4 ms·

Would you mind providing details like the search query and link to the page you expect to be found? To test your hypothesis, I did a basic search for exact mat

by Denzel 4y ago

Would you mind providing details like the search query and link to the page you expect to be found? To test your hypothesis, I did a basic search for exact matches on "we do not synchronize on the update of the broker node" and Google returned 2 search results in 240ms: - https://github.com/a0x8o/kafka/blob/master/core/src/main/scala/kafka/coordinator/transaction/TransactionMarkerChannelManager.scala https://github.com/a0x8o/kafka/blob/master/core/src/main/sca... - https://jar-download.com/artifacts/org.apache.kafka/kafka_2.12/2.3.1/source-code/kafka/coordinator/transaction/TransactionMarkerChannelManager.scala https://jar-download.com/artifacts/org.apache.kafka/kafka_2.... Which contain exactly the source code from GitHub that I was looking for. You'll notice that the first result is actually a0x80's fork of apache/kafka. Google states that some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed were omitted, and I'm able to remove that filter. With that filter removed, I can see the same document indexed from apache/kafka on GitHub. There's nothing I can do or promise directly, but I can assure you that Google takes the quality of our search results very seriously. If you believe we're not delivering quality results, I strongly encourage you to click that "Send Feedback" link at the bottom of your results so that our teams can act upon your feedback. Disclosure: I work on Search at Google. Disclaimer: The words, views, and opinions expressed in this post are my own. They are not representative nor do they represent my employer in any capacity.

sefrost 4y ago
How often do people use the send feedback button? How many of the reports are looked at?
- Denzel 4y ago
  I’m not authorized to disclose data that’s not public knowledge. What I can say is that we have a feedback process in place for Google Search that we use to improve our product. You can send feedback and check the box to allow our teams to contact you if you’re interested in a follow up. Of course, given our scale, we’re not able to follow up on every bit of feedback but that doesn’t mean we don’t review or act upon that feedback in some way.
  - democra 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - Denzel 4y ago
      I’m sorry, I’m not a marketer, I’m a SWE working on a team within Google Search. Google Search is composed of many teams, and my team is not responsible for following up on any type of public user feedback because our users are internal.
jrvarela56 4y ago
I dont know how common this is, but in my 12 years using this site this is the first time I see a Google employee address a customer regarding a product they work on. Congrats and hope Google takes advantage of HN, similar to how startups use this forum to engage with users - it is now a meme that Google Search is unusable so there must be something to learn from the audience. I will use the send feedback button tomorrow as you suggest.
- Denzel 4y ago
  Thank you for the kind words. Long time HN member here like you (going on 11 years) that recently started working on Search as a SWE. Yes, that meme is very common. I hope I can contribute positively to these discussions by offering an outlet for feedback, and humanizing our organization. Google’s Search organization is large, so it’s certainly not monolithic, but we’re staffed with a bunch of normal, hardworking, genuine human beings like most companies, that care about the impact we’re having. I’m happy you’ve found some value in our discussion. :)
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    There are cases where Google doesn't return anything close to all known exact matches. 1. Most large classic forums using vbulletin. Try picking any rare word or phrase with less than 100 total matches via the forum's search tool and compare to the Google verbatim results. 2. This very site, searching for an uncommon word such as "memeplex" returns hundreds of unique results according to hn.algolia.com, but only 65 according to Google via site:news.ycombinator.com "memeplex". 3. Fanfiction sites such as fanfiction.net . Try randomly picking an obscure 'fandom' with only a few hundred stories, and search for the name of one of the main protagonists. It will only retrieves a small fraction of all the existing stories that mention the protagonist's name. EDIT: I originally had another example involving macrumors.com but then realized there was a formatting mistake in the search query.
    - Denzel 4y ago
      Hey Michael, I appreciate the effort you put into describing a few examples: 1. If you could link to specific examples and queries that’d be super helpful for someone like me that’s not active on the forums you’re describing. 2. Algolia is a fuzzy matching search engine. Searching for memeplex [1] returns matches like “megaplex”, “memepher”, “meeples”, etc. Unchecking typo tolerance in the settings returns < 100 results in line with Google’s results. 3. Again, if you could link to specific examples and queries that’d be helpful. [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=19&prefix=true&query=Memeplex&sort=byPopularity&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=19&prefix=true&qu...
dpkirchner 4y ago
> Google states that some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed were omitted, and I'm able to remove that filter. I've definitely seen that sort of thing before but there is no such link there at the moment -- at least not when searching from my iPhone, whether or not I'm in desktop mode. I just see a large error box that says "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" followed by the link to the a0x80 fork. By the way, the a0x80 result highlights a serious problem with search results: the GitHub URL is strangely modified. Instead of showing the full URL or even a prefix leading up to it Google is selecting parts of the URL, showing "https://github.com https://github.com > src > transaction" on mobile and "https://github.com https://github.com > kafka > coordinator > transaction" when I request the desktop site. In neither case is it obvious that the content isn't the canonical source from Apache. I've noticed this middle-out truncation for GH urls before but I'm not sure when it started.

by Denzel 4y ago

sefrost 4y ago

How often do people use the send feedback button? How many of the reports are looked at?

Denzel 4y ago
I’m not authorized to disclose data that’s not public knowledge. What I can say is that we have a feedback process in place for Google Search that we use to improve our product. You can send feedback and check the box to allow our teams to contact you if you’re interested in a follow up. Of course, given our scale, we’re not able to follow up on every bit of feedback but that doesn’t mean we don’t review or act upon that feedback in some way.
- democra 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Denzel 4y ago
    I’m sorry, I’m not a marketer, I’m a SWE working on a team within Google Search. Google Search is composed of many teams, and my team is not responsible for following up on any type of public user feedback because our users are internal.

jrvarela56 4y ago

I dont know how common this is, but in my 12 years using this site this is the first time I see a Google employee address a customer regarding a product they work on. Congrats and hope Google takes advantage of HN, similar to how startups use this forum to engage with users - it is now a meme that Google Search is unusable so there must be something to learn from the audience. I will use the send feedback button tomorrow as you suggest.

Denzel 4y ago
Thank you for the kind words. Long time HN member here like you (going on 11 years) that recently started working on Search as a SWE. Yes, that meme is very common. I hope I can contribute positively to these discussions by offering an outlet for feedback, and humanizing our organization. Google’s Search organization is large, so it’s certainly not monolithic, but we’re staffed with a bunch of normal, hardworking, genuine human beings like most companies, that care about the impact we’re having. I’m happy you’ve found some value in our discussion. :)
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  There are cases where Google doesn't return anything close to all known exact matches. 1. Most large classic forums using vbulletin. Try picking any rare word or phrase with less than 100 total matches via the forum's search tool and compare to the Google verbatim results. 2. This very site, searching for an uncommon word such as "memeplex" returns hundreds of unique results according to hn.algolia.com, but only 65 according to Google via site:news.ycombinator.com "memeplex". 3. Fanfiction sites such as fanfiction.net . Try randomly picking an obscure 'fandom' with only a few hundred stories, and search for the name of one of the main protagonists. It will only retrieves a small fraction of all the existing stories that mention the protagonist's name. EDIT: I originally had another example involving macrumors.com but then realized there was a formatting mistake in the search query.
  - Denzel 4y ago
    Hey Michael, I appreciate the effort you put into describing a few examples: 1. If you could link to specific examples and queries that’d be super helpful for someone like me that’s not active on the forums you’re describing. 2. Algolia is a fuzzy matching search engine. Searching for memeplex [1] returns matches like “megaplex”, “memepher”, “meeples”, etc. Unchecking typo tolerance in the settings returns < 100 results in line with Google’s results. 3. Again, if you could link to specific examples and queries that’d be helpful. [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=19&prefix=true&query=Memeplex&sort=byPopularity&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=19&prefix=true&qu...

dpkirchner 4y ago

> Google states that some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed were omitted, and I'm able to remove that filter. I've definitely seen that sort of thing before but there is no such link there at the moment -- at least not when searching from my iPhone, whether or not I'm in desktop mode. I just see a large error box that says "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" followed by the link to the a0x80 fork. By the way, the a0x80 result highlights a serious problem with search results: the GitHub URL is strangely modified. Instead of showing the full URL or even a prefix leading up to it Google is selecting parts of the URL, showing "https://github.com https://github.com > src > transaction" on mobile and "https://github.com https://github.com > kafka > coordinator > transaction" when I request the desktop site. In neither case is it obvious that the content isn't the canonical source from Apache. I've noticed this middle-out truncation for GH urls before but I'm not sure when it started.