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It's an end to keyword search. Search now has state. I can search something, and then manipulate the results. Filter the results. I dont have to start over
by basch 4y ago
It's an end to keyword search.
Search now has state. I can search something, and then manipulate the results. Filter the results. I dont have to start over with a new query, or mess with quotes and -signs, which has been utterly terrible ever since google started taking things like that as suggestions. Or when I search for 4-5 words, and it instantly chooses to leave out the most important of the 5 terms so it can return tons of utterly useless off topic stuff.
- PenguinCoder 4y agoI absolutely hate this, and it turns the search useless to me. When searching with "direct quotes" on Google, it has ignored my exact term in quotes and shown me results WITHOUT THAT KEYWORD. Useless.
- basch 4y agoIt is utter baffling how often I will search a couple terms and the top 5 results will say missing x and make me click to bring back my most important term. Obviously the term that is most limiting my search result volume is a candidate for either causing interference, or BEING the most important term. The frequency with which google chooses to disregard that word instead of focusing on it is just painful. Why theyve chosen to optimize for returning the MOST results is just misguided. I do not need or care for 10k results. Give me 90 that are actually useful.
- rippercushions 4y agoThis was finally largely fixed last year. https://blog.google/products/search/how-were-improving-search-results-when-you-use-quotes/ https://blog.google/products/search/how-were-improving-searc...
- basch 4y agoThat doesnt appear to be related. Your post is about making the preview text more relevant.
- layer8 4y agoIt helps to turn Verbatim mode on (under Search Tools).
- JohnFen 4y ago> It's an end to keyword search I really hope not. I want keyword searching. I hope that it can continue to exist alongside this.
- basch 4y agoI guess I'm perfectly fine having to press "reset state" to get back to a clean search, vs every search being a clean search. Most of my searches are vaguely phrased as a question anyway with the question words missing. Im guessing they will work just the same.
- Dalewyn 4y agoMost people ask human-style questions, eg: "How do I turn my toaster on?"; unlike tech enthusiasts who might be more inclined to feed mechanical queries, eg: "toaster turn on -site:reddit.com". If the former query becomes more useful, even at the cost of the latter (which has gotten fairly useless already anyway), that is an overall boon for end-users.
- JohnFen 4y ago> that is an overall boon for end-users. But it would be a loss for people doing research.
- basch 4y agoCan you give an example of something you think will work in standard search but that stateful search would fail to return good results for?
- JohnFen 4y agoAny searches that aren't looking for an immediate answer. When I'm searching, I don't want the search engine to find an answer for me. I want the search engine to provide me with a list of websites that touch on the topic I'm looking for, so I can get a "big picture" of what's out there, review them, and put together the information I'm looking for from the mosaic that I have been presented. I don't want the search engine narrow my view to a tiny selection of websites or, worse, try to summarize the contents of the websites. That's not useful to me in terms of what I use search engines for. Stateful search is really only useful for narrowing things down. That's not what I want the machine to do except in terms of paying attention to the keywords I want (and the keywords I actively don't want). I totally understand there are use cases where what I actively don't want may be exactly what is desired. That's just not my use case. That's why I'm not saying there shouldn't be such search engines. I'm just saying that I hope my use case will also be possible, or web searching loses a whole lot of usefulness to me.