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> Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes sub

> Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query Wait. Is this example from the court testimony, or something the author made up?

mvdtnz 3y ago
It sounds like the author is massively extrapolating from one slide that was only shown for a brief moment. A slide that we can't see. I am extremely skeptical that Google would make such an egregious substitution and I'd need to see some actual evidence for this.
rodonn 3y ago
I'm pretty sure the author is misinterpreting what she saw. Here is a thing that Google does do: The user searches for "children's clothing". An advertiser has created a search ad for the keyword "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear". If the advertiser has enabled "broad match" for their ad, then their ad will be eligible to be shown on the user's page in one of the advertising slots, even though there are no words in common between the user's query and the advertiser's keyword. Does anyone have evidence of Google manipulating the user's query to affect the organic search results shown to the user?
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Query re-write is probably one of the top keys to search quality, at any search engine.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    Is it, though? I reckon it’s commonly accepted. I reckon there are cases that can be highlighted. As I’m sure it’s possible to make the case that some trickle-down policies work. But in the end, plural forms or synonyms do not equate to the original word.
    - bloppe 3y ago
      You can just surround a word with double quotes if you need exact matches. It's nice having synonyms otherwise.
      - eitland 3y ago
        Haven't worked reliably in Google since somewhere around 2012 AFAIK. Edit: Downvote all you want but this is documented.
        xboxnolifes 3y ago
        I use it all the time. My biggest issue is I frequently get 0 search results with it on specific searches. It may not always have a result, but I don't get returned results that don't include the quoted portion.
        eitland 3y ago
        As I write above it doesn't work reliably. And as I think everyone on HN knows "my Google" isn't "your Google". Even if it works reliably for you doesn't mean it does for me and many others.
        the-rc 3y ago
        The problem is that you're assuming search is deterministic.
        eitland 3y ago
        > The problem is that you're assuming search is deterministic. I am not assuming search is deterministic. But even in a generally non-deterministic system, some things should always stay true. For example: When doublequotes means "exact match", any item that doesn't contain an exact match should not be shown. I also understand that a webpage might have changed since it was indexed, but I have a really hard time believing all the false matches I have wasted time on over the years relates to websites suddenly changing between the time when they were indexed and the time when I visited them.
- ganeshkrishnan 3y ago
  its usually from user behaviour and how the advertiser setup the keywords for the product. If users searching for "children's clothing" start having a high conversion for "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" then more and more of their ads will start appearing when searching for children's clothing. Google (and also the advertiser) have list of keywords that work well for products and then keep testing new keywords
  - edmundsauto 3y ago
    This actually makes sense to me - conversion is possibly the most clear signal that the query intent was answered. While there is a financial incentive for Google to make this happen, it also results in improved user experience - in the less cynical days I might call this a “win win”.
- hedora 3y ago
  Searching for "children's clothing" gives 100% spam (== store front landing blurbs or things that are labeled "sponsored"). Searching "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" gives some organic results and some spam. So, it's now worse than the previous alleged behavior. Great.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    Exactly. “Children’s clothing” is a completely useless search until the search engine joins it with a million signals you failed to type. I can’t even begin to imagine how people believe every page in the internet could possibly be ranked in a useful way without those extra implicit terms.
    - selfhoster11 3y ago
      If it's a useless search, follow the GIGO principle. The user will realise they made a garbage query and will make the keywords more specific.
    - friendzis 3y ago
      I find it interesting how you manage to draw such weird conclusions. "Children's clothing" is not a useless search query. It is very generic or wide and THEREFORE useful. Running that query through a GPT to transform it into "Popular brand among this bucket of users that spends a lot on ads" + "storefront" is completely useless, because now you have "enhanced" the query itself to a narrow subset of indices. All the fashion, sustainability, diy blogs are immediately filtered out in the query itself. The "frontend" now does not even have a chance at drawing from different buckets to form SERPs - every result is storefront now. This is the issue discussed in OP. There is one implicit question here. Not only how much we need to tweak input queries to get the search engine to actually cast a wide net and allow discoverability, but whether that is possible at all.
- rodonn 3y ago
  Looks like her claim was in fact false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802116
vore 3y ago
This really really doesn't pass the sniff test. It would be extremely obvious if your searches were being so egregiously converted.
- jjulius 3y ago
  >It would be extremely obvious... I don't think this is necessarily true.
  - lozenge 3y ago
    If you search for children's clothing, you get multiple different companies. The query obviously hasn't been modified to just include one brand.
    - hedora 3y ago
      You get companies, but they are all resellers. The listings are all worded like advertisements and stuffed with thumbnails, etc, in the style of banner ads. None of the results point to manufacturers, reviews or other classes of articles. Ironically, you get better results with the thing they apparently used to rewrite to.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I wouldn't expect results manipulated as such to be "extremely obvious" to your average person.
      - vore 3y ago
        That's what you should be saying, because that's what the article is claiming. If you're arguing they would rewrite queries less obviously, that's a much weaker claim than what the author is making. I'm sure the average person would notice if their query for "children's clothing" was converted to "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear". Have you ever seen your query converted to such a narrow query targeting a specific brand like the article alleges? Surely you would notice that you're only getting NIKOLAI-brand kidswear results?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416694.pdf https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416694.pdf Page 14 "Query Rewriter interprets query"
- somsak2 3y ago
  If this article is based on these four words, I'm not sure how you could label that anything other than a massive misrepresentation.
  - tantalor 3y ago
    misrepresentation -> misinformation
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  According to someone attending the trial, the testimony given today explains what's happening in further detail. https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1708892621433672072 https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1708892621433672072
  - cbzbc 3y ago
    That's a tweet by the author of the article being discussed here.

mvdtnz 3y ago

It sounds like the author is massively extrapolating from one slide that was only shown for a brief moment. A slide that we can't see. I am extremely skeptical that Google would make such an egregious substitution and I'd need to see some actual evidence for this.

rodonn 3y ago

I'm pretty sure the author is misinterpreting what she saw. Here is a thing that Google does do: The user searches for "children's clothing". An advertiser has created a search ad for the keyword "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear". If the advertiser has enabled "broad match" for their ad, then their ad will be eligible to be shown on the user's page in one of the advertising slots, even though there are no words in common between the user's query and the advertiser's keyword. Does anyone have evidence of Google manipulating the user's query to affect the organic search results shown to the user?

jeffbee 3y ago
Query re-write is probably one of the top keys to search quality, at any search engine.
- eastbound 3y ago
  Is it, though? I reckon it’s commonly accepted. I reckon there are cases that can be highlighted. As I’m sure it’s possible to make the case that some trickle-down policies work. But in the end, plural forms or synonyms do not equate to the original word.
  - bloppe 3y ago
    You can just surround a word with double quotes if you need exact matches. It's nice having synonyms otherwise.
    - eitland 3y ago
      Haven't worked reliably in Google since somewhere around 2012 AFAIK. Edit: Downvote all you want but this is documented.
      - xboxnolifes 3y ago
        I use it all the time. My biggest issue is I frequently get 0 search results with it on specific searches. It may not always have a result, but I don't get returned results that don't include the quoted portion.
        eitland 3y ago
        As I write above it doesn't work reliably. And as I think everyone on HN knows "my Google" isn't "your Google". Even if it works reliably for you doesn't mean it does for me and many others.
        the-rc 3y ago
        The problem is that you're assuming search is deterministic.
        eitland 3y ago
        > The problem is that you're assuming search is deterministic. I am not assuming search is deterministic. But even in a generally non-deterministic system, some things should always stay true. For example: When doublequotes means "exact match", any item that doesn't contain an exact match should not be shown. I also understand that a webpage might have changed since it was indexed, but I have a really hard time believing all the false matches I have wasted time on over the years relates to websites suddenly changing between the time when they were indexed and the time when I visited them.
ganeshkrishnan 3y ago
its usually from user behaviour and how the advertiser setup the keywords for the product. If users searching for "children's clothing" start having a high conversion for "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" then more and more of their ads will start appearing when searching for children's clothing. Google (and also the advertiser) have list of keywords that work well for products and then keep testing new keywords
- edmundsauto 3y ago
  This actually makes sense to me - conversion is possibly the most clear signal that the query intent was answered. While there is a financial incentive for Google to make this happen, it also results in improved user experience - in the less cynical days I might call this a “win win”.
hedora 3y ago
Searching for "children's clothing" gives 100% spam (== store front landing blurbs or things that are labeled "sponsored"). Searching "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" gives some organic results and some spam. So, it's now worse than the previous alleged behavior. Great.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Exactly. “Children’s clothing” is a completely useless search until the search engine joins it with a million signals you failed to type. I can’t even begin to imagine how people believe every page in the internet could possibly be ranked in a useful way without those extra implicit terms.
  - selfhoster11 3y ago
    If it's a useless search, follow the GIGO principle. The user will realise they made a garbage query and will make the keywords more specific.
  - friendzis 3y ago
    I find it interesting how you manage to draw such weird conclusions. "Children's clothing" is not a useless search query. It is very generic or wide and THEREFORE useful. Running that query through a GPT to transform it into "Popular brand among this bucket of users that spends a lot on ads" + "storefront" is completely useless, because now you have "enhanced" the query itself to a narrow subset of indices. All the fashion, sustainability, diy blogs are immediately filtered out in the query itself. The "frontend" now does not even have a chance at drawing from different buckets to form SERPs - every result is storefront now. This is the issue discussed in OP. There is one implicit question here. Not only how much we need to tweak input queries to get the search engine to actually cast a wide net and allow discoverability, but whether that is possible at all.
rodonn 3y ago
Looks like her claim was in fact false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802116

vore 3y ago

This really really doesn't pass the sniff test. It would be extremely obvious if your searches were being so egregiously converted.

jjulius 3y ago
>It would be extremely obvious... I don't think this is necessarily true.
- lozenge 3y ago
  If you search for children's clothing, you get multiple different companies. The query obviously hasn't been modified to just include one brand.
  - hedora 3y ago
    You get companies, but they are all resellers. The listings are all worded like advertisements and stuffed with thumbnails, etc, in the style of banner ads. None of the results point to manufacturers, reviews or other classes of articles. Ironically, you get better results with the thing they apparently used to rewrite to.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I wouldn't expect results manipulated as such to be "extremely obvious" to your average person.
    - vore 3y ago
      That's what you should be saying, because that's what the article is claiming. If you're arguing they would rewrite queries less obviously, that's a much weaker claim than what the author is making. I'm sure the average person would notice if their query for "children's clothing" was converted to "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear". Have you ever seen your query converted to such a narrow query targeting a specific brand like the article alleges? Surely you would notice that you're only getting NIKOLAI-brand kidswear results?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416694.pdf https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416694.pdf Page 14 "Query Rewriter interprets query"

somsak2 3y ago
If this article is based on these four words, I'm not sure how you could label that anything other than a massive misrepresentation.
- tantalor 3y ago
  misrepresentation -> misinformation
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
According to someone attending the trial, the testimony given today explains what's happening in further detail. https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1708892621433672072 https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1708892621433672072
- cbzbc 3y ago
  That's a tweet by the author of the article being discussed here.