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> The “Google is going downhill” narrative only exists in the tech bubble. No one actually thinks this way in the real world Maybe. But the opinion that Google

> The “Google is going downhill” narrative only exists in the tech bubble. No one actually thinks this way in the real world Maybe. But the opinion that Google is returning less relevant results is sooner or later going to go mainstream unless they start returning relevant results. We're users too, but we notice things first. Just because the other users haven't noticed them doesn't mean that they won't in the near future.

dangus 3y ago
I personally don’t even agree that Google returns irrelevant results. I am a DuckDuckGo user and I still use the !G flag when the results I’m getting aren’t good. Every time I go over to Google the results improve slightly. ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. Microsoft and Google are both going to integrate AI into their search engines and they’ll both improve drastically as a result. We’re only scratching the surface on the subject.
- brookst 3y ago
  It’s not so much that Google returns irrelevant results as it is that Google returns results that are optimized for taking as long as possible to glean the information you’re looking for. Recipes are the classic example. Because Google upranks sites that people spend more time on after a click, most recipe searches yield pages that start with the history of flour milling and what milk is, before eventually getting to the desired recipe 5000 words later.
  - dangus 3y ago
    I don’t agree that Google is optimizing for time wasting, either. The faster they get you to click an ad link the faster they get paid. The phenomenon with recipes that you mention has nothing to do with Google: it has more to do with copyright. You can’t copyright a recipe, but you can copyright written commentary about cooking a recipe. The recipe blogs also need enough content to place ads around.
  - KMag 3y ago
    From my memory working on web indexing at Google roughly 15 years ago, there was a step function for detecting "short clicks" that indicated a page was irrelevant for that query. As long as the user spent above some minimum before returning to Google, increased time on the site didn't indicate higher quality. So, the real optimum is ranking for one or more popular searches (regardless of relevance), looking vaguely interesting, and just confusing enough that it takes a couple of seconds to realize this isn't the page you wanted. Either that, or being exactly what someone wants for one of the popular searches. Though, things may have changed, and my memory definitely has faded. Also, plenty of SEOs may have misunderstood short clicks as a quality signal, so even if maximizing time on site doesn't help, I wouldn't be surprised if SEOs still recommend it.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  > ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. > Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. That's really the only thing I want: A search engine that understands my queries. I don't want to chat with a computer.
jampekka 3y ago
Isn't this how Google (as search) got off? Altavista et al got spammed into unusable mess and their use collapsed almost overnight when PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. Of course nowadays Google's tentacles are so deeply everywhere that they will churn on with subpar technology just like e.g. Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft etc etc. The oligopoly is probably here to stay.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  It's so easy to try out another search engine, and people do all the time. It's also easy to set any search engine as the default, unless you use iOS. It's also super easy to use different search engines in parallel. I often search HN for a different perspective and for live search. Sometimes also github. And of course amazon, whenever I want to order something.
- KMag 3y ago
  > PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. It was more temporary (shorter time period) than you probably realize. I was a developer on the Google web indexing system. PageRank was only one of many signals that went into ranking, and PageRank was gamed by link farms pretty early. There's a whole team dedicated to fighting webspam, and their spam signals are some of the other inputs to the scorer. By Google's golden years, there was a whole lot of secret sauce going into fighting webspam, and PageRank had been pretty thoroughly gamed. PageRank was important, but I think its importance is generally over-estimated. Also, about 15 years ago, Google was testing another link-graph-based metric that was more efficient to calculate and less susceptible to linkfarms. I imagine PageRank (as described in the patent/Wikipedia) has been replaced, though perhaps the new algorithm is still referred to as PageRank. (IIRC, the proposed replacement was being called PageRankNG while in testing.)
Aurornis 3y ago
> Maybe. But the opinion that Google is returning less relevant results is sooner or later going to go mainstream unless they start returning relevant results. Less relevant compared to what? Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. ChatGPT is helpful because it gives a very convincing feeling of being right. Whether or not it’s actually right is another question.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Less relevant compared to what? Compared to what the user wanted when they ran the search in the first place. > It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. Of course it's a personal anecdote but as a DDG user since 2014 I routinely add !g to my search when the results don't satisfy me (which happen every once in a while, say once a month). This used to help, as most of the time Google had the answer I was looking for and could not find otherwise, but I don't think it happened even once over the past two years: Google is now at least as bad as DDG when it used to be strongly superior.
- Atreiden 3y ago
  > And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. I acknowledge that it is a paid service, but you haven't tried Kagi yet you should give it a go! Default Search quality is very good, with no ads, tracking, or telemetry, and you can use Lenses and customizations to get even better results. You can even block certain sites from appearing in search (or simply de-rank them), which has dramatically reduced Pinterest and other SEO spam for me.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  > Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I think they're right. More and more information on the internet is siloed into apps or behind paywalls. Knowledgeable people who used to write technical articles now make youtube videos (far less searchable). And the good stuff on the internet is diluted with low quality content written by someone who has to churn out an article every 15 minutes that is hard to filter out, even as a human. (I wasted 3 hours yesterday because a website gave me the wrong formula for something)
jfoster 3y ago
It doesn't matter who agrees Google is delivering less relevant results until someone is delivering significantly more relevant results. As of now, that does not yet exist. It should only be a matter of time, but the only safe assumption is that smart, >$1T companies don't give up on their core businesses too easily.

dangus 3y ago

I personally don’t even agree that Google returns irrelevant results. I am a DuckDuckGo user and I still use the !G flag when the results I’m getting aren’t good. Every time I go over to Google the results improve slightly. ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. Microsoft and Google are both going to integrate AI into their search engines and they’ll both improve drastically as a result. We’re only scratching the surface on the subject.

brookst 3y ago
It’s not so much that Google returns irrelevant results as it is that Google returns results that are optimized for taking as long as possible to glean the information you’re looking for. Recipes are the classic example. Because Google upranks sites that people spend more time on after a click, most recipe searches yield pages that start with the history of flour milling and what milk is, before eventually getting to the desired recipe 5000 words later.
- dangus 3y ago
  I don’t agree that Google is optimizing for time wasting, either. The faster they get you to click an ad link the faster they get paid. The phenomenon with recipes that you mention has nothing to do with Google: it has more to do with copyright. You can’t copyright a recipe, but you can copyright written commentary about cooking a recipe. The recipe blogs also need enough content to place ads around.
- KMag 3y ago
  From my memory working on web indexing at Google roughly 15 years ago, there was a step function for detecting "short clicks" that indicated a page was irrelevant for that query. As long as the user spent above some minimum before returning to Google, increased time on the site didn't indicate higher quality. So, the real optimum is ranking for one or more popular searches (regardless of relevance), looking vaguely interesting, and just confusing enough that it takes a couple of seconds to realize this isn't the page you wanted. Either that, or being exactly what someone wants for one of the popular searches. Though, things may have changed, and my memory definitely has faded. Also, plenty of SEOs may have misunderstood short clicks as a quality signal, so even if maximizing time on site doesn't help, I wouldn't be surprised if SEOs still recommend it.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
> ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. > Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. That's really the only thing I want: A search engine that understands my queries. I don't want to chat with a computer.

jampekka 3y ago

Isn't this how Google (as search) got off? Altavista et al got spammed into unusable mess and their use collapsed almost overnight when PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. Of course nowadays Google's tentacles are so deeply everywhere that they will churn on with subpar technology just like e.g. Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft etc etc. The oligopoly is probably here to stay.

amadeuspagel 3y ago
It's so easy to try out another search engine, and people do all the time. It's also easy to set any search engine as the default, unless you use iOS. It's also super easy to use different search engines in parallel. I often search HN for a different perspective and for live search. Sometimes also github. And of course amazon, whenever I want to order something.
KMag 3y ago
> PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. It was more temporary (shorter time period) than you probably realize. I was a developer on the Google web indexing system. PageRank was only one of many signals that went into ranking, and PageRank was gamed by link farms pretty early. There's a whole team dedicated to fighting webspam, and their spam signals are some of the other inputs to the scorer. By Google's golden years, there was a whole lot of secret sauce going into fighting webspam, and PageRank had been pretty thoroughly gamed. PageRank was important, but I think its importance is generally over-estimated. Also, about 15 years ago, Google was testing another link-graph-based metric that was more efficient to calculate and less susceptible to linkfarms. I imagine PageRank (as described in the patent/Wikipedia) has been replaced, though perhaps the new algorithm is still referred to as PageRank. (IIRC, the proposed replacement was being called PageRankNG while in testing.)

Aurornis 3y ago

> Maybe. But the opinion that Google is returning less relevant results is sooner or later going to go mainstream unless they start returning relevant results. Less relevant compared to what? Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. ChatGPT is helpful because it gives a very convincing feeling of being right. Whether or not it’s actually right is another question.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> Less relevant compared to what? Compared to what the user wanted when they ran the search in the first place. > It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. Of course it's a personal anecdote but as a DDG user since 2014 I routinely add !g to my search when the results don't satisfy me (which happen every once in a while, say once a month). This used to help, as most of the time Google had the answer I was looking for and could not find otherwise, but I don't think it happened even once over the past two years: Google is now at least as bad as DDG when it used to be strongly superior.
Atreiden 3y ago
> And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. I acknowledge that it is a paid service, but you haven't tried Kagi yet you should give it a go! Default Search quality is very good, with no ads, tracking, or telemetry, and you can use Lenses and customizations to get even better results. You can even block certain sites from appearing in search (or simply de-rank them), which has dramatically reduced Pinterest and other SEO spam for me.
londons_explore 3y ago
> Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I think they're right. More and more information on the internet is siloed into apps or behind paywalls. Knowledgeable people who used to write technical articles now make youtube videos (far less searchable). And the good stuff on the internet is diluted with low quality content written by someone who has to churn out an article every 15 minutes that is hard to filter out, even as a human. (I wasted 3 hours yesterday because a website gave me the wrong formula for something)

jfoster 3y ago

It doesn't matter who agrees Google is delivering less relevant results until someone is delivering significantly more relevant results. As of now, that does not yet exist. It should only be a matter of time, but the only safe assumption is that smart, >$1T companies don't give up on their core businesses too easily.