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I think the comkon case is if you're looking for anything niche/technical, it'll often just reinterpret your query as if it were a typo even if you quote it. Th

I think the comkon case is if you're looking for anything niche/technical, it'll often just reinterpret your query as if it were a typo even if you quote it. That and searching for product reviews usually just returns SEO'ed trash like 10 10 lists or best vacuum cleaner 2020 that's just a mishmash of press releases as opposed to actul experience or useful information.

thayne 4y ago
> That and searching for product reviews usually just returns SEO'ed trash I run into this for a lot of things beyond just product reviews, such as recipes or "what is X?" etc. Granted I don't think that is entirely Google's fault.
- ghaff 4y ago
  In general, it's probably true that the amount (and sophistication) of spam and spammish content has tended to overwhelm whatever technology improvements in search there have been.
  - abakker 4y ago
    It's just that to the HN audience, the spam sure seems unsophisticated. I can imagine being able to filter out most blogspam just by looking at the CSS. like, every blog spam review and restaurant site is so obviously bad it hurts. also, "bestmitersaw.com" or other similar single product review/spam sites filled with affiliate links. Jeez. Kill them all.
ghaff 4y ago
How many people and organizations online actually provide real filtered hands-on reviews of things these days? There are exceptions like Wirecutter and sites like Amazon provide some insight assuming you're willing to wade through all the fake reviews, But generally speaking, consumers aren't willing to pay the cost for in-depth reviews. ADDED: There are individuals in some domain niches but you pretty much need to know who they are.
- newbie2020 4y ago
  Reddit has lots of them. Not sure why google can’t pick them up. YouTube also has specific reviews on anything you might want. Considering google owns YouTube, it’s strange that these results don’t bubble to the top.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Now, you're talking about essentially manual curation of trusted reviewers though. At that point, you're getting close to essentially resurrecting a Yahoo-style directory of good content. I don't really use Reddit but I have sites and people I go to for reviews of certain types of gear. But I don't know how scalable that is.
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      A big part of Googs secret sauce is ranking relevancy in part by reputation. They totally could index text-to-speech of youtube videos and rank channels by popularity in their content niches, then supply those when searches overlap their the content terms. Clearly they do _something_ like this, and probably could do more. Wirecutter and reddit should show up higher than random SEO fake-review sites, not because of manual ranking, but because NYT and reddit get higher traffic, and have higher reputation from other sites. They should able to derive signals that them so.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    YouTube has ostensibly strong policies around disclosing commercial activity, but Reddit does not. This "you can trust Reddit for reviews" narrative is nonsense. It costs basically nothing to subtly shill a product on Reddit, and more sophisticated operations will manipulate upvotes as well. On most niche subreddits, you only need a dozen upvotes to bubble to the top. Impossible to track abuse on that scale. Not to mention the transparency nightmare of subreddit moderation.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  They control like half pf webe economy, they decixe who makes money from ads, they decide who survives and who does not. They dont get to complain there is no content to steal after bthey've pillaged and burned half the web
simplicio 4y ago
Also feel like if there was more then one way to interpret a query, it used to try and give an example of each on the first page. Like it used to be if I searched "ford", I'd get both links relating to Ford Motors and President Ford. Trying today, the first link to Prez Ford is on the third page.
techsupporter 4y ago
> it'll often just reinterpret your query as if it were a typo even if you quote it This is exactly it for me, there's no way to tell the computer "this is what I want you to do." Maybe it's because product designers don't want to tell the user no. If something does fail to work, we couch it in language like "oops, something went wrong, we're very sorry" with no further hint of what to do next. Sometimes I just want the big database in the sky to tell me what it knows about a specific string of characters; this seems like it should be straightforward but I suppose it isn't.

thayne 4y ago

> That and searching for product reviews usually just returns SEO'ed trash I run into this for a lot of things beyond just product reviews, such as recipes or "what is X?" etc. Granted I don't think that is entirely Google's fault.

ghaff 4y ago
In general, it's probably true that the amount (and sophistication) of spam and spammish content has tended to overwhelm whatever technology improvements in search there have been.
- abakker 4y ago
  It's just that to the HN audience, the spam sure seems unsophisticated. I can imagine being able to filter out most blogspam just by looking at the CSS. like, every blog spam review and restaurant site is so obviously bad it hurts. also, "bestmitersaw.com" or other similar single product review/spam sites filled with affiliate links. Jeez. Kill them all.

ghaff 4y ago

How many people and organizations online actually provide real filtered hands-on reviews of things these days? There are exceptions like Wirecutter and sites like Amazon provide some insight assuming you're willing to wade through all the fake reviews, But generally speaking, consumers aren't willing to pay the cost for in-depth reviews. ADDED: There are individuals in some domain niches but you pretty much need to know who they are.

newbie2020 4y ago
Reddit has lots of them. Not sure why google can’t pick them up. YouTube also has specific reviews on anything you might want. Considering google owns YouTube, it’s strange that these results don’t bubble to the top.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Now, you're talking about essentially manual curation of trusted reviewers though. At that point, you're getting close to essentially resurrecting a Yahoo-style directory of good content. I don't really use Reddit but I have sites and people I go to for reviews of certain types of gear. But I don't know how scalable that is.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    A big part of Googs secret sauce is ranking relevancy in part by reputation. They totally could index text-to-speech of youtube videos and rank channels by popularity in their content niches, then supply those when searches overlap their the content terms. Clearly they do _something_ like this, and probably could do more. Wirecutter and reddit should show up higher than random SEO fake-review sites, not because of manual ranking, but because NYT and reddit get higher traffic, and have higher reputation from other sites. They should able to derive signals that them so.
- pphysch 4y ago
  YouTube has ostensibly strong policies around disclosing commercial activity, but Reddit does not. This "you can trust Reddit for reviews" narrative is nonsense. It costs basically nothing to subtly shill a product on Reddit, and more sophisticated operations will manipulate upvotes as well. On most niche subreddits, you only need a dozen upvotes to bubble to the top. Impossible to track abuse on that scale. Not to mention the transparency nightmare of subreddit moderation.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
They control like half pf webe economy, they decixe who makes money from ads, they decide who survives and who does not. They dont get to complain there is no content to steal after bthey've pillaged and burned half the web

simplicio 4y ago

Also feel like if there was more then one way to interpret a query, it used to try and give an example of each on the first page. Like it used to be if I searched "ford", I'd get both links relating to Ford Motors and President Ford. Trying today, the first link to Prez Ford is on the third page.

techsupporter 4y ago

> it'll often just reinterpret your query as if it were a typo even if you quote it This is exactly it for me, there's no way to tell the computer "this is what I want you to do." Maybe it's because product designers don't want to tell the user no. If something does fail to work, we couch it in language like "oops, something went wrong, we're very sorry" with no further hint of what to do next. Sometimes I just want the big database in the sky to tell me what it knows about a specific string of characters; this seems like it should be straightforward but I suppose it isn't.