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It seems the AI confuses literal and semantic searches, that is, if I search for "what is America's finest news source?" it should be clear that I'm not looking

It seems the AI confuses literal and semantic searches, that is, if I search for "what is America's finest news source?" it should be clear that I'm not looking for a page containing that phrase but rather one that satisfies its meaning not necessarily respecting the phrase word for word. However, Google is a advertising machine, so I wouldn't be that surprised if a search for "what is the best pizza in the world" didn't return results based on user reviews and opinions but rather a pointer to someone that advertise themselves as the best pizza in the world.

pimlottc 2y ago
It's more than just the literal text on theonion.com; that tagline has been widely quoted on many reputable sites when describing The Onion [0]. So I'm sure to Google that seems like a really strong signal that there's a strong consensus that they really are the finest news source out there. 0: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22America%27s+finest+news+source%22+-site%3Atheonion.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22America%27s+finest+news+s...
- more_corn 2y ago
  And in every context onion is known to be a source of purely satirical content. This isn’t hard.
  - toast0 2y ago
    The AV club isn't purely satirical content and was integrated into the Onion for a long time (I'm not sure how separate it is now, but it has its own domain anyway)
viraptor 2y ago
> it should be clear that I'm not looking for a page containing that phrase but rather one that satisfies its meaning Why? If you hear "America's finest news source" a few times and go to google to check what people mean, you really want it to tell you about the onion. Or at least a Wikipedia-style disambiguation page.
sdwr 2y ago
There's a big difference between returning a list of results vs a paragraph of information declaring an answer. An incorrect or tenuously related result coming back as #5, or even #1, is less "wrong" than "the answer" being wrong.

pimlottc 2y ago

It's more than just the literal text on theonion.com; that tagline has been widely quoted on many reputable sites when describing The Onion [0]. So I'm sure to Google that seems like a really strong signal that there's a strong consensus that they really are the finest news source out there. 0: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22America%27s+finest+news+source%22+-site%3Atheonion.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22America%27s+finest+news+s...

more_corn 2y ago
And in every context onion is known to be a source of purely satirical content. This isn’t hard.
- toast0 2y ago
  The AV club isn't purely satirical content and was integrated into the Onion for a long time (I'm not sure how separate it is now, but it has its own domain anyway)

viraptor 2y ago

> it should be clear that I'm not looking for a page containing that phrase but rather one that satisfies its meaning Why? If you hear "America's finest news source" a few times and go to google to check what people mean, you really want it to tell you about the onion. Or at least a Wikipedia-style disambiguation page.

sdwr 2y ago

There's a big difference between returning a list of results vs a paragraph of information declaring an answer. An incorrect or tenuously related result coming back as #5, or even #1, is less "wrong" than "the answer" being wrong.