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Tonight I typed Eagles into Google and it showed me all the information I needed about the game that starts at 8:10 pm. That is search relevance. I've noticed

by 300bps 13y ago

Tonight I typed Eagles into Google and it showed me all the information I needed about the game that starts at 8:10 pm. That is search relevance. I've noticed Bing doing a lot of this type of thing for the past year or two but Google is definitely the master of it.

hahainternet 13y ago
Last night I asked Google how much a driving theory lesson costs. It spoke the answer back to me that it had extracted using NLP from the official website. That is the power of their infrastructure.
bigbang 13y ago
Since Google knows a lot about me (for eg) by parsing my emails (I use gmail) and knows about the sites I visit too (Chrome and thru Adsense on 3rd websites), Google is in a much better position to provide me with more relevant results(and ads) than Bing, since I don't use much Microsoft's online services.
tluyben2 13y ago
Google has a lot of ways of knowing what I want to find, which definitely has disadvantages; I get presented with the same ads & results even if I try to find other stuff. I get presented with the same article or ad in different searches numerous times to the point I go on to anonymous browsing / ddg. The good thing; when just searched for something about UIView and later type something "populating a table", it'll give me SO articles (and such) about UITableView which is what I meant but forgot to type add ios/or uitable. The bad thing; when i'm doing research, it'll give me the same stuff over and over again and I have to page quite far and add / remove query info / play with search tools to get to different things which might not be the most popular or might not be what Google thinks I want. The awful thing; the ads... I use ad blockers, but when I get ads (gmail / some sites), they are always the same. For Facebook I just think their algorithm is broken or maybe they have none (I only get ads about dating, cheating, stocks all of which I have no interest in nor ever shown), but for Google they show things I am interested in but I already know all of them, have been there, knew most of them before those ads and they cannot possibly sell me anything. If I wanted something from them I would go there without those ads, so why are they targeting me like that? Show me ads I don't know and if I can use it, I would click. I'm technical, but I hear the same annoyance from others; a friend of mine rents out houses; the search results when he wants to research the competition are usually almost only his own sites (presumably because he visits them a lot?) and ads for his own properties. He is very non technical, so explaining this all to him is not really sinking in.
nknighthb 13y ago
This is a great example of search result subjectivity. I don't care about football. I'm annoyed when it rudely intrudes my consciousness. If I type "eagles" into a search engine, I'm looking for the band. The football team has no relevance to me, even as millions of other people tonight are probably looking for exactly what Google showed you.
- ak217 13y ago
  Yep, and that's why it's important for the search engine to be able to collect information about you! It's not just for commercial ends like ad targeting.

by 300bps 13y ago

hahainternet 13y ago

Last night I asked Google how much a driving theory lesson costs. It spoke the answer back to me that it had extracted using NLP from the official website. That is the power of their infrastructure.

bigbang 13y ago

Since Google knows a lot about me (for eg) by parsing my emails (I use gmail) and knows about the sites I visit too (Chrome and thru Adsense on 3rd websites), Google is in a much better position to provide me with more relevant results(and ads) than Bing, since I don't use much Microsoft's online services.

tluyben2 13y ago

Google has a lot of ways of knowing what I want to find, which definitely has disadvantages; I get presented with the same ads & results even if I try to find other stuff. I get presented with the same article or ad in different searches numerous times to the point I go on to anonymous browsing / ddg. The good thing; when just searched for something about UIView and later type something "populating a table", it'll give me SO articles (and such) about UITableView which is what I meant but forgot to type add ios/or uitable. The bad thing; when i'm doing research, it'll give me the same stuff over and over again and I have to page quite far and add / remove query info / play with search tools to get to different things which might not be the most popular or might not be what Google thinks I want. The awful thing; the ads... I use ad blockers, but when I get ads (gmail / some sites), they are always the same. For Facebook I just think their algorithm is broken or maybe they have none (I only get ads about dating, cheating, stocks all of which I have no interest in nor ever shown), but for Google they show things I am interested in but I already know all of them, have been there, knew most of them before those ads and they cannot possibly sell me anything. If I wanted something from them I would go there without those ads, so why are they targeting me like that? Show me ads I don't know and if I can use it, I would click. I'm technical, but I hear the same annoyance from others; a friend of mine rents out houses; the search results when he wants to research the competition are usually almost only his own sites (presumably because he visits them a lot?) and ads for his own properties. He is very non technical, so explaining this all to him is not really sinking in.

nknighthb 13y ago

This is a great example of search result subjectivity. I don't care about football. I'm annoyed when it rudely intrudes my consciousness. If I type "eagles" into a search engine, I'm looking for the band. The football team has no relevance to me, even as millions of other people tonight are probably looking for exactly what Google showed you.

ak217 13y ago
Yep, and that's why it's important for the search engine to be able to collect information about you! It's not just for commercial ends like ad targeting.