6 ms·

Regarding your first complaint, I find that 90% of the time the suggestion for a different spelling is in fact the search I wanted. The 10% of cases where I was

by pshc 15y ago

Regarding your first complaint, I find that 90% of the time the suggestion for a different spelling is in fact the search I wanted. The 10% of cases where I was searching for something obscure do stick out in my mind more, but I'm OK with that. They've optimized for the common case, typos, which is a win overall. I haven't noticed any extraordinary synonym replacements myself, though, the stem's always been the same... I hope their search quality improves. I understand it's an arms race with spammers, and they do give a lot of value for free minus ads. I guess I'm so attuned to identifying bad results by now that I haven't noticed much variability in results quality. But echo-chamber curation doesn't feel right, and the feel is important.

6ren 15y ago
I've noticed both (typos and stems), and am impressed with how accurate it is. I miss literal search, and then they removed +keyword - but fortunately, quotes do it now. For example, rip and "rip" give slightly different results, with different emphasis within them: https://www.google.com/search?q=rip https://www.google.com/search?q=rip https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rip%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rip%22 Google's predictive search while you type is amazing, especially because it is so fast - you can select the search you want. It's tab-completion for the web. And it can be informative in itself, if you aren't sure of the right terms. (i.e. the deep search problem of not knowing what you are looking for). I think they are doing a great job of searching for what you want - which is their goal. Technically precise searches aren't their main goal (though I wish they retained it somewhere). However... artificially ranking their own links, ranking that isn't objective, is deadly to the utility of their search, and to their brand. In the past, google products have seemed to rank highly, but google claimed this was their natural rank. What is the evidence against them now? EDIT ok, the evidence is explicit and damning: http://www.focusontheuser.org/examples.php http://www.focusontheuser.org/examples.php EDIT2 ok, I'm not getting the results they claim, at all. I'm using "google.com" but from Australia. Maybe that's why.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  However... artificially ranking their own links, ranking that isn't objective, is deadly to the utility of their search, and to their brand. In the past, google products have seemed to rank highly, but google claimed this was their natural rank. What is the evidence against them now? I think the notion of objectivity in search is a fallacy, and I would hesitate to characterize the addition of social search as artificial inflation, at least not any more artificial than any other part of the algorithm. The fact is: Google has more information about how to rank G+ profiles than any other profiles. That extra information adds google juice. Yes, other social networking profiles are indexed and ranked, but Google doesn't have the appropriate extra information on them that it does wrt G+. This doesn't seem particularly hard to understand, and I'm not sure how the focusontheuser.org bookmarklet illuminates the issue. I agree that the G+ profiles are probably given too much weight, and that's probably for two reasons: 1. It's brand new and requires more data for calibration; 2. It props up G+ as a product. From Google's perspective, even if search quality is negatively impacted in the short term while they calibrate and funnel users into G+, as long as in the long term search quality is bolstered by the additional subsequent data, it's a win.
  - 6ren 15y ago
    Yes, I agree that social search can improve accuracy, and that google knows more about its own social information so it can use it more accurately. Artificially inflating that, for the purpose of pushing their product, is the problem (that's how I'd define "artificial ranking" - ranking on a basis other than returning a page of search results for the user). This avoids the problematic term "objective". I don't buy the "means to an end" argument. If google really is doing that, it means worse search results, loss of user confidence, and antitrust litigation (abuse of market power). BTW: the first search example "people and places" seems to require a google+ account (as it wouldn't give me results unless I signed up). I'm happy for a google+ search to yield google+ results.
    - ekianjo 15y ago
      I am not sure about the "antitrust litigation" claim you make. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Google. There are tons of old search engines and new ones coming up every year. This is very different than having a computer where Windows is installed by default, instead of having the choice of your OS. It's like saying Facebook is also "abusing its market power" because it only shows you contacts on Facebook and not on Google+. Sorry, but this cannot work this way, when you are on one network, you agree with the principles of that network, or you use another. There's no lack of options out there.
- dkarl 15y ago
  Google's search tweaks are making it better and better for most users. For me, though, I want the old simple-minded Google back. I would rather get what I ask for, even when when it's garbage in/garbage out, than wonder if some heuristic somewhere is filtering out the pages I want to see. For example, I'm sure Google "knows" that I am a monolingual English speaker, but I can read enough German, French, and Spanish to struggle through a blog post telling me how to diagnose or work around a problem with my computer when that's my only choice. (Especially now that Chrome will run the whole thing through Google Translate for me.) I set an option in Google to show me pages in other languages, but these days I don't see non-English results anymore unless there are only a few pages of search results. It seems like non-English pages are penalized heavily, regardless of how high they rank as search results. (Or did everyone who used to post about technical topics in German switch to English over the last five years?) Even if that's not true, the fact that I even think about it is a bother. I wish Google would be more simple-minded so I could have more confidence in how I understand the results.
  - 6ren 15y ago
    > Google Search automatically returns results in the language you choose for Google product text, but you can also request results in many other languages. Try setting German at "For Google text" (first on language preference page). I did, and got several german hits. Whereas, merely adding "german" for the search results (second on language preferences page) didn't add any. It's a hassle, but a solution is to change your "For Google text" setting. for each language you want. It seems to me that the vastly greater number of english results would simply out-weigh the german resuls. The german results will still be there, but ranked much lower. What's curious to me is that you say Google didn't formerly do this. Maybe they changed the weighting of the various languages from being equal to being weighted according to the results. Probably searching with german terms will get german results, but again a hassle because you have to do it for each language. EDIT following guelo's comment on "verbatim" under "All Results -> More Search Tools" on the left hand side, there's also a "Translated foreign pages" option. This gave me several results in other languages. Sounds like what you want. BONUS: I noticed a "Search English and German pages" just under "Search the web" on the left hand side (I added German as a search language above). I think this is precisely what you wanted. Google is impressing me.
- guelo 15y ago
  > Technically precise searches aren't their main goal (though I wish they retained it somewhere). There is the 'Verbatim' search option hidden on the SERP page on the left hand side under All Results -> More Search Tools -> Verbatim
barrkel 15y ago
I seldom make spelling mistakes. I'd estimate that easily 95% of Google's "suggestions" are incorrect in my use case; and having to put the problematic word in quotes, rather than merely prepending a '+', is an editing chore. The one thing that annoys me most these days, however, is that it also searches for "bike" when I type "motorbike"; I get endless irrelevant results about cycling in many longer queries. I recall other search engines in the past implementing cluster-based analysis to disambiguate homographs (with user selection on the SERP), but Google still isn't clever enough to fully figure out how "bike" means something different on motorbike-related pages than on cycling-related pages.
- mvgoogler 15y ago
  The search quality team loves to get specific examples of search results that you don't find helpful. If you are getting low quality results the best thing you can do is send them feedback. You could use the form at - https://www.google.com/quality_form?q=google+search+quality&hl=en&biw=1424&bih=929&prmd=imvnsu https://www.google.com/quality_form?q=google+search+quality&... I doubt Amit Singhal would object to receiving a specific report about bad search results.
  - robk 15y ago
    There's little incentive in filling out a form that disappears into the ether. Given that Google's other web-based support tools are mostly useless and unanswered (Gmail support for example), this is not much an incentive to waste time filling out another form and likely getting no reply whatsoever.
    - mvgoogler 15y ago
      I know that the search quality team loves getting specific examples of bad search results. I know this both from talking to them and from seeing how they interact with people on forums (HN in particular :-) ) See, for example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277867 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277867 I don't work on search quality, but I can pretty much guarantee that if you send specific examples to the search quality team, either through the feedback form, or some other means - heck send it to Matt Cutts - it will be looked at and used to improve search quality. The more specific you can be, the better. "Searches for bikes suck for me" isn't very useful :-) "When I enter the query 'blah blah blah', the following urls (url1, url2, url3, ...) are completely irrelevant to me." Even better, say why you think the urls are irrelevant. If you submit reports like this, I can promise you that the search quality team will take them seriously and will praise your name (if possibly only internally :-) )

by pshc 15y ago

6ren 15y ago

I've noticed both (typos and stems), and am impressed with how accurate it is. I miss literal search, and then they removed +keyword - but fortunately, quotes do it now. For example, rip and "rip" give slightly different results, with different emphasis within them: https://www.google.com/search?q=rip https://www.google.com/search?q=rip https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rip%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rip%22 Google's predictive search while you type is amazing, especially because it is so fast - you can select the search you want. It's tab-completion for the web. And it can be informative in itself, if you aren't sure of the right terms. (i.e. the deep search problem of not knowing what you are looking for). I think they are doing a great job of searching for what you want - which is their goal. Technically precise searches aren't their main goal (though I wish they retained it somewhere). However... artificially ranking their own links, ranking that isn't objective, is deadly to the utility of their search, and to their brand. In the past, google products have seemed to rank highly, but google claimed this was their natural rank. What is the evidence against them now? EDIT ok, the evidence is explicit and damning: http://www.focusontheuser.org/examples.php http://www.focusontheuser.org/examples.php EDIT2 ok, I'm not getting the results they claim, at all. I'm using "google.com" but from Australia. Maybe that's why.

joebadmo 15y ago
However... artificially ranking their own links, ranking that isn't objective, is deadly to the utility of their search, and to their brand. In the past, google products have seemed to rank highly, but google claimed this was their natural rank. What is the evidence against them now? I think the notion of objectivity in search is a fallacy, and I would hesitate to characterize the addition of social search as artificial inflation, at least not any more artificial than any other part of the algorithm. The fact is: Google has more information about how to rank G+ profiles than any other profiles. That extra information adds google juice. Yes, other social networking profiles are indexed and ranked, but Google doesn't have the appropriate extra information on them that it does wrt G+. This doesn't seem particularly hard to understand, and I'm not sure how the focusontheuser.org bookmarklet illuminates the issue. I agree that the G+ profiles are probably given too much weight, and that's probably for two reasons: 1. It's brand new and requires more data for calibration; 2. It props up G+ as a product. From Google's perspective, even if search quality is negatively impacted in the short term while they calibrate and funnel users into G+, as long as in the long term search quality is bolstered by the additional subsequent data, it's a win.
- 6ren 15y ago
  Yes, I agree that social search can improve accuracy, and that google knows more about its own social information so it can use it more accurately. Artificially inflating that, for the purpose of pushing their product, is the problem (that's how I'd define "artificial ranking" - ranking on a basis other than returning a page of search results for the user). This avoids the problematic term "objective". I don't buy the "means to an end" argument. If google really is doing that, it means worse search results, loss of user confidence, and antitrust litigation (abuse of market power). BTW: the first search example "people and places" seems to require a google+ account (as it wouldn't give me results unless I signed up). I'm happy for a google+ search to yield google+ results.
  - ekianjo 15y ago
    I am not sure about the "antitrust litigation" claim you make. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Google. There are tons of old search engines and new ones coming up every year. This is very different than having a computer where Windows is installed by default, instead of having the choice of your OS. It's like saying Facebook is also "abusing its market power" because it only shows you contacts on Facebook and not on Google+. Sorry, but this cannot work this way, when you are on one network, you agree with the principles of that network, or you use another. There's no lack of options out there.
dkarl 15y ago
Google's search tweaks are making it better and better for most users. For me, though, I want the old simple-minded Google back. I would rather get what I ask for, even when when it's garbage in/garbage out, than wonder if some heuristic somewhere is filtering out the pages I want to see. For example, I'm sure Google "knows" that I am a monolingual English speaker, but I can read enough German, French, and Spanish to struggle through a blog post telling me how to diagnose or work around a problem with my computer when that's my only choice. (Especially now that Chrome will run the whole thing through Google Translate for me.) I set an option in Google to show me pages in other languages, but these days I don't see non-English results anymore unless there are only a few pages of search results. It seems like non-English pages are penalized heavily, regardless of how high they rank as search results. (Or did everyone who used to post about technical topics in German switch to English over the last five years?) Even if that's not true, the fact that I even think about it is a bother. I wish Google would be more simple-minded so I could have more confidence in how I understand the results.
- 6ren 15y ago
  > Google Search automatically returns results in the language you choose for Google product text, but you can also request results in many other languages. Try setting German at "For Google text" (first on language preference page). I did, and got several german hits. Whereas, merely adding "german" for the search results (second on language preferences page) didn't add any. It's a hassle, but a solution is to change your "For Google text" setting. for each language you want. It seems to me that the vastly greater number of english results would simply out-weigh the german resuls. The german results will still be there, but ranked much lower. What's curious to me is that you say Google didn't formerly do this. Maybe they changed the weighting of the various languages from being equal to being weighted according to the results. Probably searching with german terms will get german results, but again a hassle because you have to do it for each language. EDIT following guelo's comment on "verbatim" under "All Results -> More Search Tools" on the left hand side, there's also a "Translated foreign pages" option. This gave me several results in other languages. Sounds like what you want. BONUS: I noticed a "Search English and German pages" just under "Search the web" on the left hand side (I added German as a search language above). I think this is precisely what you wanted. Google is impressing me.
guelo 15y ago
> Technically precise searches aren't their main goal (though I wish they retained it somewhere). There is the 'Verbatim' search option hidden on the SERP page on the left hand side under All Results -> More Search Tools -> Verbatim

barrkel 15y ago

I seldom make spelling mistakes. I'd estimate that easily 95% of Google's "suggestions" are incorrect in my use case; and having to put the problematic word in quotes, rather than merely prepending a '+', is an editing chore. The one thing that annoys me most these days, however, is that it also searches for "bike" when I type "motorbike"; I get endless irrelevant results about cycling in many longer queries. I recall other search engines in the past implementing cluster-based analysis to disambiguate homographs (with user selection on the SERP), but Google still isn't clever enough to fully figure out how "bike" means something different on motorbike-related pages than on cycling-related pages.

mvgoogler 15y ago
The search quality team loves to get specific examples of search results that you don't find helpful. If you are getting low quality results the best thing you can do is send them feedback. You could use the form at - https://www.google.com/quality_form?q=google+search+quality&hl=en&biw=1424&bih=929&prmd=imvnsu https://www.google.com/quality_form?q=google+search+quality&... I doubt Amit Singhal would object to receiving a specific report about bad search results.
- robk 15y ago
  There's little incentive in filling out a form that disappears into the ether. Given that Google's other web-based support tools are mostly useless and unanswered (Gmail support for example), this is not much an incentive to waste time filling out another form and likely getting no reply whatsoever.
  - mvgoogler 15y ago
    I know that the search quality team loves getting specific examples of bad search results. I know this both from talking to them and from seeing how they interact with people on forums (HN in particular :-) ) See, for example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277867 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277867 I don't work on search quality, but I can pretty much guarantee that if you send specific examples to the search quality team, either through the feedback form, or some other means - heck send it to Matt Cutts - it will be looked at and used to improve search quality. The more specific you can be, the better. "Searches for bikes suck for me" isn't very useful :-) "When I enter the query 'blah blah blah', the following urls (url1, url2, url3, ...) are completely irrelevant to me." Even better, say why you think the urls are irrelevant. If you submit reports like this, I can promise you that the search quality team will take them seriously and will praise your name (if possibly only internally :-) )