5 ms·

Google's recency bias in search results hurts them too. There are many older resources which are still valid out there, but you won't find them (easily) via Goo

Google's recency bias in search results hurts them too. There are many older resources which are still valid out there, but you won't find them (easily) via Google Search. Instead, you get the SEO spam which doesn't match the search as well, but is newer.

bombcar 3y ago
This is a huge, huge, huge problem and Google I feel could work to solve this. NEWS (heh it contains new) is important to be up-to-date and recent. But so many things are olds and you should give more weight to older pagerank-verified pages.
- waboremo 3y ago
  All of the Google sections seem to be terrible for their use case. Images are lacking filters and are filled with Pinterest results which send people into a cycle when trying to get to the actual image to save. News will sometimes show old news when it's obvious there should be new information about whatever you're searching, leading you to have to specifically indicate sort by date. Videos will prioritize certain domains even if the video itself is irrelevant to your search (ie searching up an actress, it'll show an IMDB video first, even if the video is very old and is just a generic trailer for some movie they were in ages ago). If you search something relatively generic, the new search bubbles will now hide the other categories (ie searching adele will hide categories like shopping or books). The finance option literally just redirects you to Google Finance now, doesn't even retain your search. They've really let the core search experience be deteriorated so extensively, that we can't blame all of it on SEO.
  - infoseek12 3y ago
    I haven’t given it much thought until just now but it really is surprising how terrible Googles image search is. There are so many images on the Internet yet the image search often fails to retrieve good examples even on straightforward searches. Never mind difficult searches, higher resolution images, or if you want to quickly download an image. It was never very good and it’s gotten perceptible worse.
- hef19898 3y ago
  News, the search showing articles from 3 weeks ago it didn't find 2 weeks ago...
- katbyte 3y ago
  there have been many times when i'm searching for things i'll go into the "tools" and limit results from 1990-2010 and find exactly it with a handful of results, vs if i don't a ton of blogspam and other crap hiding it
- crtified 3y ago
  Side-thought: I have at times wished Google had a time machine function, for example, "show me the results that this search would have returned in 2008". It would open up a whole new world of chronological meta analysis; a new dimension of cross-referencing. [I understand that Google has, or had, some limited incarnation of this, in the form of it's Time Range search, but - and without looking deeply into it - I suspect that is an algorithmically different procedure than the one I am describing. That is, I expect that applies a simple filter to a current search, rather than being The Actual Old Search Results]
nocsi 3y ago
Is Google biased, or are it’s users biased? If someone is looking up something technical or diagnosing a problem, the most recent post on StackOverflow would be more relevant. Old stuff can be important, but if users searches mostly comprise recent stuff - what’s the point?
- basch 3y ago
  Recipes. Historical things. There are way too many google searches where the best result was the top 10 years ago, and still should be the top. Instead it’s something from this year that has no information. Googling is now like talking to that person who repeats your question back to you as a statement, as if they added to the conversations. The results are some social media manager who’s job it is to make “content” by writing filler.
  - treeman79 3y ago
    Content is clearly being auto generated. Even the new Zelda game. Trying to search anything and it’s Tons of pages that all are extremely verbose with a consistent grammar style and not actually saying anything useful.
- 6D794163636F756 3y ago
  I think it's user bias. It's shockingly hard to get Google to default to docs on Java 17 over java 8. Users want 8 so Google servers that even if it isn't as new.
- clnq 3y ago
  I have some old articles on my blog that always decrease in readership. I do a pass every year, change a paragraph here and there, change the alias/url, and then get 5x the readership for a few months. Rinse and repeat. Most of my traffic comes from Google. Also, most of my content is in such a specific niche that it doesn’t really age much in 5 years. So recency bias kinda works against people discovering useful content. But whatever. Google is in decline anyways.
  - 3y ago
diffeomorphism 3y ago
Can you give an example? For many things (software, hardware, buying things,...) older resources might still be valid but dated. For more settled subjects, e.g. encyclopedic, I also have not had Google be worse than Bing.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Google results didn't start to decline to be worse than Bing, Google results declined irrespective of and without reference to Bing. Google results are far worse that Google results once were.
treeman79 3y ago
Doesn’t help that they just give answers to a query. Answers often being very wrong. Then instead of more results they show related questions, which are often non-sensical. This is not even getting into censorship of any political thing that google employees dislike.
jjk166 3y ago
You can filter results by time pretty easily. It's not perfect but it eliminates most of the SEO crap or current event stories.
- _Tev 3y ago
  In mobile version you can't do it easily. Also the UI is very basic, almost like google didn't want you to use it.

bombcar 3y ago

This is a huge, huge, huge problem and Google I feel could work to solve this. NEWS (heh it contains new) is important to be up-to-date and recent. But so many things are olds and you should give more weight to older pagerank-verified pages.

waboremo 3y ago
All of the Google sections seem to be terrible for their use case. Images are lacking filters and are filled with Pinterest results which send people into a cycle when trying to get to the actual image to save. News will sometimes show old news when it's obvious there should be new information about whatever you're searching, leading you to have to specifically indicate sort by date. Videos will prioritize certain domains even if the video itself is irrelevant to your search (ie searching up an actress, it'll show an IMDB video first, even if the video is very old and is just a generic trailer for some movie they were in ages ago). If you search something relatively generic, the new search bubbles will now hide the other categories (ie searching adele will hide categories like shopping or books). The finance option literally just redirects you to Google Finance now, doesn't even retain your search. They've really let the core search experience be deteriorated so extensively, that we can't blame all of it on SEO.
- infoseek12 3y ago
  I haven’t given it much thought until just now but it really is surprising how terrible Googles image search is. There are so many images on the Internet yet the image search often fails to retrieve good examples even on straightforward searches. Never mind difficult searches, higher resolution images, or if you want to quickly download an image. It was never very good and it’s gotten perceptible worse.
hef19898 3y ago
News, the search showing articles from 3 weeks ago it didn't find 2 weeks ago...
katbyte 3y ago
there have been many times when i'm searching for things i'll go into the "tools" and limit results from 1990-2010 and find exactly it with a handful of results, vs if i don't a ton of blogspam and other crap hiding it
crtified 3y ago
Side-thought: I have at times wished Google had a time machine function, for example, "show me the results that this search would have returned in 2008". It would open up a whole new world of chronological meta analysis; a new dimension of cross-referencing. [I understand that Google has, or had, some limited incarnation of this, in the form of it's Time Range search, but - and without looking deeply into it - I suspect that is an algorithmically different procedure than the one I am describing. That is, I expect that applies a simple filter to a current search, rather than being The Actual Old Search Results]

nocsi 3y ago

Is Google biased, or are it’s users biased? If someone is looking up something technical or diagnosing a problem, the most recent post on StackOverflow would be more relevant. Old stuff can be important, but if users searches mostly comprise recent stuff - what’s the point?

basch 3y ago
Recipes. Historical things. There are way too many google searches where the best result was the top 10 years ago, and still should be the top. Instead it’s something from this year that has no information. Googling is now like talking to that person who repeats your question back to you as a statement, as if they added to the conversations. The results are some social media manager who’s job it is to make “content” by writing filler.
- treeman79 3y ago
  Content is clearly being auto generated. Even the new Zelda game. Trying to search anything and it’s Tons of pages that all are extremely verbose with a consistent grammar style and not actually saying anything useful.
6D794163636F756 3y ago
I think it's user bias. It's shockingly hard to get Google to default to docs on Java 17 over java 8. Users want 8 so Google servers that even if it isn't as new.
clnq 3y ago
I have some old articles on my blog that always decrease in readership. I do a pass every year, change a paragraph here and there, change the alias/url, and then get 5x the readership for a few months. Rinse and repeat. Most of my traffic comes from Google. Also, most of my content is in such a specific niche that it doesn’t really age much in 5 years. So recency bias kinda works against people discovering useful content. But whatever. Google is in decline anyways.
- 3y ago

diffeomorphism 3y ago

Can you give an example? For many things (software, hardware, buying things,...) older resources might still be valid but dated. For more settled subjects, e.g. encyclopedic, I also have not had Google be worse than Bing.

pessimizer 3y ago
Google results didn't start to decline to be worse than Bing, Google results declined irrespective of and without reference to Bing. Google results are far worse that Google results once were.

treeman79 3y ago

Doesn’t help that they just give answers to a query. Answers often being very wrong. Then instead of more results they show related questions, which are often non-sensical. This is not even getting into censorship of any political thing that google employees dislike.

jjk166 3y ago

You can filter results by time pretty easily. It's not perfect but it eliminates most of the SEO crap or current event stories.

_Tev 3y ago
In mobile version you can't do it easily. Also the UI is very basic, almost like google didn't want you to use it.