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I'm not sure that I agree. My brother tried to set me up with a girl last week. She has a pretty uncommon name. Googled her. Found... a lot of stuff. I have a

I'm not sure that I agree. My brother tried to set me up with a girl last week. She has a pretty uncommon name. Googled her. Found... a lot of stuff. I have a VERY common name. Think multiple (relatively) famous people (photographers, US Medal of Honor winner, enough lawyers to choke a court system for DECADES), but if you google my name and the city I live in (1,000,000+ people), my LinkedIn is like the second result. For everyone saying that Google has gotten worse over the time they've been using it, these two use cases (which are pretty challenging) do really still work.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
And did you Google yourself on a clean computer?
- distortedsignal 3y ago
  Tried this test three ways - from my wifi, on my phone's LTE connection, and via a VPN that my family uses, all in private windows to prevent Google using my local cache. All found my LinkedIn in the top 2 slots. It seems pretty stable to me? How could I make this cleaner?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    That sounds pretty thorough for the purpose. I think the parent's point was just that if you naively Google yourself without doing anything special, your own results will tend to percolate to the top more so than if a random person were to Google you.
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      Based on the rants I've gotten from barbers, taxi drivers and the like when I've told them what I'm working om, there does indeed seem like there is a widespread dissatisfaction with capital G.
      - distortedsignal 3y ago
        Yeah - but that's a different problem. How many barbers are there in your city? How many taxi drivers? Now - how should Google satisfy all of those people? I'll confess that I don't have the answer here. But if you're trying to look up "barber ${my_city}" or "taxi ${my_city}", and there are more than one page of results, everyone but the top 10 (top 20? how many results per page are there on google these days?) is going to be unhappy. Unless there are 20 (or 40?) or fewer barbers in your city, more than half the barbers are going to be unhappy with google. It sucks, but when x people are clamoring for y resources, x - y people will be unhappy. And if y is significantly smaller than x, a significant amount of people are going to be unhappy.
        marginalia_nu 3y ago
        No I mean it's the barbers and taxi drivers struggling to find things.
        distortedsignal 3y ago
        Sorry, I misunderstood.
deltarholamda 3y ago
Okay, but now try "what's the best gaming laptop?" or something similar. This is the sort of query that, at one time, would unearth some nerd's web site alongside PCWorld or whatever. Now it's seven pages of nearly identical listicles, some of which are on bizarre domains like "DougsAutoBodyAndFlowerShop.com", and all of which are festooned with ads, also provided by Google.
- distortedsignal 3y ago
  Ok, I'll try that. Top results (excluding sponsors b/c UBlock Origin): PC Gamer The Verge Games Radar Youtube (channel: Jarrod's Tech) A giant ad showing some laptops to buy Youtube (channel: PC Builder) RTINGS.com PC Magazine Youtube (channel: Top Tech Now) CNET Tom's Hardware Another giant ad showing some laptops to buy Engadget PC Magazine Laptop Mag TechRadar These are mainstream tech press sites. And maybe the reason that it's a bunch of similar listicles is because the thing you're looking for (a laptop) is a product with relatively few entries in the market. What are you expecting here that Google isn't giving you? I'm trying to be as charitable as possible, but, for me, the expected results are about as good as I could hope for.
  - distortedsignal 3y ago
    I want to point out - if you get to the seventh page of Google, it's been known for some time that those results are... specious at best. Check out this xkcd from almost a decade ago: https://xkcd.com/1334/ https://xkcd.com/1334/ https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1334:_Second https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1334:_Second If you're really going to page 7 of Google... man, that's a desperation I've never known.
    - deltarholamda 3y ago
      I've searched for various weird error messages and ended up far into the Lands of Deep Pagination before, trying to find some glimmer of hope that I can unbrick whatever beep-boop thing I broke. It is a violent and windswept place, barren of joy or peace.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

And did you Google yourself on a clean computer?

distortedsignal 3y ago
Tried this test three ways - from my wifi, on my phone's LTE connection, and via a VPN that my family uses, all in private windows to prevent Google using my local cache. All found my LinkedIn in the top 2 slots. It seems pretty stable to me? How could I make this cleaner?
- ghaff 3y ago
  That sounds pretty thorough for the purpose. I think the parent's point was just that if you naively Google yourself without doing anything special, your own results will tend to percolate to the top more so than if a random person were to Google you.
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    Based on the rants I've gotten from barbers, taxi drivers and the like when I've told them what I'm working om, there does indeed seem like there is a widespread dissatisfaction with capital G.
    - distortedsignal 3y ago
      Yeah - but that's a different problem. How many barbers are there in your city? How many taxi drivers? Now - how should Google satisfy all of those people? I'll confess that I don't have the answer here. But if you're trying to look up "barber ${my_city}" or "taxi ${my_city}", and there are more than one page of results, everyone but the top 10 (top 20? how many results per page are there on google these days?) is going to be unhappy. Unless there are 20 (or 40?) or fewer barbers in your city, more than half the barbers are going to be unhappy with google. It sucks, but when x people are clamoring for y resources, x - y people will be unhappy. And if y is significantly smaller than x, a significant amount of people are going to be unhappy.
      - marginalia_nu 3y ago
        No I mean it's the barbers and taxi drivers struggling to find things.
        distortedsignal 3y ago
        Sorry, I misunderstood.

deltarholamda 3y ago

Okay, but now try "what's the best gaming laptop?" or something similar. This is the sort of query that, at one time, would unearth some nerd's web site alongside PCWorld or whatever. Now it's seven pages of nearly identical listicles, some of which are on bizarre domains like "DougsAutoBodyAndFlowerShop.com", and all of which are festooned with ads, also provided by Google.

distortedsignal 3y ago
Ok, I'll try that. Top results (excluding sponsors b/c UBlock Origin): PC Gamer The Verge Games Radar Youtube (channel: Jarrod's Tech) A giant ad showing some laptops to buy Youtube (channel: PC Builder) RTINGS.com PC Magazine Youtube (channel: Top Tech Now) CNET Tom's Hardware Another giant ad showing some laptops to buy Engadget PC Magazine Laptop Mag TechRadar These are mainstream tech press sites. And maybe the reason that it's a bunch of similar listicles is because the thing you're looking for (a laptop) is a product with relatively few entries in the market. What are you expecting here that Google isn't giving you? I'm trying to be as charitable as possible, but, for me, the expected results are about as good as I could hope for.
- distortedsignal 3y ago
  I want to point out - if you get to the seventh page of Google, it's been known for some time that those results are... specious at best. Check out this xkcd from almost a decade ago: https://xkcd.com/1334/ https://xkcd.com/1334/ https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1334:_Second https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1334:_Second If you're really going to page 7 of Google... man, that's a desperation I've never known.
  - deltarholamda 3y ago
    I've searched for various weird error messages and ended up far into the Lands of Deep Pagination before, trying to find some glimmer of hope that I can unbrick whatever beep-boop thing I broke. It is a violent and windswept place, barren of joy or peace.