> you want to create a useful ranking, your first few results need to have identified the correct intent but also be sensitive to timeliness and location. This

> you want to create a useful ranking, your first few results need to have identified the correct intent but also be sensitive to timeliness and location. This fundamentally misunderstands the goal of a search engine too. This part is mainly for helping to sell ads and not rank by relevance. The correct way to rank results for a query like Rome is to return results related to a modern city, then ancient times, and keep the local pizza place at the bottom. Yelp/maps/search really don’t need to be all wrapped up in the same utility function, and honestly no one asked for this. It’s just been that way for so long that people have internalized the idea that it must be essential. Localization/trending content etc mainly serve the needs of advertisers, trackers, marketers.. not searchers. News and product search can/should probably be orthogonal, but instead we’re going the opposite direction and increasingly removing distinctions between maps/video/image/text search. This helps platforms to erode the distinction between user-directed organic discovery vs promoted content.