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What changed? Just an asumption here. But could it be the fault of the web rather than Google's? Could it be that the web itself is being so flooded with SEO-

by d--b 3y ago

What changed? Just an asumption here. But could it be the fault of the web rather than Google's? Could it be that the web itself is being so flooded with SEO-ed crap content that even Google can't sort through it all?

tome 3y ago
Kagi gives good results, so it's not a question of being technically infeasible.
Drakim 3y ago
Chicken & Egg problem, the reason the web is so flooded with SEO-ed crap content is because of Google Search.
pravus 3y ago
It's both, really. I seem to recall somewhere around 2006 Google changed to providing personalized search results based on your history. Since then the quality of search has declined horribly and my assumption is that it's a side-effect of the combination of hyper-SEO and a narrow focus on individual interest rather than categories. I'm starting to believe that some sort of Yahoo model is the best solution because you want a lot of source material to search through, but it needs to be context-aware so that searches are meaningful. I am vastly more effective in my job when search results return reference information rather than blog articles about somebody's weekend hobby project that only explores the most basic parts of a problem I'm working on. And this extends to other categories in my searching as well. I'm also personally wondering if Google has realized (even implicitly) that because of all of this, it no longer has to do deep searching anymore and can save tons of money by regurgitating cached copies of "related" garbage because people will give up before any expensive operations take place. It makes me wonder if Google's internal resource accounting has anything to do with it but that's just pure speculation on my part.
tjpnz 3y ago
It's quite common for some queries to return a few pages when they might've previously yielded dozens. I'm not sure when it happened but couldn't have been more than 1-2 years ago. There's also less balance (ultimately results) for topics some might deem political, I may be on the left but I'm not blind. Here's something to try: think of a really obscure TV show you watched when you were young, even better a specific quote. In my experience Google was pretty good at finding sources on where it came from. But now it's incredibly rare.
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  They implemented embedding-based search instead of keyword matching.

by d--b 3y ago

tome 3y ago

Kagi gives good results, so it's not a question of being technically infeasible.

Drakim 3y ago

Chicken & Egg problem, the reason the web is so flooded with SEO-ed crap content is because of Google Search.

pravus 3y ago

It's both, really. I seem to recall somewhere around 2006 Google changed to providing personalized search results based on your history. Since then the quality of search has declined horribly and my assumption is that it's a side-effect of the combination of hyper-SEO and a narrow focus on individual interest rather than categories. I'm starting to believe that some sort of Yahoo model is the best solution because you want a lot of source material to search through, but it needs to be context-aware so that searches are meaningful. I am vastly more effective in my job when search results return reference information rather than blog articles about somebody's weekend hobby project that only explores the most basic parts of a problem I'm working on. And this extends to other categories in my searching as well. I'm also personally wondering if Google has realized (even implicitly) that because of all of this, it no longer has to do deep searching anymore and can save tons of money by regurgitating cached copies of "related" garbage because people will give up before any expensive operations take place. It makes me wonder if Google's internal resource accounting has anything to do with it but that's just pure speculation on my part.

tjpnz 3y ago

It's quite common for some queries to return a few pages when they might've previously yielded dozens. I'm not sure when it happened but couldn't have been more than 1-2 years ago. There's also less balance (ultimately results) for topics some might deem political, I may be on the left but I'm not blind. Here's something to try: think of a really obscure TV show you watched when you were young, even better a specific quote. In my experience Google was pretty good at finding sources on where it came from. But now it's incredibly rare.

Llamamoe 3y ago
They implemented embedding-based search instead of keyword matching.