6 ms·

Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT

Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL. Just thrown into the list, as if they have any business being there (oh wait, they do have business: Google’s business). Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value and I can’t believe it has come to this. Imagine if every time you ran `ls` in a shell with a glob pattern, it just decided to sort of “add in” a few other files loosely based on your query (or heck, files that aren’t based on it at all)? Oh, now imagine if `rm` did that. Sadly this happens with lots of search tools now. Why the heck is the default state on a new Mac to funnel what you type to everything, e.g. I searched for “Chrome” and hit Return and the FIRST thing it did was throw me into the App Store and call up some not-even-a-web-browser scam app with Chrome in its name, instead of selecting the Chrome already installed on my computer and opening it? More and more it seems that you have to turn off all kinds of poor defaults to put tools into a useful state, or there is simply no way to get them there at all.

kache_ 4y ago
Open source alternatives are the cure (in the case of Mac hacking their search results to drive some arbitrary metric so some random PM gets promoted somewhere) A lot harder to track me using linux instead and constantly pushing my company to allow people to use linux machines for dev
l33t2328 4y ago
> Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value This is exactly the ridiculous kind of hyperbole I come to HN for. If you honestly can’t find any value in using Google despite its unreliability, you were probably expecting too much of it to begin with.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Your expectations are too low. We all remember google in it's heyday when it returned honest results, so we know what's possible.
  - Croftengea 4y ago
    google.stanford.edu :)
    - sitkack 4y ago
      https://altavista.com https://altavista.com it runs on the latest top end Alpha processors.
      - dizhn 4y ago
        http://altavista.digital.com http://altavista.digital.com I honestly switched to google from alltheweb and altavista initially because of the easier name and muscle memory taking hold. To this day I believe Altavista was better when google first took off.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > we know what's possible. We know its possible to do in the Internet of 2004. The Internet of 2004 no longer exists, the Internet of 2022 is a very different problem for search to solve.
  - malfist 4y ago
    Ah yes, the good ol' days of content farms copying from stack overflow, or did you mean the good ol' days of buying back links? Or the good ol' days of web rings? Let's face it, the heyday of honest results are just as mythical as the political "good ol' days".
    - strbean 4y ago
      Eh, there were a few periods of "glory days". Usually in the months after Google's latest crackdown on one of the SEO techniques you mentioned.
      - corrral 4y ago
        Notably, around `08 or `09, these cycles stopped. From the outside, it looks like Google stopped trying to fight spam and just gave a bunch of huge sites a permanent boost in rankings instead, so at least some of your results might not be spammy garbage.
stickfigure 4y ago
I would be willing to bet substantial sums of money that Google tracks metrics for these alternative results and has concluded that they add value to the user. Maybe not to you, but to most people. Personally, I'm ok with a bit of "oh, this is what I think you meant" rather than a literal interpretation of my query. It's not perfect but neither are my queries.
- bobsomers 4y ago
  > I would be willing to bet substantial sums of money that Google tracks metrics for these alternative results and has concluded that they add value to the user. And I would be willing to be substantial sums of money that any metrics Google has with respect to "adding value to the user" are actually more directly track "adding value to the business".
  - kempbellt 4y ago
    I would imagine that "adding value to the user" translates to "adding value to the business" in a lot of ways for Google. If, on average, users perceive more value from Google, they use Google more, and Google earns more ad rev. Even if this lowers value substantially for the "relative few". It's basic utilitarianism, and it sucks to be in the "relative few"... I too, wish that quotes were respected, and Google would stop giving results for what it thinks I meant to search for like it knows what I meant better than I do - even if that is the case...sometimes.
    - Retric 4y ago
      That assumes people consider alternatives to Google viable. Right now maximizing the number of searches people preform even if it degrades overall search quality is probably the goal.
- bentcorner 4y ago
  I certainly have moments where I don't quite know how to ask what I'm looking for and badly describe it in a query: e.g. "flat thing you use for cooking" - google seems to understand what I'm looking for, whereas bing/ddg guide me more towards cooking tools with the word "flat" in them. I usually use ddg but I do find google useful for the more weird queries I have.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL There used to be a 'verbatim' mode that would do exactly that. The quotes symbol were also a way to enforce verbatim mode. Sadly this behaviour of "let me assume what you want" is not exclusive of google as I also now experience this on ddg.
- twofornone 4y ago
  What I don't understand is that the verbatim option still exists, it just doesn't seem to do anything. And quotes don't seem to work anymore either. It's all very insulting.
  - nabakin 4y ago
    In my case quotes still work but they aren't as good as they once were
    - monkpit 4y ago
      Quotes haven’t worked for about 10 years now. For my job in 2012 I very often had to google obscure part numbers to find documentation. Even if you added quotes to the part number (such as “foo123-x”, google would return results for “foo234-x” or “foo123-y” and bold them as if they had matched. The real part numbers could be 10-20 characters long, so it was more difficult to spot discrepancies. I learned very quickly not to trust the results even when adding quotes. If I had assumed the quotes had worked, I would have grabbed bad documentation without even realizing it.
      - Melatonic 4y ago
        You have to both quote the term(s) and then check the box for "verbatim". Then it should generally work. Have you all tried doing both at once? edit: It is a pain in the ass though
      - nabakin 4y ago
the_snooze 4y ago
It's not just search. It's so much user-facing interactivity online. Stop black-box-inserting irrelevant search results. Stop black-box-modifying what I type in the document. Stop black-box-suggesting-as-I-type. Stop black-box-second-guessing what I meant. I'm a perfectly capable human who can communicate my intent, and make corrections on my own if needed. What kind of deranged hubris must these engineers have to build systems that try to proactively act on what they think I actually meant?
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Also, I wish Google could simply deliver the information I want without tracking me or gathering information about me, my interests, communication, travel, searches, or contacts. Google should respect their users' privacy.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    Please remember, you, who does a Google search, is a user, but not a customer. Customers' interests come first, and the customers pay well for tracking and targeting.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Given that chat texts are used in court as evidence, I wonder what happens to this when the text is not what you typed, but what the AI system "corrected" for you.
DharmaPolice 4y ago
Unfortunately the fuzzy search thing is in a kind of feedback loop in terms of user expectation. Because of Google users are used to typing the wrong thing and getting the right answer. If I search for "how old is Roger Redford" Google tells me that Robert Redford was born in 1936 (it doesn't even display the "Did you mean...?" correction). And to be fair, in 99% of cases the person probably did mean Robert Redford. But anyway, this is the behaviour I think people are being trained to expect from searches. I sometimes have to show new users our business systems (which manage residential property data) and it's seen as a drag that you have to have some level of precision when searching for anything. It's like a spellchecker. As they've got better over time you can be less and less accurate with words you're not quite sure on and they still find the word you meant.
- thunderbong 4y ago
  Google is 24 years old. They track everything from email to searches to website behaviour across innumerable sites. If they still need a feedback loop on their search results page, maybe they should hire some other guys to tweak their search engine!
  - nine_k 4y ago
    They do, partly because SEO spam never sleeps and ever evolves.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  Seems like the search market is ready for Google Search Pro, where you can use advanced operators and syntax to get exactly what you asked. Just $9.99 monthly, or buy Google One and get it free!
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > the word you want I was watching a new movie yesterday (The Lost City) with closed captioning on. The character said "synonym". The cc text said "cinnamon". I see a lot of homonyms in the cc, but that one was the funniest.

kache_ 4y ago

Open source alternatives are the cure (in the case of Mac hacking their search results to drive some arbitrary metric so some random PM gets promoted somewhere) A lot harder to track me using linux instead and constantly pushing my company to allow people to use linux machines for dev

l33t2328 4y ago

> Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value This is exactly the ridiculous kind of hyperbole I come to HN for. If you honestly can’t find any value in using Google despite its unreliability, you were probably expecting too much of it to begin with.

colordrops 4y ago
Your expectations are too low. We all remember google in it's heyday when it returned honest results, so we know what's possible.
- Croftengea 4y ago
  google.stanford.edu :)
  - sitkack 4y ago
    https://altavista.com https://altavista.com it runs on the latest top end Alpha processors.
    - dizhn 4y ago
      http://altavista.digital.com http://altavista.digital.com I honestly switched to google from alltheweb and altavista initially because of the easier name and muscle memory taking hold. To this day I believe Altavista was better when google first took off.
- vkou 4y ago
  > we know what's possible. We know its possible to do in the Internet of 2004. The Internet of 2004 no longer exists, the Internet of 2022 is a very different problem for search to solve.
- malfist 4y ago
  Ah yes, the good ol' days of content farms copying from stack overflow, or did you mean the good ol' days of buying back links? Or the good ol' days of web rings? Let's face it, the heyday of honest results are just as mythical as the political "good ol' days".
  - strbean 4y ago
    Eh, there were a few periods of "glory days". Usually in the months after Google's latest crackdown on one of the SEO techniques you mentioned.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Notably, around `08 or `09, these cycles stopped. From the outside, it looks like Google stopped trying to fight spam and just gave a bunch of huge sites a permanent boost in rankings instead, so at least some of your results might not be spammy garbage.

stickfigure 4y ago

I would be willing to bet substantial sums of money that Google tracks metrics for these alternative results and has concluded that they add value to the user. Maybe not to you, but to most people. Personally, I'm ok with a bit of "oh, this is what I think you meant" rather than a literal interpretation of my query. It's not perfect but neither are my queries.

bobsomers 4y ago
> I would be willing to bet substantial sums of money that Google tracks metrics for these alternative results and has concluded that they add value to the user. And I would be willing to be substantial sums of money that any metrics Google has with respect to "adding value to the user" are actually more directly track "adding value to the business".
- kempbellt 4y ago
  I would imagine that "adding value to the user" translates to "adding value to the business" in a lot of ways for Google. If, on average, users perceive more value from Google, they use Google more, and Google earns more ad rev. Even if this lowers value substantially for the "relative few". It's basic utilitarianism, and it sucks to be in the "relative few"... I too, wish that quotes were respected, and Google would stop giving results for what it thinks I meant to search for like it knows what I meant better than I do - even if that is the case...sometimes.
  - Retric 4y ago
    That assumes people consider alternatives to Google viable. Right now maximizing the number of searches people preform even if it degrades overall search quality is probably the goal.
bentcorner 4y ago
I certainly have moments where I don't quite know how to ask what I'm looking for and badly describe it in a query: e.g. "flat thing you use for cooking" - google seems to understand what I'm looking for, whereas bing/ddg guide me more towards cooking tools with the word "flat" in them. I usually use ddg but I do find google useful for the more weird queries I have.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago

> Well whether you add “site:.edu” or not, Google still does the thing where they just spit out a pile of extra “matches” that don’t contain your search phrase AT ALL There used to be a 'verbatim' mode that would do exactly that. The quotes symbol were also a way to enforce verbatim mode. Sadly this behaviour of "let me assume what you want" is not exclusive of google as I also now experience this on ddg.

twofornone 4y ago
What I don't understand is that the verbatim option still exists, it just doesn't seem to do anything. And quotes don't seem to work anymore either. It's all very insulting.
- nabakin 4y ago
  In my case quotes still work but they aren't as good as they once were
  - monkpit 4y ago
    Quotes haven’t worked for about 10 years now. For my job in 2012 I very often had to google obscure part numbers to find documentation. Even if you added quotes to the part number (such as “foo123-x”, google would return results for “foo234-x” or “foo123-y” and bold them as if they had matched. The real part numbers could be 10-20 characters long, so it was more difficult to spot discrepancies. I learned very quickly not to trust the results even when adding quotes. If I had assumed the quotes had worked, I would have grabbed bad documentation without even realizing it.
    - Melatonic 4y ago
      You have to both quote the term(s) and then check the box for "verbatim". Then it should generally work. Have you all tried doing both at once? edit: It is a pain in the ass though
    - nabakin 4y ago

the_snooze 4y ago

It's not just search. It's so much user-facing interactivity online. Stop black-box-inserting irrelevant search results. Stop black-box-modifying what I type in the document. Stop black-box-suggesting-as-I-type. Stop black-box-second-guessing what I meant. I'm a perfectly capable human who can communicate my intent, and make corrections on my own if needed. What kind of deranged hubris must these engineers have to build systems that try to proactively act on what they think I actually meant?

pmoriarty 4y ago
Also, I wish Google could simply deliver the information I want without tracking me or gathering information about me, my interests, communication, travel, searches, or contacts. Google should respect their users' privacy.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Please remember, you, who does a Google search, is a user, but not a customer. Customers' interests come first, and the customers pay well for tracking and targeting.
WalterBright 4y ago
Given that chat texts are used in court as evidence, I wonder what happens to this when the text is not what you typed, but what the AI system "corrected" for you.

DharmaPolice 4y ago

Unfortunately the fuzzy search thing is in a kind of feedback loop in terms of user expectation. Because of Google users are used to typing the wrong thing and getting the right answer. If I search for "how old is Roger Redford" Google tells me that Robert Redford was born in 1936 (it doesn't even display the "Did you mean...?" correction). And to be fair, in 99% of cases the person probably did mean Robert Redford. But anyway, this is the behaviour I think people are being trained to expect from searches. I sometimes have to show new users our business systems (which manage residential property data) and it's seen as a drag that you have to have some level of precision when searching for anything. It's like a spellchecker. As they've got better over time you can be less and less accurate with words you're not quite sure on and they still find the word you meant.

thunderbong 4y ago
Google is 24 years old. They track everything from email to searches to website behaviour across innumerable sites. If they still need a feedback loop on their search results page, maybe they should hire some other guys to tweak their search engine!
- nine_k 4y ago
  They do, partly because SEO spam never sleeps and ever evolves.
ASalazarMX 4y ago
Seems like the search market is ready for Google Search Pro, where you can use advanced operators and syntax to get exactly what you asked. Just $9.99 monthly, or buy Google One and get it free!
WalterBright 4y ago
> the word you want I was watching a new movie yesterday (The Lost City) with closed captioning on. The character said "synonym". The cc text said "cinnamon". I see a lot of homonyms in the cc, but that one was the funniest.