - including its own web browser, DNS and ads - more money to spend and actual computer scientists who've been banging away at the problem for decades. Bing is just Microsoft's way of siphoning off some search revenues from the most technically illiterate users who don't know better and never change their defaults on their Windows box they bought at Walmart. MS has zero incentive to improve the results. DDG is a cute little boutique web site. Good for them. But their impact on Google Search is so small as to be non-existent.
  - joelthelion 4y ago
    Disagree. I use DDG because I'm frustrated with Google search results. And granted, sometimes Google is better, so I just add "!g" to my query and let DDG redirect me to Google.
    - permo-w 4y ago
      for me I’d be very happy to just use google through a proxy service. google now hides images and maps behind a cookie consent page, so if you’ve got their cookies blocked, you can’t access then

mingusrude 4y ago

I love this old video from their "weekly search meeting": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A

londons_explore 4y ago

"don't" being turned into "don t" is due to the way search indexes work. It's a computer science problem, not Google specific. The index is like a dictionary - you look things up by word. But you need to find some way to split up every page on the internet to decide what is a 'word' and what isn't. If you decide that quote marks are part of a word, then you'll end up with apple and apple' making different entries in the index which you probably didn't want.

josu 4y ago
Why not just map "don't" to "dont"? I can't really see too many false positives.
- hugh-avherald 4y ago
  Won't work for wont, cant, well, and probably more. It's also possible that Dont might appear as a proper noun (say, as a new company).
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Homonyms are a thing in language, though. Language models need to account for a sentence like > Will Will have enough will to see this through?
  - Izkata 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Dont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Dont
    - JacobThreeThree 4y ago
      Don't Do What Donny Don't Does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRvaR4fqrYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRvaR4fqrYY
- lloydatkinson 4y ago

rob_c 4y ago

It's only "myseterious" because google will have everyone believe so. They certainly have some of (if not the) best tuned algorithms for indexing and querying on the planet, but there's no angel dust or dark magic at work. (And frankly given how unreliable search in gmail is I'm amazed they keep their head above water)