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"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. (Answers
by joostdevries 12y ago
"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. (Answers, by the way, included British spy and French Resistance leader Nancy Wake, world’s first programmer Ada Lovelace, slave rescuer and activist Harriet Tubman, and Chinese pirate Ching Shih.) 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.” "
That made me wonder whether Google has shifted its products from being the kind of thing that their own employee corps would enjoy to things for the general public. I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google Maps search. That feature disappeared and probably the majority of users wouldn't use those anyway.
Personally I scorn at a search result of the '100 most beautiful women'. But in the large population it will probably lead to a much higher click through.
So I wonder if Google Search was oriented towards the smart crowd niche and that they changed focus towards the common and the populous.
To put it differently: a shift from an emphasis in information as high value search result towards including entertainment, gossip etc. High brow to low brow.
- DanBC 12y agoI get for "most amazing woman ever" (including quotes) images, then tumblr, pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, then MetaFilter. Sub-optimal, but not terrible. Removing the quotes gives me similar reaults to you. But there are a few results about interesting women based on achievement not appearance. Google is trained by the crowd, and the crowd is stupid. See for example the numbers of searches using + operator correctly.
- joostdevries 12y agoI was quoting the article...
- tedivm 12y agoThis is by far the best reason I've heard for the decline in quality of Google search results. There's no doubt that when I first started using Google it was for technical things, and I feel like most of the people online during their first few years of life were doing the same. I'm guessing we're no longer their target market, although I wouldn't be surprised if an algorithm made that decision instead of a person. At the same time, they are trying to do targeted search and I feel like that should be able to help far more than it is.
- madcaptenor 12y agoSeconding targeted search. If google knows so much about me, why do they send me to stuff they should know I'd never want to read?
- gabemart 12y ago> I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google Maps search. That feature disappeared and probably the majority of users wouldn't use those anyway. I still use that feature every day. I have a smart keyword setup so that I just type: maps from LAX to San Francisco into the URL bar and get taken straight to a Google Maps page showing me that route [1]. Forgive me if I've misunderstood you and you're talking about something else, but this feature still exists. AFAIK I'm using the latest version of Google maps. [1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview?q=from+lax+to+san+francisco https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview?q=from+lax+to+san+fran...
- michaelt 12y agoIn classic Google Maps you could find a multi-leg route by searching with the syntax "from:san francisco to:los angeles to:new york" [1] whereas in new Google Maps the same query just shows you San Francisco [2]. The new Google Maps will do multi-point routes [3], but by default when you enter San Francisco to Los Angeles it chooses flights, and hides the option to enter a multi-point route. You have to switch to car directions to get the option to enter more than one point, and enter them one at a time not use the nice from-to-to syntax. Pretty crap for power users - but I guess ad-supported products make their money by being mass market, and catering to power users isn't very important. [1] https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=from:san+francisco+to:los+angeles+to:new+york https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=from:san+francisco+to:los+a... [2] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/from:san+francisco+to:los+angeles+to:new+york/@37.7063155,-122.3906075,12z/data=!3m1!4b1 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/from:san+francisco+to:l... [3] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/Los+Angeles,+CA,+USA/New+York,+NY,+USA/@37.0798614,-107.0308321,5z https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/Los...
- gabemart 12y agoThanks for the clarification. It also bugs me that there's no way to enter the mode of transportation as part of the URL query string. I'd love to be able to use smart keyword syntax like: from London to Cambridge by bike from Glasgow to Manchester by bus
- 12y ago