4 ms·

I mean, this is a big part of the issue. Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back. S

I mean, this is a big part of the issue. Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back. Sometimes you benefit from that, other times it pushes the results you want way down. I just tested this and there were some micropython related results in the top ten, but the majority were for beautiful soup with no mention of micropython.

tshaddox 4y ago
> Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back... There's a problem here though, which is that there is no way for me or any other reader to discern whether the reality of the situation is "it's not reproducible and the commenter is misremembering basic facts about their search results due perhaps to some unrelated frustrations" and "it's not reproducible but the commenter's account is accurate." I completely share the views about Google's search results being terrible, but it's still possible to overstate how bad they are. And I do find it fairly difficult to believe that Google would show some people paid programming courses as the top 4 results for that query when much more relevant results clearly exist and everyone attempting to reproduce this gets those more relevant results.
- copymoro 4y ago
  nor are we anywhere near being able to inspect how google is doing all this. if only there were some way to somehow be able to share that information with everybody, some technology so that we can all access such potentially useful information about how google is functioning right now sorry about the snark, but it's a vent for accumulative frustration from seeing a worsening trend in this regard. Kafka would recognize this trend; computing is truly becoming a "bureaucrat's best friend".
- int_19h 4y ago
  I believe the OP because I've had that exact problem once myself, except in my case it was "helpfully" substituting FreeBSD in the query with Linux.
majormajor 4y ago
I often find that frustrating about Google search, but I'm also unconvinced it's a problem that a more-AI-driven approach will avoid. Seems like the idea to try to convince the model to interpret things differently based on user history is still likely to get pushed by product managers, and still technically capable. And then "no tell me about the framework" "conversationally" vs tailoring Google search terms seems a bit of a wash.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I'm about 80% sure that the reason why Google became so bad for my searches is that they added AI elements to it, to make it try to figure out what I'm searching for instead of taking my word for it. In that sense, I'm not sure more AI would improve the situation. OTOH, better AI just might. There doesn't seem to be a "no AI" option on offer.
- cameldrv 4y ago
  Based on my usage of ChatGPT, I think that a more AI driven approach could help a lot. With ChatGPT if it misinterprets what I'm asking for, I can make a clarifying followup query.
ants_everywhere 4y ago
> Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back. There could also be other things that make it non-reproducible as well. It sometimes feels like search just returns whatever it has on hand that seems somewhat similar to your search. It may then do an asynchronous request to pull into cache results from a deeper backend search, but by the time the frontend gets them you've already been served your results. Subsequent searches from other people for the same terms would then get better results than you did, so this sort of optimization would on average improve search quality even if quality is poor for the first searcher. I have no idea if search engines actually do this. But it seems to explain some of their more mysterious behavior, like immediately returning a bunch of results that have nothing to do with your search terms.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
  That sounds plausible. There could be some service aggregating search results from multiple systems, and if one of them is slow (maybe breaking some SLA), it would be omitted. I guess there are probably a hundred Google employees reading this who know whether it’s accurate and we’re just speculating.

tshaddox 4y ago

> Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back... There's a problem here though, which is that there is no way for me or any other reader to discern whether the reality of the situation is "it's not reproducible and the commenter is misremembering basic facts about their search results due perhaps to some unrelated frustrations" and "it's not reproducible but the commenter's account is accurate." I completely share the views about Google's search results being terrible, but it's still possible to overstate how bad they are. And I do find it fairly difficult to believe that Google would show some people paid programming courses as the top 4 results for that query when much more relevant results clearly exist and everyone attempting to reproduce this gets those more relevant results.

copymoro 4y ago
nor are we anywhere near being able to inspect how google is doing all this. if only there were some way to somehow be able to share that information with everybody, some technology so that we can all access such potentially useful information about how google is functioning right now sorry about the snark, but it's a vent for accumulative frustration from seeing a worsening trend in this regard. Kafka would recognize this trend; computing is truly becoming a "bureaucrat's best friend".
int_19h 4y ago
I believe the OP because I've had that exact problem once myself, except in my case it was "helpfully" substituting FreeBSD in the query with Linux.

majormajor 4y ago

I often find that frustrating about Google search, but I'm also unconvinced it's a problem that a more-AI-driven approach will avoid. Seems like the idea to try to convince the model to interpret things differently based on user history is still likely to get pushed by product managers, and still technically capable. And then "no tell me about the framework" "conversationally" vs tailoring Google search terms seems a bit of a wash.

JohnFen 4y ago
I'm about 80% sure that the reason why Google became so bad for my searches is that they added AI elements to it, to make it try to figure out what I'm searching for instead of taking my word for it. In that sense, I'm not sure more AI would improve the situation. OTOH, better AI just might. There doesn't seem to be a "no AI" option on offer.
cameldrv 4y ago
Based on my usage of ChatGPT, I think that a more AI driven approach could help a lot. With ChatGPT if it misinterprets what I'm asking for, I can make a clarifying followup query.

ants_everywhere 4y ago

> Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back. There could also be other things that make it non-reproducible as well. It sometimes feels like search just returns whatever it has on hand that seems somewhat similar to your search. It may then do an asynchronous request to pull into cache results from a deeper backend search, but by the time the frontend gets them you've already been served your results. Subsequent searches from other people for the same terms would then get better results than you did, so this sort of optimization would on average improve search quality even if quality is poor for the first searcher. I have no idea if search engines actually do this. But it seems to explain some of their more mysterious behavior, like immediately returning a bunch of results that have nothing to do with your search terms.

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
That sounds plausible. There could be some service aggregating search results from multiple systems, and if one of them is slow (maybe breaking some SLA), it would be omitted. I guess there are probably a hundred Google employees reading this who know whether it’s accurate and we’re just speculating.