
Google’s Web Search Quality. A picture is worth a 1000 words - staunch
http://jakenbake.com/googles-web-search-quality-a-picture-is-worth-1000-words/
======
aresant
The article shows BING & GOOG'S search results for "the film where no new
babies are born"

BING returns gibberish results, GOOG returns an IMDB link to "Children of
Men", the perfect answer.

But one search out of billions is easy to gimmick, what are the results with a
slightly different search string:

"the movie where no babies can be born anymore"

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+b...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymore&go=&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymor&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=)

[https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-
ab&hl=en&safe=of...](https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-
ab&hl=en&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymore&pbx=1&oq=the+movie+where+no+babies+can+be+born+anymore&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=12&gs_upl=513l513l0l1474l1l1l0l0l0l0l98l98l1l1l0&gs_l=hp.12...513l513l0l1474l1l1l0l0l0l0l98l98l1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=88c33d31734d390&biw=1024&bih=683)

Bing's search is more accurate in the above example

Not "knock it out of the park" accurate but GOOG returns the complete wrong
answer

How many of these could you find if you had the time in your day?

That said, as a guy with a bunch of MSFT stock I can't remember the last time
I used BING

~~~
shazow
Smallest grammatical change to get the correct result:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+babies+cant+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+babies+cant+be+born+anymore)

"the movie where no babies can be born anymore" ->

"the movie where babies can't be born anymore"

There is definitely some room for improvement here, I'll submit this
internally.

~~~
tricolon
Also, compare these:

"movie where no babies are born anymore"

"movie where no babies are born"

------
ajays
One of my pain points with Google is that the page is now bloated beyond
belief. At one time, I'd hit the "home" button (G was my home page), the page
would pop up instantly and I'd start typing my search.

Now, with "instant search", "google plus" and all that bloat, the page pops
up, but when I start typing, nothing happens (as it's still loading the gobs
of JavaScript); and then it'll miss the first few characters and then start
pulling in random search results based on the last few characters I typed,
while trying to load previews of pages. In all this confusion, the time taken
for me to enter a search term and get results has gone from, say, 3-4 seconds
earlier, to 7-10 seconds now. I know it doesn't sound much, but this is a
company where Marissa used to count the individual characters of the homepage.
Now that she's not in charge, the page has ballooned like Kirstie Alley.

~~~
ajross
Really. Are you on a particularly challenged connection? I just tried exactly
that test and could barely get anything typed at all before the page display
was finished. And it certainly didn't miss any characters. Obviously there
_is_ a lot more content on the page now than there was a few years ago, but
AFAICT they've hidden it exceedingly well.

Honestly, the above seems like pretty bald hyperbole to me.

~~~
EveryoneElse
You may find this hard to believe but, there are places that exist that are
not America.

We like to call this "The rest of the world". It's nice and there are many
friendly people.

Now let's take an example of a place in the rest of the world:

Perth, Australia.

What's the flight time of a packet from Perth to Mountain View? 300ms -400ms?
Taken each way that's almost a second.

Hyperbole? not at all.

You may now continue living in total oblivion to the world around you.

Also you say they've hidden the extra content. The same extra content which
was just more ads. You're actually making the contention that google was
cleverly hiding all the ads from you?

No it wasn't. It was cleverly pushing real results below the fold where they
will stop distracting users from the ads.

see this: [http://www.seobook.com/excuse-me-where-did-googles-
organic-s...](http://www.seobook.com/excuse-me-where-did-googles-organic-
search-results-go)

This is only heading in one direction - "Pay up for adwords or you're on page
two, buddy".

~~~
brandon
You do know that your Google searches don't go to Mountain View, right? Google
has datacenters all over the world. I think you know better, and I'd love to
see some actual numbers from you.

~~~
nl
I disagree with most of the OP's points, but...

You do realize that Google doesn't have a datacenter in Australia, right?

Our searches go to California, so I think the OP's point about the round trip
time to Mountain View are reasonable.

I'm not in Perth (which - to be fair to Google - is the most isolated city in
the world), but from Adelaide my timings look like this:

GET <http://www.google.com.au/s?hl=en..>.

Waiting: 205ms

Receiving: 218ms

Total: 423ms

Having said that, I usually get results before I can press Enter.

------
leh
I just tried this with a different movie in mind. The results are pretty
interesting, but see for yourself:

[http://www.google.de/search?q=the%20film%20where%20a%20house...](http://www.google.de/search?q=the%20film%20where%20a%20house%20is%20flying%20with%20an%20old%20guy%20and%20a%20young%20one&hl=de&prmd=imvns&biw=1188&bih=702&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw&ei=C6xST7HqDtSQ4gTMmaDJDQ)

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flyin...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+with+an+old+guy+and+a+young+one&go=&qs=n&form=QBLH&filt=all&pq=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+with+an+old+guy+and+a+young+one&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=)

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+wi...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+film+where+a+house+is+flying+with+an+old+guy+and+a+young+one)

If you get the same results as I do, you should find the correct answer as
duckducks first answer and bings 4th one. Google's first page of search
results has no reference to the correct answer (though in the picture search
the first one picture is from the movie).

I use google day in day out. Maybe I should overcome that habit :-)

~~~
icebraining
My first result in Google for that query is: "National Geographic real-life
floating house: Pixar's Up! can be ..."

In any case, I think I have my search-fu already optimized for Google: I'd
search "animation film flying house" instead, which results in:

Google → 1st result, Wikipedia page for Up!

DDG → 3rd result, reference to Up! in the title, although not a page about the
movie specifically.

Bing → Up! nowhere to be see on the first page.

~~~
inaseer
I see several relevant results in Bing including the wikipedia entry for Up as
the fourth result.

~~~
icebraining
Well, it definitively doesn't here: <http://i.imgur.com/zaiCy.png> (I joined
two screenshots in Gimp, that's why the scrollbar is strange)

------
hackinthebochs
Google has many cute gimmicks built in, no doubt. But honestly I've been
frustrated at Google's results as of late. Google simply has been SEO'd to
death. Plus, uncommon phrases are completely swamped by more common similar
ones. Search is just waiting to be blown wide open again, at least in some
specific cases.

~~~
dmoy
My only real beef with Google search at the moment is that it seems to give
too much weight to "current events." If there is some big piece of news (like
the recent school shooting), it funnels you towards that result. I was looking
for some statistics on suburban schools, and a search for 'suburban schools'
returned 9 results about the shooting that occurred the day before, and result
from ehow.com

:\

It would be pretty cool if we could have knobs that would control the
weighting of different factors - news, wiki, help websites, etc.

I guess I don't really know how it works though, so maybe that's not very
feasible (or maybe it'd be too easy to game?).

~~~
waterlesscloud
With sort of the opposite result for tech searches. It's very common to get
links to blog and forum posts from several years ago when it's far more likely
that information posted in the last year would be more helpful.

~~~
saryant
You can limit the time span of your search in the sidebar on Google. I'll
often do that when I'm searching for something technical.

~~~
wickedchicken
Excellent for "best way to install X" posts when X is fast-moving :)

------
Tobu
[the film where no new babies are born] → [no babies movie]. The rest of the
query is superfluous or implied.

<http://google.com/#q=no%20babies%20movie> finds it.

"no babies" does not appear on the IMDb page itself, but I expect it appears
near many links to the IMDb page.

Edit: rewriting queries is a necessary step to do question-answering with a
search engine. Query rewriting + some sort of knowledge graph is a large part
of the Watson recipe; the graph is comparatively sparse but simplified queries
can be entry points into that graph.

~~~
shingen
Google does a stellar job correlating click through and click back actions +
times to determine what people were most likely looking for with each query,
and then raising or lowering results accordingly (Panda amplified this metric
in their scoring system). I suspect they stomp Bing in that department.

~~~
Tobu
Bing too shows results based on user interactions (collected via a toolbar or
via IE's "suggested sites" feature):

[http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-results-
one-...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-results-one-of-bings-
ranking.html)

------
tambourine_man
The problem is when the cleverness doesn't work. Then it's clippy time.

I desperately want a “don't be smart button”. Searching for code is pointless,
even on quotes and verbatim.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22this%3Aempty%22>

~~~
magicalist
[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861#exceptions%5Fpunctuations)

That's not cleverness gone bad. You've never been able to search with a colon
on regular google. I miss code search too.

------
zalew
about a year ago this came up

[https://www.google.com/search?q=that+hipster+song+with+whist...](https://www.google.com/search?q=that+hipster+song+with+whistling)

<http://i.imgur.com/63uJd.png>

the keywords in description were added _after_ this search got popular!

------
tazzy531
This thread is filled with great anecdotes. If you do encounter something
where Google is not returning the best result for your query, fill out the
Search Quality Feedback form: <http://www.google.com/quality_form>

This will help the team improve the search engine.

------
lrobb
I'd be interested in how those results were obtained, because when I search
google with that exact same query, the results look pretty much like bing's
results.

------
mathattack
Looks like Google finds ways to keep getting better. It's an arms race...
Geogle wants to be so much better than everyone else that people won't mind
ads thrown in. That's ambitious. They also have to stay ahead o SEOs who
compete with their ads.

~~~
stock_toaster
Google is getting better for "general searches", but I have gotten
consistently worse results over time for obscure things, like searching for
code or searches for things where the results would overlap with something
popular but unrelated.

~~~
mathattack
This makes a lot of sense. Their search results can't self teach for obscure
things.

------
Kurtz79
Similar queries give incredible accurate results ("movie with Brad Pitt and
Edward Norton","movie where james stewart is afraid of heights") , but it
seems to work just with movies...

I got spottier results trying with music and games related queries. Google
probably picks up the words "movie" or "film", and than search the rest of the
query restricting the first few results to movie-related websites.

Still, it's clearly not a "Number of French military victories" kind of
gimmick, search is definitely going in that direction in the following years.

------
alinspired
great example! another improvement from google - recognize search queries
typed in wrong keyboard layout, ie:
[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D1%81%D1%80%D1%88...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D1%81%D1%80%D1%88%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%82+%D1%89%D0%B0+%D1%8C%D1%84%D1%82)

------
gghootch
Adding some very popular words to a query really messes up the results of all
three.

I tried combinations of the movie with (four) guys in white clothing/suits. It
wasn't until I searched for 'the movie with guys dressed in white' that any
relevant results were returned.

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+whit...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+white)

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+white)

[http://www.google.nl/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in...](http://www.google.nl/search?q=the+movie+with+guys+dressed+in+white)

Arguably it's Google > Duck > Bing

------
sofifonfek
Google web search's secret: it's not searching what you tell it to search.

\- suggest spelling corrections and alternative spellings \- personalize your
search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before \- include
synonyms of your search terms to find related results \- find results that
match similar terms to those in your query \- search for words with the same
stem, like "running" when you search for [ run ]

[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p=g_verb&answer=1734130)

Also <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb>

------
anonymoushn
If you search for chrome, Google thinks you probably want to do the following
things more than you want to download Chrome from Google: buy a Chromebook,
use the Google Chrome Beta, buy a Google Chrome messenger bag, read about
Google Chrome on Wikipedia, download Google Chrome from download.com, download
ad block for Chrome, read news about Chrome, download Angry Birds for Chrome

If you search Bing for chrome, the first result will allow you to download
Chrome from Google. :)

~~~
nose
This is probably why:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202/posts/NAWu...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202/posts/NAWunDzJSHC)

 _the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for
at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a
reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company
would._

~~~
Flemlord
That could explain this: Google Chrome loses market share for second
consecutive month.

[http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/google_chrome_coughs_m...](http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/google_chrome_coughs_market_share_second_consecutive_month)

------
ivan_ah
Counter example query that returns the same first hit: "movie where they use
math to find patterns in the torah"

[http://www.google.ca/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+f...](http://www.google.ca/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+find+patterns+in+the+torah)

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+fi...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=movie+where+they+use+math+to+find+patterns+in+the+torah)

------
threepipeproblm
The success with negation-based queries displayed in the example is thoroughly
explained in The Structured Search Engine --
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lCSDOuqv1A>

TL;DR - Google has added phrase chunking, weights positive/negative words in
phrases, and allows negative phrases to modify the search impact of the
affected phrases.

------
why-el
No one is interested in why bing is suggesting word "baby" instead of babies?
I submitted the same query and it does not suggest that anymore.

------
sofifonfek
Paradoxically this is also the reason why the biggest advertiser's search
engine sucks more and more. This fuzzy search where he looks for all kind of
synonyms instead of what he's asked means it often returns no useful results
and misses the target by a solar system or two.

Looking for a film on the web = imdb no babies are born = no procreation

So let's search for "imdb no procreation":
<http://lmgtfy.com/?q=imdb+no+procreation> and
<http://www.bing.com/search?q=imdb+no+procreation>

Now let's turn off this fuzzy synonymous search, go on the results page for
"the film where no more babies are born", click on "more search tools" in the
sidebar and click "verbatim". Not only the actual results doesn't show up
anymore but we now see this very story referenced several times further
skewing the results towards confirmation bias:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb>

I switched from metacrawler to google for my web searching in 1998, I can
testify that it's getting worse and worse at providing relevant results for a
while now and at the same time it gets better at tracking users and raising
privacy concerns, censoring results, adding clutter, spam and ads, silently
removing useful features. I've switched to duckduckgo in 2010 and rarely go
back to google anymore.

------
guscost
[http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+miss...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+misses+his+sled)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+gets...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+gets+raped+in+the+woods)

~~~
guscost
[http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+solv...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+movie+where+the+guy+solves+the+mystery+backwards)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+that+guy+solv...](http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+where+that+guy+solves+the+mystery+backwards)

~~~
guscost
[http://www.google.com/search?q=that+first+movie+with+the+din...](http://www.google.com/search?q=that+first+movie+with+the+dinosaurs)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+with+the+space+miss...](http://www.google.com/search?q=the+movie+with+the+space+mission+that+barely+makes+it+back)

~~~
saalweachter
Isn't that second one "every movie with a space mission"?

------
kenjackson
This says nothing about search quality. No single query can. The fact that
I've completely stopped using Google search for about 3 months now and don't
miss it at all is probably more telling. Five years ago that wouldn't have
been possible, but today Bing is as good (sometimes worse, sometimes better).

~~~
adgar
You appear to be arguing that one anecdotal query "says nothing" but one
anecdotal user experience says something. What is it about your anecdote that
makes it meaningful in a discussion about services with hundreds of millions
of users?

------
user2634
There is no point of linking to google search results because it is
personalized. Everyone sees different pages.

~~~
franze
use &pws=0

~~~
user2634
Doesn't help.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=internet&pws=0](https://www.google.com/search?q=internet&pws=0)
returns only sites in local language. Zero English.

And nobody else uses &pws=0. Real Google isn't "&pws=0" Google.

~~~
franze
&hl=all

&filter=0 (if you like)

yes there is no "real google result" but the impact of personalization (as
long as you are not self spammed with google plus your world) is in generally
overrated.

------
yabai
This post illustrates the reason I cant seem to shake my Google addiction.

------
rplst8
Whatev. So one search result (or even 100) are better on Google. Bing could be
better at other things. The problem is no one uses Bing, so it's hard to know.
<http://imgur.com/peK58>

------
scriptproof
Very bad example because Google trends to favor large and authority websites.
Try a query where the answer is on a small (but very well informed) site.

~~~
scriptproof
Thanks you for the downvote. But if you try this query: "film no baby", you
get the same result again, just because IMDB if a first choice for Google for
any query related to "film". The query "film end of baby" shows different
results. This downplays the presence of any intelligence in Google's results.

------
stretchwithme
you mean baby born with two heads isn't it?

------
wavephorm
Microsoft's entire business is based around the idea that inferior products
don't matter as long as you have the monopoly position, backed by business and
sales channels that enable them to shove half-baked products and poor support
down customers throats.

Microsoft is long past the point where they will continue to get away with
shipping turds. I think they've lost the entire mobile computing market
forever. It doesn't matter how much they polish Windows 8 because consumers
and business alike are finally starting to see the light from the permanent
hangover that Microsoft has cast upon the entire IT industry since the
mid-1990's.

~~~
cooldeal
Yea Office 2007 and Windows 7 are turds compared to the competition and we are
better off with Google having 100% because only they have access to the most
keyword click data. I am surprised you didn't call them M$.

~~~
wavephorm
You haven't really given me much to dispute, but I digress. Neither Office or
Windows 7 is geared toward mobile computing, which for all intensive purposes
is the future of computing and which Microsoft is at an enormous disadvantage.
Microsoft is currently dominant in every area of computing that is declining
in every metric worth measuring. Nearly every way Microsoft makes money has
become stagnant largely due to the dominance of Microsoft in these areas and
the lack of innovation required to continue making money. Microsoft is in much
graver danger than they let on. The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the
next generation of innovators. Find me an 18 year old MS Visual Basic
programmer and I'll show you a minimum wage earner for the rest of his career.

Microsoft is a dying company, and the sooner young people abandon this company
and all its technologies the better off they are.

~~~
cooldeal
> Neither Office or Windows 7 is geared toward mobile computing, which for all
> intensive purposes is the future of computing and which Microsoft is at an
> enormous disadvantage.

Yes, too bad that MS isn't making something like Windows 8 or Office 15 that
are geared for mobile and touch friendly launching in like six months or so.

>The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the next generation of innovators.
Find me an 18 year old MS Visual Basic programmer and I'll show you a minimum
wage earner for the rest of his career.

I just searched for 'Visual Basic' on indeed.com and came up with the
following results:

Salary Estimate $20,000+ (35031) $40,000+ (16019) $60,000+ (9512) $80,000+
(4628) $100,000+ (2151)

Minimum wage is 12K/year.

Do a search for C#:

$50,000+ (28977) $70,000+ (18380) $90,000+ (8590) $110,000+ (3348) $130,000+
(1337)

These are counting only the open jobs(many of which are going unfilled).

>The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the next generation of innovators.

You mean by people like StackOverflow?

>Microsoft is a dying company, and the sooner young people abandon this
company and all its technologies the better off they are.

Yes, people should do that. It will make hiring for all the above open
positions easier, since it will weed out people who are easily misled by
people like you and who live in a well and shout la-la-la to any voice of
reason.

~~~
wavephorm

      Windows 8 or Office 15 that are geared for mobile and 
      touch friendly launching in like six months or so.
    

5 years behind the competition. Windows is so far behind iOS it's embarassing.

    
    
      I just searched for 'Visual Basic'... Salary Estimate
    

What you're not able to do a bing search for is how long-term these high-
paying Visual Basic jobs are going to last. There's no future in Visual Basic
because it's not for building apps in a mobile computing paradigm. It's an
old-school desktop GUI paradigm, the paradigm that is quickly being replaced
with mobile computing... where Microsoft is at an enormous disadvantage.
Nobody is building mobile apps using Visual Basic.

    
    
      >The entire MS stack has been abandoned by the next generation of innovators.
      You mean by people like StackOverflow?
    

Out of every 100 Silicon Valley startups, I think you'll find about 1% or less
are using any Microsoft technologies. You conveniently provided one of those
1%.

------
drivebyacct2
This thread is quickly filling up with anecdotes and such which is fine, but I
thought I'd throw out a tip. Do not be afraid to play with the date range for
limiting or further specifying your search. I probably use it 2-3 times a
week, it's very nice.

