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Ask HN: Is Google search team being sabotaged?

16 points by nothrowaways 3y ago

Or is it just me? I feel that search results in Google are being deliberately annoying.

speedgoose 3y ago
It’s called the SEO industry.
mikewarot 3y ago
It's the incentive structures at play that are forcing the continually worsening of search quality. It doesn't matter what their immediate management wants, what the shareholders want seems to be more profit this quarter, and higher stock prices.
stathibus 3y ago
If it was just search that was broken and needed fixing, then a competitor would have stomped google search into the dust already. The reality is that the internet itself is now 99.99% shit thanks to the SEO insanity that Google created.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Then show older sites. So much more is available that is excluded.
- webmobdev 3y ago
  > then a competitor would have stomped google search into the dust already You'd think so, but they can't. Forget about Google's brand power due to which every internet user is hard-wired to turn to it when searching. The scale of users they have gives them a monopoly that allows them to collect a vast amount of data that no competitor can match. Without an quivalent amount of data, they just can't improve their engines. A simple example is the search queries - the keywords you use to search for data. I suspect Google gets roughly 1000 new search queries to every 1 new query their competitor gets. So Google has 1000+ new data points to optimise their search engine, where as a competitor is constrained due to the lack of similar data. That is why the competitors offer a poorer search experience with new queries. Which makes users stop using it and adds to woes of the non-Google search engine. The only fix to this is to recognize Google search engine as a monopoly, and force it to share its data with other competitors till they reach a certain level of threshold of "competitiveness". (Ofcourse, the biggest issue with this approach is the user privacy problem).
Chyzwar 3y ago
Google metrics for successful search are about making more money from ads not if an individual finds an answer.

16 points by nothrowaways 3y ago

Or is it just me? I feel that search results in Google are being deliberately annoying.

speedgoose 3y ago

It’s called the SEO industry.

mikewarot 3y ago

It's the incentive structures at play that are forcing the continually worsening of search quality. It doesn't matter what their immediate management wants, what the shareholders want seems to be more profit this quarter, and higher stock prices.

stathibus 3y ago

If it was just search that was broken and needed fixing, then a competitor would have stomped google search into the dust already. The reality is that the internet itself is now 99.99% shit thanks to the SEO insanity that Google created.

ipaddr 3y ago
Then show older sites. So much more is available that is excluded.
webmobdev 3y ago
> then a competitor would have stomped google search into the dust already You'd think so, but they can't. Forget about Google's brand power due to which every internet user is hard-wired to turn to it when searching. The scale of users they have gives them a monopoly that allows them to collect a vast amount of data that no competitor can match. Without an quivalent amount of data, they just can't improve their engines. A simple example is the search queries - the keywords you use to search for data. I suspect Google gets roughly 1000 new search queries to every 1 new query their competitor gets. So Google has 1000+ new data points to optimise their search engine, where as a competitor is constrained due to the lack of similar data. That is why the competitors offer a poorer search experience with new queries. Which makes users stop using it and adds to woes of the non-Google search engine. The only fix to this is to recognize Google search engine as a monopoly, and force it to share its data with other competitors till they reach a certain level of threshold of "competitiveness". (Ofcourse, the biggest issue with this approach is the user privacy problem).

Chyzwar 3y ago

Google metrics for successful search are about making more money from ads not if an individual finds an answer.