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I yearn to return to the days where search engines worked on keywords. When you could explicitly tell it what terms you were looking for. None of this "trying t
by BitwiseFool 4y ago
I yearn to return to the days where search engines worked on keywords. When you could explicitly tell it what terms you were looking for. None of this "trying to guess what you really meant" stuff. I've found that all of the old 'google-fu' techniques only work incidentally. Perhaps it is because they want people to ask questions using natural language? I understand that an "answer engine" has its use cases, but that shouldn't be the end-all-be-all of what it means to query something online.
I have no idea what kind of metrics lead Google towards fixating on the most generic terms of a search, but it is infuriating that Bing is moving in this direction too. It seems like even Google's competitors cannot help but follow its lead.
- placatedmayhem 4y ago> I have no idea what kind of metrics lead Google towards fixating on the most generic terms of a search Total shot in the dark, but I'm guessing that interpreting a query string more generically allows Google to serve up a broader collection of ads. There used to be an operator in search engines of yore (including Google, iirc) that specified, basically, "expand beyond exact matches" to include synonyms and such, maybe "~". Google has basically inverted that, so exact matching requires explicit input. I also find it frustrating.
- lokar 4y agoMatching query terms against content vs ads has always been separate. On the ads side there a pretty complex systems to expand the query to match more.
- calr 4y agoI’ve had the same experience. Search is unusable far too often for general keywords; I end up making a failed keyword search and then fall back to making a search based on sender address. Searching on sender address works fine but requires me to correctly recall who sent an email I’m looking for.