8 ms·

Please now also improve search results without quotes. When I query a b c (without quotes) I want results exclusively containing all 3 words, not just one or tw

by fleddr 4y ago

Please now also improve search results without quotes. When I query a b c (without quotes) I want results exclusively containing all 3 words, not just one or two of them. There's a reason I typed it. Next, remove content thieves like Pinterest entirely from the index. Next, invest in recency + relevancy over just page reputation. A huge amount of high value recent content is written but it keeps losing against much worse old content which only ranks because it's old. As the typical example: the 15 year old Stackoverflow jQuery answer. Invest in location awareness. Including location in your query gives laughable results. Find a way to down rank sites gaming particular categories with shady tactics.

superbaconman 4y ago
I don't know... Recency sucks when searching for news related stuff. It feels next to impossible to look into the history of news commentary on any given topic.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  - dannysullivan 4y ago
    If there's something newsy, we show recent stories because that's often helpful. If you want to older content, we have time range options. Check out before/after: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272 https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272
    - emmelaich 4y ago
      Date range is great, but unfortunately it can fail when for instance old newspaper stories still have recent news in the sidebar. Google will include those recent updates as belonging to the date of the old story.
      - dannysullivan 4y ago
        It can happen. We keep working on improving in these cases, and we do give newspapers guidance on things they should consider to help avoid it.
- rzwitserloot 4y ago
  Google search has a feature to restrict your search to a specific period, such as 'only stuff that showed up in the last year'. I can foresee google semi-intelligently figuring out it's a news search and giving you recent stuff in that case. As long as explicitly selecting a search period completely disables any 'recency' filtering, that seems fine to me. I also wish it was possible to be very specific with the recency selector. I want to be able to say: I want to search for stuff that showed up in this month 5 years ago, because I know it was news then.
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  You can add date ranges. I do this a lot.
swyx 4y ago
Pinterest and Linkedin are the top culprits for rug-pulling search interest - they blatantly display different results to Googlebot than to humans. If I cant see the result you linked to without logging in, it shouldnt match on your search index. The open web made you rich, please help keep it open.
- mathattack 4y ago
  Amen on Pinterest. I wish there was a profile setting to add that never included them in my results.
  - newsuser 4y ago
    You can use the UBlacklist addon to achieve that.
- Jaruzel 4y ago
  Google explicitly say that you shouldn't present different results to googlebot than you would to normal users, and doing so would get your site down ranked... Funny how they don't seem to actually enforce that rule on the big guys gaming the index...
dannysullivan 4y ago
By default, we (I work for Google Search). do tend to look for all the words indicated. It's just that sometimes, what seems to be the most relevant documents won't have all the exact words. If you want results exclusively to contain words, that's what the quotes command is for.
- fleddr 4y ago
  "what seems to be the most relevant documents won't have all the exact words" In which case it isn't relevant. I typed those words for a reason, any result not containing all three is not relevant by definition.
  - rzwitserloot 4y ago
    I can accept google search doing some trickery where it goes: Okay, I found nothing, or the few things I found seemed irrelevant, however, if I replace one of your words with something similar, or e.g. I take this one word you wrote and stick a space in between (not arbitrarily, also based on 'I observe that this one word is usually typed as two words in all the pages I scanned) - then I do get results. In other words, not a blanket 'the results for this query suck, but if I just stick my fingers in my ears and completely ignore one your words I get much nicer results so why don't I show you those?' - but a more intelligent presumption. With, of course, the option to force the search to show specifically what you exactly searched for with no such helpful alternatives applied.
    - normac2 4y ago
      I think what you described is what they already have with the "including results for [similar wording]" version of the results page. They also have a link to see the exact results. However, as of right now they only offer it for actual typos/spelling mistakes (like your example with the missing space) as opposed to semantically similar wordings.
  - jrmg 4y ago
    I definitely appreciate synonyms (which I may not otherwise consider, or at best have to think of one by one) and plurals being included by default.
DamnInteresting 4y ago
> Next, invest in recency + relevancy over just page reputation. Counterpoint: Google already gives priority to recency, and it heavily rewards "flip shop" sites that essentially plagiarize existing content. The original researchers/authors who did the leg work get buried in lazy rewrites.
- radlad 4y ago
  Or how about how every single reddit post, according to Google, is from this year. Then you click it and find out its 10 years old. I assume this is reddit trying to game the recency metric.
  - throwamon 4y ago
    I can't tell if it's incompetence or malice, but this happened after the redesign. I think it's caused by the presence of recent posts from the "more posts" section. Another consequence of the redesign, much worse than useless dates, is that you get completely useless results just because the same "related post" (the title of which Google happens to deem "relevant") appears over and over again at the bottom of different pages. To get around this you can search for "site:old.reddit.com" or "site:i.reddit.com". One downside is you get fewer results.
    - hbn 4y ago
      I dread the day reddit stops letting you opt out of the redesign. It's absolutely unusable and hasn't improved at all since launch.
      - citrusybread 4y ago
        yet from their point of view it probably improved the product -- how many viewers get suckered into watching an endless stream of content mixed in with ads.
      - ss108 4y ago
        Yeah, what is up with that? It is unquestionably trash, and they simply aren't doing anything about it. The fact that they have an opt out means they acknowledge that a substantial number of users hate it.
YPPH 4y ago
As a non-American, I find Google's location awareness is already unmatched. It's what keeps me using Google over the alternatives. Googling a thing (business, place, location) near my house will give it as the first search result. The alternatives will often give me the title of something in the US.
- etherealG 4y ago
  I have the exact opposite experience. Living in France for 8 years means basically assuming the usual french mass media rhetoric or the English one.
bel_marinaio 4y ago
You can probably use a browser plugin to get rid of pinterest results https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blacklist/jbpccandodannohfaoncogijbkfcmpgo?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blacklist/jbpccand...
systemvoltage 4y ago
All this hostility to users in last few years is because of $$$. Google should just have a developer/engineer/expert mode that shows results using 2012 algorithms. I don’t mind paying $5/month in exchange.
- braindead_in 4y ago
  I'll happily pay for filtering the search result with GPT3 or LAmDA.
- trebbble 4y ago
  '07. It went to hell in '08 or '09. That's when my much-remarked-upon search skills became entirely useless, because you could no longer direct the search engine with any precision.
  - erichocean 4y ago
    Hey Google, you could get an extra $60/year from me if you offered the 2007 search engine as an option. Not kidding.
paintman252 4y ago
Wow, Google search sucks but first three tips is horrible advice. Like it would only make it worse
nurettin 4y ago
20 years ago, search results were controlled via + and - prefixes. +typography -cat means "I want typography to be present im the results, but cat is not allowed". I checked and they still seem to work.
russh 4y ago
I would like a way to maintain a list of sites I never want to see in my search results.
estensen 4y ago
Staying in Italy for a while I got Italian ads (and I don't speak Italian), and was also often redirected to Italian pages when I explicitly wanted the English version. For example, looking up an error code for my watch I was redirected to the Italian product page for the watch instead of the forum with the answer I wanted. I guess a VPN could be a workaround, but does the average Joe know what a VPN is?

by fleddr 4y ago

superbaconman 4y ago

I don't know... Recency sucks when searching for news related stuff. It feels next to impossible to look into the history of news commentary on any given topic.

phpisthebest 4y ago
- dannysullivan 4y ago
  If there's something newsy, we show recent stories because that's often helpful. If you want to older content, we have time range options. Check out before/after: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272 https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272
  - emmelaich 4y ago
    Date range is great, but unfortunately it can fail when for instance old newspaper stories still have recent news in the sidebar. Google will include those recent updates as belonging to the date of the old story.
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      It can happen. We keep working on improving in these cases, and we do give newspapers guidance on things they should consider to help avoid it.
rzwitserloot 4y ago
Google search has a feature to restrict your search to a specific period, such as 'only stuff that showed up in the last year'. I can foresee google semi-intelligently figuring out it's a news search and giving you recent stuff in that case. As long as explicitly selecting a search period completely disables any 'recency' filtering, that seems fine to me. I also wish it was possible to be very specific with the recency selector. I want to be able to say: I want to search for stuff that showed up in this month 5 years ago, because I know it was news then.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
You can add date ranges. I do this a lot.

swyx 4y ago

Pinterest and Linkedin are the top culprits for rug-pulling search interest - they blatantly display different results to Googlebot than to humans. If I cant see the result you linked to without logging in, it shouldnt match on your search index. The open web made you rich, please help keep it open.

mathattack 4y ago
Amen on Pinterest. I wish there was a profile setting to add that never included them in my results.
- newsuser 4y ago
  You can use the UBlacklist addon to achieve that.
Jaruzel 4y ago
Google explicitly say that you shouldn't present different results to googlebot than you would to normal users, and doing so would get your site down ranked... Funny how they don't seem to actually enforce that rule on the big guys gaming the index...

dannysullivan 4y ago

By default, we (I work for Google Search). do tend to look for all the words indicated. It's just that sometimes, what seems to be the most relevant documents won't have all the exact words. If you want results exclusively to contain words, that's what the quotes command is for.

fleddr 4y ago
"what seems to be the most relevant documents won't have all the exact words" In which case it isn't relevant. I typed those words for a reason, any result not containing all three is not relevant by definition.
- rzwitserloot 4y ago
  I can accept google search doing some trickery where it goes: Okay, I found nothing, or the few things I found seemed irrelevant, however, if I replace one of your words with something similar, or e.g. I take this one word you wrote and stick a space in between (not arbitrarily, also based on 'I observe that this one word is usually typed as two words in all the pages I scanned) - then I do get results. In other words, not a blanket 'the results for this query suck, but if I just stick my fingers in my ears and completely ignore one your words I get much nicer results so why don't I show you those?' - but a more intelligent presumption. With, of course, the option to force the search to show specifically what you exactly searched for with no such helpful alternatives applied.
  - normac2 4y ago
    I think what you described is what they already have with the "including results for [similar wording]" version of the results page. They also have a link to see the exact results. However, as of right now they only offer it for actual typos/spelling mistakes (like your example with the missing space) as opposed to semantically similar wordings.
- jrmg 4y ago
  I definitely appreciate synonyms (which I may not otherwise consider, or at best have to think of one by one) and plurals being included by default.

DamnInteresting 4y ago

> Next, invest in recency + relevancy over just page reputation. Counterpoint: Google already gives priority to recency, and it heavily rewards "flip shop" sites that essentially plagiarize existing content. The original researchers/authors who did the leg work get buried in lazy rewrites.

radlad 4y ago
Or how about how every single reddit post, according to Google, is from this year. Then you click it and find out its 10 years old. I assume this is reddit trying to game the recency metric.
- throwamon 4y ago
  I can't tell if it's incompetence or malice, but this happened after the redesign. I think it's caused by the presence of recent posts from the "more posts" section. Another consequence of the redesign, much worse than useless dates, is that you get completely useless results just because the same "related post" (the title of which Google happens to deem "relevant") appears over and over again at the bottom of different pages. To get around this you can search for "site:old.reddit.com" or "site:i.reddit.com". One downside is you get fewer results.
  - hbn 4y ago
    I dread the day reddit stops letting you opt out of the redesign. It's absolutely unusable and hasn't improved at all since launch.
    - citrusybread 4y ago
      yet from their point of view it probably improved the product -- how many viewers get suckered into watching an endless stream of content mixed in with ads.
    - ss108 4y ago
      Yeah, what is up with that? It is unquestionably trash, and they simply aren't doing anything about it. The fact that they have an opt out means they acknowledge that a substantial number of users hate it.

YPPH 4y ago

As a non-American, I find Google's location awareness is already unmatched. It's what keeps me using Google over the alternatives. Googling a thing (business, place, location) near my house will give it as the first search result. The alternatives will often give me the title of something in the US.

etherealG 4y ago
I have the exact opposite experience. Living in France for 8 years means basically assuming the usual french mass media rhetoric or the English one.

bel_marinaio 4y ago

You can probably use a browser plugin to get rid of pinterest results https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blacklist/jbpccandodannohfaoncogijbkfcmpgo?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blacklist/jbpccand...

systemvoltage 4y ago

All this hostility to users in last few years is because of $$$. Google should just have a developer/engineer/expert mode that shows results using 2012 algorithms. I don’t mind paying $5/month in exchange.

braindead_in 4y ago
I'll happily pay for filtering the search result with GPT3 or LAmDA.
trebbble 4y ago
'07. It went to hell in '08 or '09. That's when my much-remarked-upon search skills became entirely useless, because you could no longer direct the search engine with any precision.
- erichocean 4y ago
  Hey Google, you could get an extra $60/year from me if you offered the 2007 search engine as an option. Not kidding.

paintman252 4y ago

Wow, Google search sucks but first three tips is horrible advice. Like it would only make it worse

nurettin 4y ago

20 years ago, search results were controlled via + and - prefixes. +typography -cat means "I want typography to be present im the results, but cat is not allowed". I checked and they still seem to work.

russh 4y ago

I would like a way to maintain a list of sites I never want to see in my search results.

estensen 4y ago

Staying in Italy for a while I got Italian ads (and I don't speak Italian), and was also often redirected to Italian pages when I explicitly wanted the English version. For example, looking up an error code for my watch I was redirected to the Italian product page for the watch instead of the forum with the answer I wanted. I guess a VPN could be a workaround, but does the average Joe know what a VPN is?