4 ms·

I work for Google Search. Nothing changed in how they worked over the past two years. I think it's just that our snippets weren't reflecting where we were findi

I work for Google Search. Nothing changed in how they worked over the past two years. I think it's just that our snippets weren't reflecting where we were finding the quoted terms, causing people to think they were ignored. Hopefully this change will now help avoid that impression.

mojuba 4y ago
It's just not true. Some years back (I think around 2017) I was showing to my colleagues how the phrase "The magic of Google is gone" in quotes brings a ton of irrelevant results, none of which contained the phrase or sometimes even any of the words (and no, it wasn't the suggested "results without quotes"). I also posted about it on an online forum which Google could at one point find as the only result, but now it's gone even though that page is still there, on the same forum. Today this phrase yields zero results and suggests some without quotes. I could occasionally see irrelevant results for quoted searches until very recently, but I presume it's been fixed now.
- dannysullivan 4y ago
  Quotes searches bring back pages we can see have the quoted terms. That's how it is intended to work, and that's how does work. I've looked into many of these cases, we find the quoted terms there. In this example, we don't see any pages with that quoted phrase. If there is a page with it out on the web, like the forum post you mentioned, it might be that we no longer have the page in our index -- so we wouldn't match it. Do you recall the URL? It would help me look into that more.
  - onli 4y ago
    I have a different example of Google not finding a page with "" that ought to be found. Assume I want to find https://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?t=18685 https://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?t=18685, which is on a ~20 year old phpBB forum that is certainly indexed. The post is from 2012 after all. And I take one sentence from there and search for it, with quotes: "Hast du besondere s9y eventplugins installiert?" This leads to https://www.google.de/search?q=%22Hast+du+besondere+s9y+eventplugins+installiert%3F%22 https://www.google.de/search?q=%22Hast+du+besondere+s9y+even..., which so far has only one search result, to http://sw-guide.de/2006-11/serendipity-plugins-seitenleisten-und-events/ http://sw-guide.de/2006-11/serendipity-plugins-seitenleisten.... Which by the way does not contain the target sentence, but that might be because the search moved over into non-verbatim mode. If I search without the quotes I get more results, but I think not the target thread. Admittedly, this is not "" not working by showing pages that do not contain the target keyword. But it is "" failing by the search not properly searching its own index. What's going on there? Why is the index of a rather stale 20 year old forum not complete? The site is indexed in general.
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      I don't see that particular page appearing to be indexed by us. If we don't have it indexed, we can't match it. Ideally, we'd index all the pages out on the web. But the web is really big.
  - Der_Einzige 4y ago
    You're still trying to gaslight HN users about this. Just ADMIT YOU and GOOGLE ARE WRONG. Thread after thread of hundreds of people telling you your wrong and then you going "actually the community is wrong". Month after month, year after year, you pull this crap. Admit it, Google search is worse now than it was before, and partly because they are abjectly failing at handling quotes.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    it might be that we no longer have the page in our index -- so we wouldn't match it what the ... ? Why do you delete stuff from your index? Even if it's down there's a good chance it'll be archived ...
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      It's not that it gets specifically deleted. We just don't have infinite space. There's always new pages coming along. Like trillions of pages out there. So we might not get back to revisiting a page and it falls out of our index while other content is added.
dereg 4y ago
How do you folks think about the fact that sites provide privileged access to Google’s crawler but routinely restrict access/paywall the same content to a normal user? Among chronic offenders are LinkedIn Pinterest, Instagram, various media sites, and etc. are you folks well aware that this is occurring, and are there any plans to discourage or punish that sort of behavior?

mojuba 4y ago

It's just not true. Some years back (I think around 2017) I was showing to my colleagues how the phrase "The magic of Google is gone" in quotes brings a ton of irrelevant results, none of which contained the phrase or sometimes even any of the words (and no, it wasn't the suggested "results without quotes"). I also posted about it on an online forum which Google could at one point find as the only result, but now it's gone even though that page is still there, on the same forum. Today this phrase yields zero results and suggests some without quotes. I could occasionally see irrelevant results for quoted searches until very recently, but I presume it's been fixed now.

dannysullivan 4y ago
Quotes searches bring back pages we can see have the quoted terms. That's how it is intended to work, and that's how does work. I've looked into many of these cases, we find the quoted terms there. In this example, we don't see any pages with that quoted phrase. If there is a page with it out on the web, like the forum post you mentioned, it might be that we no longer have the page in our index -- so we wouldn't match it. Do you recall the URL? It would help me look into that more.
- onli 4y ago
  I have a different example of Google not finding a page with "" that ought to be found. Assume I want to find https://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?t=18685 https://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?t=18685, which is on a ~20 year old phpBB forum that is certainly indexed. The post is from 2012 after all. And I take one sentence from there and search for it, with quotes: "Hast du besondere s9y eventplugins installiert?" This leads to https://www.google.de/search?q=%22Hast+du+besondere+s9y+eventplugins+installiert%3F%22 https://www.google.de/search?q=%22Hast+du+besondere+s9y+even..., which so far has only one search result, to http://sw-guide.de/2006-11/serendipity-plugins-seitenleisten-und-events/ http://sw-guide.de/2006-11/serendipity-plugins-seitenleisten.... Which by the way does not contain the target sentence, but that might be because the search moved over into non-verbatim mode. If I search without the quotes I get more results, but I think not the target thread. Admittedly, this is not "" not working by showing pages that do not contain the target keyword. But it is "" failing by the search not properly searching its own index. What's going on there? Why is the index of a rather stale 20 year old forum not complete? The site is indexed in general.
  - dannysullivan 4y ago
    I don't see that particular page appearing to be indexed by us. If we don't have it indexed, we can't match it. Ideally, we'd index all the pages out on the web. But the web is really big.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  You're still trying to gaslight HN users about this. Just ADMIT YOU and GOOGLE ARE WRONG. Thread after thread of hundreds of people telling you your wrong and then you going "actually the community is wrong". Month after month, year after year, you pull this crap. Admit it, Google search is worse now than it was before, and partly because they are abjectly failing at handling quotes.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  it might be that we no longer have the page in our index -- so we wouldn't match it what the ... ? Why do you delete stuff from your index? Even if it's down there's a good chance it'll be archived ...
  - dannysullivan 4y ago
    It's not that it gets specifically deleted. We just don't have infinite space. There's always new pages coming along. Like trillions of pages out there. So we might not get back to revisiting a page and it falls out of our index while other content is added.

dereg 4y ago

How do you folks think about the fact that sites provide privileged access to Google’s crawler but routinely restrict access/paywall the same content to a normal user? Among chronic offenders are LinkedIn Pinterest, Instagram, various media sites, and etc. are you folks well aware that this is occurring, and are there any plans to discourage or punish that sort of behavior?