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>>One last one: Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you MetaFilter’s helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the third r
by credo 12y ago
>>One last one: Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you MetaFilter’s helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the third result.
>>Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google’s top result? A list of “the 100 most beautiful women ever.”
Unfortunately, American culture (and many cultures around the world) objectify women and value them based on their looks. So Google's search results may just be a true reflection of what people are interested in looking at. Perhaps Bing's algorithms aren't as good as Google's algorithms in estimating what people might be more interested in.
To be clear, I didn't intend my statement as a feminist critique of society (though personally I would agree with this feminist critique). I just used this example as a roundabout way of defending Google's algorithm and saying that Google gives us the search results we deserve (and ask for) and not the search results that (from Auerback's perspective and mine) we should probably be more interested in.
- jlcummings 12y agoThere probably is something to this. Perhaps if a different, more specific, standard of measure is applied during query, results will be more applicible for the intended purpose. For instance substituting accomplished for amazing seems to provide more pointed results.
- rhizome 12y agoThat's the crux of the argument, though: Google search results are ranked according to a value system. What does that system prioritize? Not Metafilter; not Harriet Tubman. "Beautiful Women." This is neither right nor wrong, it just is, but Google has to live with what that says about them, and that's entirely fair.