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Last week an article from the BBC said:
Google has said it is 'thinking deeply' about ways to improve search, after criticism over how some results - including ones discussing the Holocaust - were ranked.
[...] Google - which processes five billion searches a day - was keen to come up with a solution that was broadly applicable across all searches, rather than just those that have been noticed by users.
"It's very easy to take a search here and there and demand Google change something," explained Mr Sullivan, "and then the next day you find a different search and say, 'why didn't you fix that?' "
This week we see the results of their efforts: Google has modified PageRank to surface "more high-quality, credible content on the web":
Google's technology was changed again after people spoke out about how typing in "are Jews evil" in the autocorrect function resulted in offensive terms. Also, when people searched "who runs Hollywood?" the result, "Jews," was scrubbed last year. Google said its algorithm incorrectly gave "authority" to a site that suggested so because it was linked to over and over again.
But Heidi Beirich, intelligence project director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Tuesday that Google has a long way to go to "clean up its act." While searching for "did the Holocaust happen?" no longer shows one white supremacist site at the top, searching for "is the Holocaust real?" still provides a site up high that claims it's a hoax.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Saturday December 31 2016, @09:21AM
Google should show you what you ask for plain and simple. If that's not what you want, you can always refine your search criteria. But if google of some other engine makes those decisions for you, now what, the only way to know something has gone wrong is if you stumble on different results with a different browser.
To make matters worse since they do it behind the scenes it's much harder to know how to refine the search as you don't really know exactly what tgey did to the results. Ever try googling for an older article? Chances are you can't get it unless you know exactly what to type and it isn't the same as the new stuff. Knowing roughly the title doesn't cut it either.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Saturday December 31 2016, @10:48PM
Chances are you can't get it unless you know exactly what to type and it isn't the same as the new stuff. Knowing roughly the title doesn't cut it either.
Why would you expect it would? Have you even done old school, hard-copy, card-catalog research in a thing called a "library"? Knowing "roughly" is not knowing, Francis! You have to know how to search, and not rely on algorithms. You collect clues, you process leads, you narrow it down. If you can't find something, it means one of two things: either it doesn't exist, or you are not very good at searching.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday December 31 2016, @10:57PM
How does Google know what you are asking for? Humans aren't very good at being unambiguous and explicit. Maybe Google could gather lots of personal data to try to improve their algorithms, but then people complain about privacy (and even then, it's hard to tell what humans want. Have you TRIED understanding a woman? (a joke, if your sensors are broken)) But if Google tries to not be all-knowing, people complain about Google not showing you what you want.
Keep complaining, maybe that will fix everything.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @01:01AM
Or, they could implement things that we used to have back in days of yore, like, you know, the near operator. I see no evidence that they have that operator at all, they certainly don't list it with their other operators.