Seriously, there was a time when Google seemed to know what I meant when I searched for something. It was kind of uncanny but damn was it useful.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms.
Maybe I got older and missed changes in how Google works... possible. It's just at this point Google is nothing more than a pain in my ass.
It's the same principle as with AI customized ads that show me exactly what interests me... which is an outright falsehood. I almost never see ads that are of interest to me, anywhere.
I want the Rising Star Google back... That thing made life easier.
Part of the issue is that it's being gamed pretty hard, but yeah, it's definitely gone downhill. Seems like every time a search engine gets popular, then sites game it, then it sucks. We used to go through that cycle a lot faster, though, changing to the new best search engine every few years.
For politically sensitive searches, too, Google is not the right one. You can't find things that you know exist simply because someone at Google disagrees with them. Yeah, I know that sometimes they are filtering out actual BS like people who don't believe that vaccines work at all or what have you, but it's hard to even evaluate things for yourself when you have a censor sitting over your virtual shoulder. Thankfully, search engines aren't yet a monoculture, but it's still tough to find what you want these days.
Part of the issue is that it's being gamed pretty hard, but yeah, it's definitely gone downhill.
I disagree that "gaming" lies at the heat. As I see it, this decline is at least 50% self-inflicted.
For a while, I really enjoyed the online food scene. Bloggers like J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at the The Food Lab rocked my world. And it wasn't just Kenji, there was an entire network of food-related blogs to provide second and third opinions.
These days, any basic recipe search turns up 75% puppy-mill swill spill. You can
I have the same problem with searching something on Amazon. I'd say that 95% of the time, the words I'm searching for aren't even in the items descriptions. Annoying as fuck to be searching for something very specific and then be shown things that aren't even in the same category at all.
Amazon search is embarassingly shit.
Try searching Search for a 10TB hard drive.
What % of results are 10Tb hard drives ?
FFS, Amazon, spend 0.01% of your cap. on FIXING HOW PEOPLE DO BUSINESS WITH YOU.
You need 1 tebibyte of storage and high longevity, so you get the extra for over provisioning, and on top of that you want to compensate for drives dishonestly being marketed by the amount of terabytes, instead of the more sensible tebibyte standard? And also you're completely insane.
The drive manufacturers had been messing with the well-established computer convention that "kilo" = 2^10 long before Euro-pedants like you gave them cover.
1024 bytes had been a kilobyte for a couple of generations before anyone decided they needed to fight over "misuse" of the prefix.
This query seems to work a little better https://www.amazon.com/s?k=10t... [amazon.com]
I think the sort order was making smaller drives appear first in the results. It's still a pretty bad experience though!
If you click my link, you will see that amazon automatically converted my search to "10TB".
So clever.
And yet so useless for what we actually want it to do.
And - worse - for what they, presumably, want it to do.
This is a TRILLION DOLLAR company, people.
The problem I have searching on Amazon is all the crap that gets loaded for them to push in my face before I can start entering search terms. Particularly on mobile.
Yeah, i used sire: for a while, but eventually decided it didn't make enough difference to be worth the effort of typing (and remembering)
Not like the old days when all the advanced google syntax would actually let you rapidly dial-in the results. Seems like their advanced options languished one they got decent natural-language search, and then their natural language search went rapidly downhill too.
There's alternate amazon search sites for pretty much this exact reason. I haven't researched how reputable places like jungle search are, but they do exist. Probably I'll take a closer look in the near future.
What I want is a simple browser plugin to redo a search with all FBA results removed. Amazon FBA is the place where all the counterfeit products that bought good reviews live. On top of that FBA protects sellers from bad reviews, so it's where the bad sellers live too.
One of my adblock or privacy plugins really does not play well with Amazon. Maybe its privacy badger. But anyhow after a few minutes the tab freezes solid. Reloading tab causes it to freeze again. It also seems to happen with Advance Auto Parts. After a few minutes it tells me their website is down for maintenance. Switch to a different browser and it works fine. Probably so much cross site tracking is breaking things.
I use privacy badger (in firefox) and have not had this issue on windows or linux. Maybe you're not blocking enough, rather than too much? Get some anti-scripting action going on, if you haven't. That should prevent endless loops.
Then there's Goodreads (owned now by Amazon). As I type my search string, the exact book I want appears at the top of the results preview. As soon as I stop typing, the results list is populated by some algorithm's guess about what I really want, pushing the correct result down 10 or 20 places. Every time.
I have the same problem with searching something on Amazon. I'd say that 95% of the time, the words I'm searching for aren't even in the items descriptions. Annoying as fuck to be searching for something very specific and then be shown things that aren't even in the same category at all.
Amazon seems completely oblivious to what Google has been fighting tooth and nail against for over a decade: assholes sabotaging search results attempting to profit.
NewEgg suffered the same problem for a while, but unlike Amazon, NewEgg took steps. For a while there, searching for a video card on NewEgg would get you mousepads and adhesive decals for computer cases. Now you get... video cards. It has been a breath of fresh air in a sea of useless shit. Unfortunately because of Amazon, NewEgg has had to
Gawd, I hate Amazon's search and it's even gotten worse recently. In the past couple of days I've noticed that they're throwing in items from my previous searches into my current search. It's bad enough that their search wasn't finding what I was asking for.
Usually I'm pretty specific in my searches and try to put a manufacturer name if I am able to. When I do I still get the products from a bunch of other manufacturers and any matches from any other categories. I then have to select a category from the sid
Yea, it's clear google has basically given up on creating an "intelligent" search engine and have moved completely to purely dumb statistical results. If 80% of the people that search most of the terms you entered clicked on a certain website, that must be what you are looking for too, right? If not, screw you, they were right 80% of the time. No need to complicate everything with silly things like context.
But also, if I'm being real, it's not like any of the other search engines are better.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms.
You may be searching for stuff on Conservative-leaning sites, which Google censors [cbn.com].
Yeah, they deny it [snopes.com], but the denials ring hollow. They have the mechanism [dailymail.co.uk] — created to to (try to) fight spam and, their wording, "sites that actively aim to mislead". Are we supp
Every day I have to wrap quotes around my search terms because they flat out get ignored. They get a strike through line below the results. They give you what is popular not what is accurate. Even still with quotes you get back things that are vaguely related further polluting things.
They give you what is popular not what is accurate.
Actually they give you what they think is relevant to you based on your profile. It's funny seeing the people who are most against tracking are the same people who complain that results they get are popular rather than relevant to them.
"Google should return results for what you type, not for what is "relevant" to their model of you."
And this is where things fuck up. When they try to psychoanalyze people, to cater to "feelings" (which ads do, and Google follows), when they get into all of this sentimental bullshit, this is where things get fucked up.
This kind of bullshit has brought down empires. Ancient China (not to be confused with the modern era) was a powerful and mighty empire, and perhaps the most technologically adv
Remember when you could Google a fragment of a message you once read in a forum five years prior, and Google would reliably find the thread for you? God, those were the halcyon days.
Still works just fine if you know how to Google. Quotes are your friend as are the many language modifiers you can use. The internet is a big place and you can't simply find everything by searching a single BBS anymore.
However there is also a question of what is relevant. If the fragment you're looking for is generic and related to something more recent, chances are the recent topics will get priority due to this perception that recent events are more relevant to your interests.
Google used to offer a wonderful advanced search techniques class. We learned about boolean operators, various exact match operators, and "find similar images" tricks. About 99% of the cool features they taught were removed (not just hidden--removed) within 2 years.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms.
Maybe I got older and missed changes in how Google works... possible. It's just at this point Google is nothing more than a pain in my ass.
Google has changed a lot over the years and it's worth remembering that natural language queries are the norm. In many cases if you try to structure a search like you did in the 90s a search engine won't have a frigging clue what you're looking for.
Google still has by far the best hit rate for me, but then if you know how something works you can use it to your advantage.
It's the same principle as with AI customized ads that show me exactly what interests me... which is an outright falsehood. I almost never see ads that are of interest to me, anywhere.
I guess you have reasonable anti-tracking? I mean no adverts interest me, but I generally see ads only related to my interests. Usually stu
"Google has changed a lot over the years and it's worth remembering that natural language queries are the norm. "
Yeah, I was born in the mid 70's and I have been using the web since 1994, right before it became a 'thing' with the public.
So I am used to using quotes and operators, and Google should be 'smart' enough to recognize a 90's style search query and behave accordingly. This is the same company who like others froth at the mouth about "AI is the future, blah blah blah", so surely this
"Seriously, there was a time when Google seemed to know what I meant when I searched for something. It was kind of uncanny but damn was it useful.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms."
In any other universe, I would think that somebody inside Google was sabotaging them in order to bring the compa
%
APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming;
...and is best for educational purposes. -- A. Perlis
Google is close to useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, there was a time when Google seemed to know what I meant when I searched for something. It was kind of uncanny but damn was it useful.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms.
Maybe I got older and missed changes in how Google works... possible. It's just at this point Google is nothing more than a pain in my ass.
It's the same principle as with AI customized ads that show me exactly what interests me... which is an outright falsehood. I almost never see ads that are of interest to me, anywhere.
I want the Rising Star Google back... That thing made life easier.
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the issue is that it's being gamed pretty hard, but yeah, it's definitely gone downhill. Seems like every time a search engine gets popular, then sites game it, then it sucks. We used to go through that cycle a lot faster, though, changing to the new best search engine every few years.
For politically sensitive searches, too, Google is not the right one. You can't find things that you know exist simply because someone at Google disagrees with them. Yeah, I know that sometimes they are filtering out actual BS like people who don't believe that vaccines work at all or what have you, but it's hard to even evaluate things for yourself when you have a censor sitting over your virtual shoulder. Thankfully, search engines aren't yet a monoculture, but it's still tough to find what you want these days.
Re: (Score:1)
I disagree that "gaming" lies at the heat. As I see it, this decline is at least 50% self-inflicted.
For a while, I really enjoyed the online food scene. Bloggers like J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at the The Food Lab rocked my world. And it wasn't just Kenji, there was an entire network of food-related blogs to provide second and third opinions.
These days, any basic recipe search turns up 75% puppy-mill swill spill. You can
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:5, Informative)
I have the same problem with searching something on Amazon. I'd say that 95% of the time, the words I'm searching for aren't even in the items descriptions. Annoying as fuck to be searching for something very specific and then be shown things that aren't even in the same category at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Okay... "Why would you want 1.25 TB hard drives in the results?"?
Re: (Score:2)
You need 1 tebibyte of storage and high longevity, so you get the extra for over provisioning, and on top of that you want to compensate for drives dishonestly being marketed by the amount of terabytes, instead of the more sensible tebibyte standard? And also you're completely insane.
Re: (Score:0)
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:4, Insightful)
The drive manufacturers had been messing with the well-established computer convention that "kilo" = 2^10 long before Euro-pedants like you gave them cover.
1024 bytes had been a kilobyte for a couple of generations before anyone decided they needed to fight over "misuse" of the prefix.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Remove the space, so it reads "10TB". Then you'll find it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
The problem I have searching on Amazon is all the crap that gets loaded for them to push in my face before I can start entering search terms. Particularly on mobile.
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:4, Insightful)
I've often found it easier to find something specific on Amazon, by searching Google, DuckDuckGo, etc. with "amazon.com" in the search terms.
Re: (Score:2)
I have the same experience. Ditto with other sites like Home Depot, Walmarts, etc.
Site:Slashdot.org (Score:2)
The syntax site:homedepot.com does precisely what you want on Google.
For example, search immerman site:Slashdot.org
Leaving off the "site:" will include somw results that aren't on the site you're looking for, though typically it doesn't make a huge difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, i used sire: for a while, but eventually decided it didn't make enough difference to be worth the effort of typing (and remembering)
Not like the old days when all the advanced google syntax would actually let you rapidly dial-in the results. Seems like their advanced options languished one they got decent natural-language search, and then their natural language search went rapidly downhill too.
Re: (Score:2)
> Yeah, i used sire: for a while
I didn't even know they had syntax for Lancelot! Cool.
Re: (Score:2)
Or is it genealogy?
Re: (Score:1)
There's alternate amazon search sites for pretty much this exact reason. I haven't researched how reputable places like jungle search are, but they do exist. Probably I'll take a closer look in the near future.
What I want is a simple browser plugin to redo a search with all FBA results removed. Amazon FBA is the place where all the counterfeit products that bought good reviews live. On top of that FBA protects sellers from bad reviews, so it's where the bad sellers live too.
Re: (Score:3)
One of my adblock or privacy plugins really does not play well with Amazon. Maybe its privacy badger. But anyhow after a few minutes the tab freezes solid. Reloading tab causes it to freeze again. It also seems to happen with Advance Auto Parts. After a few minutes it tells me their website is down for maintenance. Switch to a different browser and it works fine. Probably so much cross site tracking is breaking things.
Re: (Score:2)
I use privacy badger (in firefox) and have not had this issue on windows or linux. Maybe you're not blocking enough, rather than too much? Get some anti-scripting action going on, if you haven't. That should prevent endless loops.
Re: Google (and Amazon and Goodreads) is close to (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have the same problem with searching something on Amazon. I'd say that 95% of the time, the words I'm searching for aren't even in the items descriptions. Annoying as fuck to be searching for something very specific and then be shown things that aren't even in the same category at all.
Amazon seems completely oblivious to what Google has been fighting tooth and nail against for over a decade: assholes sabotaging search results attempting to profit.
NewEgg suffered the same problem for a while, but unlike Amazon, NewEgg took steps. For a while there, searching for a video card on NewEgg would get you mousepads and adhesive decals for computer cases. Now you get... video cards. It has been a breath of fresh air in a sea of useless shit. Unfortunately because of Amazon, NewEgg has had to
Re: (Score:2)
Gawd, I hate Amazon's search and it's even gotten worse recently. In the past couple of days I've noticed that they're throwing in items from my previous searches into my current search. It's bad enough that their search wasn't finding what I was asking for.
Usually I'm pretty specific in my searches and try to put a manufacturer name if I am able to. When I do I still get the products from a bunch of other manufacturers and any matches from any other categories. I then have to select a category from the sid
Re: (Score:1)
It seems we are backsliding to the bad old days when the web first started, and there were no search engines.
Google, Amazon is racing as fast as they can to the bottom, and when they do hit bottom, they will just start digging to get even lower. >:(
I guess it's back to downloading a big offline database of websites, and using local search tools to find what you are looking for. :\
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:4)
But also, if I'm being real, it's not like any of the other search engines are better.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You may be searching for stuff on Conservative-leaning sites, which Google censors [cbn.com].
Yeah, they deny it [snopes.com], but the denials ring hollow. They have the mechanism [dailymail.co.uk] — created to to (try to) fight spam and, their wording, "sites that actively aim to mislead". Are we supp
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Google didn't break the internet, Advertisers did.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right in spirit, but I think you're maybe forgetting what Google does for money.
Re: (Score:2)
It's semantic search. Google gives search results for related words even when the relation doesn't make sense.
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:5, Interesting)
Every day I have to wrap quotes around my search terms because they flat out get ignored. They get a strike through line below the results. They give you what is popular not what is accurate. Even still with quotes you get back things that are vaguely related further polluting things.
Re: (Score:2)
They give you what is popular not what is accurate.
Actually they give you what they think is relevant to you based on your profile. It's funny seeing the people who are most against tracking are the same people who complain that results they get are popular rather than relevant to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Google should return results for what you type, not for what is "relevant" to their model of you.
Re: (Score:1)
"Google should return results for what you type, not for what is "relevant" to their model of you."
And this is where things fuck up. When they try to psychoanalyze people, to cater to "feelings" (which ads do, and Google follows), when they get into all of this sentimental bullshit, this is where things get fucked up.
This kind of bullshit has brought down empires. Ancient China (not to be confused with the modern era) was a powerful and mighty empire, and perhaps the most technologically adv
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when you could Google a fragment of a message you once read in a forum five years prior, and Google would reliably find the thread for you? God, those were the halcyon days.
Re: (Score:2)
Still works just fine if you know how to Google. Quotes are your friend as are the many language modifiers you can use. The internet is a big place and you can't simply find everything by searching a single BBS anymore.
However there is also a question of what is relevant. If the fragment you're looking for is generic and related to something more recent, chances are the recent topics will get priority due to this perception that recent events are more relevant to your interests.
Re: (Score:0)
Still works just fine if you know how to Google. Quotes are your friend as are the many language modifiers you can use.
Quotes help, but both quotes and plus signed have been diluted too and don't work as well as they used to.
Re: Google is close to useless (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms.
Maybe I got older and missed changes in how Google works... possible. It's just at this point Google is nothing more than a pain in my ass.
Google has changed a lot over the years and it's worth remembering that natural language queries are the norm. In many cases if you try to structure a search like you did in the 90s a search engine won't have a frigging clue what you're looking for.
Google still has by far the best hit rate for me, but then if you know how something works you can use it to your advantage.
It's the same principle as with AI customized ads that show me exactly what interests me... which is an outright falsehood. I almost never see ads that are of interest to me, anywhere.
I guess you have reasonable anti-tracking? I mean no adverts interest me, but I generally see ads only related to my interests. Usually stu
Re: (Score:1)
"Google has changed a lot over the years and it's worth remembering that natural language queries are the norm. "
Yeah, I was born in the mid 70's and I have been using the web since 1994, right before it became a 'thing' with the public.
So I am used to using quotes and operators, and Google should be 'smart' enough to recognize a 90's style search query and behave accordingly. This is the same company who like others froth at the mouth about "AI is the future, blah blah blah", so surely this
Re: (Score:1)
"Seriously, there was a time when Google seemed to know what I meant when I searched for something. It was kind of uncanny but damn was it useful.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms."
In any other universe, I would think that somebody inside Google was sabotaging them in order to bring the compa