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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Sunday August 20 2017, @10:04PM (12 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday August 20 2017, @10:04PM (#556798) Journal

    The problem with Google is that it is a hive of mediocrity, because the metric of "most popular information" is not well mapped to the metric of "best information."

    Not that I'm aware of any that are better, though.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday August 21 2017, @04:18AM (10 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday August 21 2017, @04:18AM (#556875) Journal

    The problem with Google is that it is a hive of mediocrity, because the metric of "most popular information" is not well mapped to the metric of "best information."

    That's certainly a major problem with Google, though it's also a bit of a problem with every search engine.

    My beef with Google is that you used to be able to work around that problem at least somewhat by simply adding search terms. That is, if you did a search for 2 or 3 words, and stuff that come up wasn't good, you could think about it and maybe add another term or two to restrict things and get better results. Or, you might notice a good link on some info, and add a few more terms you learned from that info to get better results.

    Yes, this sometimes still works, but it's now completely unpredictable because Google will drop random search terms all the time and show results that don't contain what you actually searched for. It won't consistently apply "advanced" operators. Sometimes it tacitly will even substitute synonyms, even when they aren't really synonyms. And no, quotation marks don't work consistently. "Verbatim" frequently fails too and throws results that don't contain the term (although the bigger problem is that "verbatim" generally returns a tiny subset of links with the terms you want -- same with "allintext:" which is a bit better, but still returns an arbitrary subset, a subset which will differ depending on things like search term order or other random search functions).

    I still remember Google back in the late 90s when it became rapidly popular for 4 things: (1) it was damn fast and clean, (2) it had a larger database than many other engines, or at least it seemed so, (3) Pagerank was a pretty decent algorithm at the time, certainly better than anything else then available, and (4) you didn't need a bunch of Boolean BS to actually get decent results. You just typed in a bunch of terms, maybe with a minus sign, and you got exactly what you asked for.

    It was great in the early 2000s when Google started adding things like autocorrecting spelling and helpful "suggested" related searches. But then it all became opaque and catering to people who don't understand how to use a full-text search. Which is okay -- I just wish there were *some* option somewhere to get something like the old Google back. Alas, it seems to be gone forever... even though Google's ranking algorithms are still generally better than other sites. It's just useless now for serious research or anyone who actually knows how to narrow down a search quickly using appropriate precise use of search terms.

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:42PM (2 children)

      by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:42PM (#557675) Journal

      "Yes, this sometimes still works, but it's now completely unpredictable because Google will drop random search terms all the time and show results that don't contain what you actually searched for."

      Yup, like if you search for arch linux something or other, it serves you answers for Windows. Ummmmm.... what?

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @12:50AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @12:50AM (#558679)

        If you really REALLY want to see a word/phrase in your Google results (rather that just be directed to a page that -another- page which -does- contain that links to), put that stuff in your search string TWICE.
        Use Verbatim search as well ( tbs=li:1& in your URL.

        .
        Now, I like to bookmark searches and sometimes use search results as links.
        Let's see you do this[1] with -your- search engine:
        http://www.google.com/search?num=30&q=intitle:Linux+intitle:Myths+-intitle:bsd+-lagoon+-backbox+-containers+-asp [google.com]

        num=30 -- Not just the standard 10 results per page (up to 100 allowed).
        intitle: and -intitle: are often useful.

        Other stuff that I didn't use that time, but regularly do:
        inurl: and -inurl:
        site: and -site:
        tbs=qdr:d& -- stuff from the last 24 hours; use h, w, m, or y for other timespans.

        [1] Extra points if it doesn't require allowing cookies or enabling JavaScript.

        ...and if you're scared shitless that Google might track you, then use a proxy ferchisake.
        N.B. archive.li (.is|.eu|.fo) will give you that for $0.

        .
        ...and as for point (4) by AthanasiusKircher, the internet is a lot bigger now than it was in 1998.
        If you can get exactly what you want on the first try, then bravo.
        I find that Boolean NOTs/added terms are often necessary.
        (These days, LATimes puts so much bullshit on its pages which is completely unrelated to the article, that that site is just becoming noise in searches.)

        There have been times when Google was better (e.g. WRT wildcards) but there's still nothing that comes close.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @05:40AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @05:40AM (#558739)

          ...and if you're scared shitless that Google might track you, then use a proxy ferchisake.

          That's still a tacit endorsement of their monstrous surveillance engine. Instead, you should use alternative search engines that have goals that don't involve conducting mass surveillance on the populace. Otherwise, you're part of the problem, even if just a bit.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:12AM (1 child)

      by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:12AM (#557782) Homepage Journal

      Thank you! You said more eloquently and in more detail, something that I have been trying to say for a long while. I've had people try to refute it in the past, making me question my own sanity.

      The other bit is what I did mention in the past that I suspect they also tailor the results a bit based on what they think you as an individual are interested in, based on your past behavior (identifying you by your IP address or cookies, LSOs, agent string, resolution and other meta data if you don't just have an account with them).

      The worst part is knowing that there must be websites out there that have exactly the information you want, but that no search string exists to persuade their engine to display them to you, exactly because of the lack of precision and the way it ignores terms when it chooses.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:36PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:36PM (#558514) Journal

        The other bit is what I did mention in the past that I suspect they also tailor the results a bit based on what they think you as an individual are interested in, based on your past behavior (identifying you by your IP address or cookies, LSOs, agent string, resolution and other meta data if you don't just have an account with them).

        You suspicions are correct, if a bit dated -- Google publicly announced that they were going to start doing exactly that way back in 2005 for logged in Google users and expanded it to all users in 2009. They also try to customize results based on your "social circle":
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search [wikipedia.org]

        Keep that in mind next time you see one of those screenshots showing Google's suggested completions for some search phrase. People interpret those to say something about what people in general are interested in; but really it's telling you about the person who took the screenshot.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:32PM (#558139)

      I remember back when Verbatim Search actually worked :P

      I'm quite sure I don't want to know the reasons for why we can't just wrap damn quotes around exact phrases we want to see.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @12:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @12:59AM (#558681)

        Still does.
        If you REALLY want a word|phrase, put it in TWICE.

        ...and Google is telling you about the zeitgeist.
        They're pointing out **what has been linked to**.
        Sometimes it's up to you to be smarter than the madding crowd.

        Phrases? Verbatim Search is the way to go.
        (Don't need quote marks.)[1]

        [1] Handy when posting a search result.
        S/N's comments engine still barfs on quote marks in URLs.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 1) by corey on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:42PM (1 child)

      by corey (2202) on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:42PM (#561167)

      Agree with this completely.

      On the plus side, when I search for things and get forum thread results, DuckDuckGo gives me lots of really old results, eg from 2005-2010. Same search on Google gives me much newer threads >2015 say. DuckDuckGo also doesn't tell you the date of the thread but Google does.

      I use duckduckgo 90% of the time. And it has been great.

      Was using qwant.com for a bit which is the Iridium browser default but it is so slow from here in Australia. The site is based in France. And its flashy.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday September 01 2017, @04:20PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Friday September 01 2017, @04:20PM (#562570) Journal

        On the plus side, when I search for things and get forum thread results, DuckDuckGo gives me lots of really old results, eg from 2005-2010. Same search on Google gives me much newer threads >2015 say. DuckDuckGo also doesn't tell you the date of the thread but Google does.

        I get the same issue with news stories too, but I find just dropping "2017" onto the end of the query usually solves that issue. Occasionally you'll still get an old article that was recently crawled and has "copyright 2017" or something in the footer, but most of the old results do get filtered out.

        Or you could just hit that drop-down below the search box where it says "Any Time" and change it to "Past Month"...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:33PM (#562753)

      For quite a while now, they've been trying to make Google "smarter." Which means that the results are more tailored to your personal likes, and perhaps more importantly to make it easier to specify what you want in the form of a natural language query.

      Unfortunately that means that, while it's a bit better at addressing a question, it's a LOT worse as a search engine. Even though the reason that people use a search engine is often because they want to query a computer database, not strike up a conversation. You can get a natural language response by asking a person (also note how likely a random person is to give a good answer to questions you might want to answer with a search engine).

      I've found that Google results have steadily gotten worse as the engine has gotten smarter, and from my observation of online forums, I am far from alone in this evaluation, particularly among those who are used to the efficiency and abundance of results available from search engines that try to be less like a half-assed artificial human and more like an actual, you know, search engine.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:39AM

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:39AM (#557851) Journal

    The metric they use is "most advertising revenue", which matches much closer to "most popular information" than it does to "best information".

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..