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These days, Google search makes me feel old and confused. The default now seems to be to ignore any search term it deems irrelevant. Whatever process is used t

These days, Google search makes me feel old and confused. The default now seems to be to ignore any search term it deems irrelevant. Whatever process is used to drop words from the query almost always drops the most important and significant words I have entered. Then it returns results that have nothing to do with my search. It's just baffling.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
The problem with almost any smart computer system is that the smarter it gets, the harder it becomes to understand why it behaves as it does. This in combination with the well-known design obstacle of having a text box as a the entire user interface making it so that you can't really communicate how to use it... well, it makes for a frustrating experience. It's a pretty deep-seated UX problem I'm not sure if there are any good answers to.
- layer8 4y ago
  Google still has an Advanced Search page [0]. It used to be linked from the main page until around 2018 [1]. [0] https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search [1] https://uxdesign.cc/google-how-the-biggest-search-engines-homepage-has-changed-over-the-last-20-years-3b59db931a0d https://uxdesign.cc/google-how-the-biggest-search-engines-ho...
thrashh 4y ago
Maybe you just notice the times where it doesn’t work well but it usually does work well but you don’t notice? Like bad CGI And if you do need to re-add it back, you can just “quote” the word
- layer8 4y ago
  That doesn’t always work, sometimes you need the verbatim option in addition.
  - thrashh 4y ago
    I honestly haven’t ever had it not work for me If I quote enough words I get the Internet’s garbage
0x_rs 4y ago
>The default now seems to be to ignore any search term it deems irrelevant. Could be worse, think of YouTube's search: ignores your query if it doesn't belong to the most popular videos on the platform, gives you irrelevant results from entirely unrelated videos with seldom any relation with what you were searching for, and goes as far as listing every few results 3-4 "you might also like" videos that have nothing to do with what you were looking for, at all, and are just whatever is trending (often actual scams usually related to crypto and unmoderated). I have no idea what twisted company culture fosters this sort of product development, but clearly search, what the company had become a synonymous for, has been tarnished beyond recognition.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

The problem with almost any smart computer system is that the smarter it gets, the harder it becomes to understand why it behaves as it does. This in combination with the well-known design obstacle of having a text box as a the entire user interface making it so that you can't really communicate how to use it... well, it makes for a frustrating experience. It's a pretty deep-seated UX problem I'm not sure if there are any good answers to.

layer8 4y ago
Google still has an Advanced Search page [0]. It used to be linked from the main page until around 2018 [1]. [0] https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search [1] https://uxdesign.cc/google-how-the-biggest-search-engines-homepage-has-changed-over-the-last-20-years-3b59db931a0d https://uxdesign.cc/google-how-the-biggest-search-engines-ho...

thrashh 4y ago

Maybe you just notice the times where it doesn’t work well but it usually does work well but you don’t notice? Like bad CGI And if you do need to re-add it back, you can just “quote” the word

layer8 4y ago
That doesn’t always work, sometimes you need the verbatim option in addition.
- thrashh 4y ago
  I honestly haven’t ever had it not work for me If I quote enough words I get the Internet’s garbage

0x_rs 4y ago

>The default now seems to be to ignore any search term it deems irrelevant. Could be worse, think of YouTube's search: ignores your query if it doesn't belong to the most popular videos on the platform, gives you irrelevant results from entirely unrelated videos with seldom any relation with what you were searching for, and goes as far as listing every few results 3-4 "you might also like" videos that have nothing to do with what you were looking for, at all, and are just whatever is trending (often actual scams usually related to crypto and unmoderated). I have no idea what twisted company culture fosters this sort of product development, but clearly search, what the company had become a synonymous for, has been tarnished beyond recognition.