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You can turn off personalization. (Operating under the assumption that most people search for facts, I personally don't see why one would ever want personalized

by qiqitori 11mo ago

You can turn off personalization. (Operating under the assumption that most people search for facts, I personally don't see why one would ever want personalized results.)

skulk 11mo ago
> I personally don't see why one would ever want personalized results. The same short combination of words can mean very different things to different people. My favorite example of this is "C string" because when I was a kid learning C I was introduced to a whole new class of lingerie because Google didn't really personalize results back then. Now when I search "C string" Google knows exactly what I mean.
Ariarule 11mo ago
I won't bother defending Google-style personalization as it exists for their search results, but since collisions in terminology across fields are common, it's not that hard to see how actual, thoughtful personalization could be useful. Someone searching for "Kafka" is going to want very different results based on whether they're thinking of software or literature. Opinions may also differ over the usefulness of sources, even for people ultimately interested primarily in facts; I find Kagi-style personalization (make your own domain list) very useful, but across Kagi's userbase Reddit is simultaneously one of the most lowered, most raised, and most pinned domains: https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
- dboreham 11mo ago
  > Kafka" is going to want very different results based on whether they're thinking of software or literature. Speak for yourself. I've worked in several "Kafka-esque" software organizations.
  - dotancohen 11mo ago
    Arguably Google SERPs are getting closer to The Trial.
- p1necone 11mo ago
  Anecdotally I find myself appending 'reddit' to search terms very frequently. It's effectively shorthand for "I want to read about peoples direct experience with this thing", and reddit is huge and well crawled by search engines. It's astroturfed to hell especially around political topics, but I feel like it's easy to tell when discussions about random products are authentic.
p1necone 11mo ago
Location based personalization is pretty useful - if I search for 'Bob's Discount Linguine' I want the one in my neighborhood. Lots of niche things (like programming) also reuse common english words to mean specific things - if I search e.g. 'locking' it's nice to get results related to asynchronous programming instead of locksmiths because google knows I regularly search for programming related terminology. Of course it's questionable whether google does a good job at any of this, but I absolutely see the value.
- skydhash 11mo ago
  I just add another keyword to narrow the search result. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted results based on anything other than the query.
- throwaway-0001 11mo ago
  Can you show me what results you see for “locking”? I see dancing move in all profiles I have.
  - smcin 11mo ago
    Wow you're right. Locking dance moves and videos. Weere you expecting to see padlocks or doorlocks or what?
    - throwaway-0001 11mo ago
      I expected to be “personalized”. I’m definitely more into programming than dancing. I see 0 personalization tbh. And I tried a few different peoples phones.
      - smcin 11mo ago
        Oh I see, locking in the programming sense, yes. Either not every search term is personalized for your context, or else this particular search is being applied to some other demographic. But that's weird because "locking" doesn't also show door, windows, filing cabinets. Anyway if you search for "programming locking" you get relevant results. Google didn't used to do this. Anyone got a rough idea when this started?
smcin 11mo ago
Some people search for shopping, or business details, in which case personalization can improve (or disimprove) result relevance based on knowing where you currently are, what day and time it is, what you tend to order etc. etc. And some people search for songs/images/videos/books/articles.

You can turn off personalization. (Operating under the assumption that most people search for facts, I personally don't see why one would ever want personalized results.)

skulk 11mo ago

> I personally don't see why one would ever want personalized results. The same short combination of words can mean very different things to different people. My favorite example of this is "C string" because when I was a kid learning C I was introduced to a whole new class of lingerie because Google didn't really personalize results back then. Now when I search "C string" Google knows exactly what I mean.

Ariarule 11mo ago

I won't bother defending Google-style personalization as it exists for their search results, but since collisions in terminology across fields are common, it's not that hard to see how actual, thoughtful personalization could be useful. Someone searching for "Kafka" is going to want very different results based on whether they're thinking of software or literature. Opinions may also differ over the usefulness of sources, even for people ultimately interested primarily in facts; I find Kagi-style personalization (make your own domain list) very useful, but across Kagi's userbase Reddit is simultaneously one of the most lowered, most raised, and most pinned domains: https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard

dboreham 11mo ago
> Kafka" is going to want very different results based on whether they're thinking of software or literature. Speak for yourself. I've worked in several "Kafka-esque" software organizations.
- dotancohen 11mo ago
  Arguably Google SERPs are getting closer to The Trial.
p1necone 11mo ago
Anecdotally I find myself appending 'reddit' to search terms very frequently. It's effectively shorthand for "I want to read about peoples direct experience with this thing", and reddit is huge and well crawled by search engines. It's astroturfed to hell especially around political topics, but I feel like it's easy to tell when discussions about random products are authentic.

p1necone 11mo ago

Location based personalization is pretty useful - if I search for 'Bob's Discount Linguine' I want the one in my neighborhood. Lots of niche things (like programming) also reuse common english words to mean specific things - if I search e.g. 'locking' it's nice to get results related to asynchronous programming instead of locksmiths because google knows I regularly search for programming related terminology. Of course it's questionable whether google does a good job at any of this, but I absolutely see the value.

skydhash 11mo ago
I just add another keyword to narrow the search result. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted results based on anything other than the query.
throwaway-0001 11mo ago
Can you show me what results you see for “locking”? I see dancing move in all profiles I have.
- smcin 11mo ago
  Wow you're right. Locking dance moves and videos. Weere you expecting to see padlocks or doorlocks or what?
  - throwaway-0001 11mo ago
    I expected to be “personalized”. I’m definitely more into programming than dancing. I see 0 personalization tbh. And I tried a few different peoples phones.
    - smcin 11mo ago
      Oh I see, locking in the programming sense, yes. Either not every search term is personalized for your context, or else this particular search is being applied to some other demographic. But that's weird because "locking" doesn't also show door, windows, filing cabinets. Anyway if you search for "programming locking" you get relevant results. Google didn't used to do this. Anyone got a rough idea when this started?

smcin 11mo ago

Some people search for shopping, or business details, in which case personalization can improve (or disimprove) result relevance based on knowing where you currently are, what day and time it is, what you tend to order etc. etc. And some people search for songs/images/videos/books/articles.