
Google Books and the open web - benbreen
http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2018/07/google-books-and-open-web.html
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Jaruzel
Search can no longer be relied upon to return standard results. Using the book
index as a synonym, when you pick up a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica,
you know that the index is the same as it was when the book was printed. It's
not been secretly updated based how many people looked up each section in that
volume globally. You know that if you are the first ever person to look up
Early Chinese Pottery that if the entry isn't indexed, then it's _not_ in that
volume, and it's not because the index decided that it wasn't a popular enough
topic and removed it from the index. I know Google don't actually remove non-
popular items from their indexes, they just bury them behind results pages of
more popular 'relevant' results. To the lay person, the result they are
looking for may as well be removed.

I appreciate that Google and Bing spend millions of dollars trying to purge
their indexes of spam, but they also seem to spend millions of dollars
creating adaptive results based on an unknown list of parameters and variables
that are opaque even to the search organisations themselves.

It's time a new search player stepped up with a proper mature indexing concept
that allows for deep hierarchical filter searching based on a semi-static
system that only removes results from search when they actually go offline,
and doesn't prioritise social media posts above everything else.

We need to bring the internet back to the primary function of an information
resource first and foremost. The clickbait-ad-selling junkie that it has
become is creating a closed circle of idiotic users consuming and creating yet
more idiotic content, like a fish eating its own tail. What's more, Google and
Bing are the primary enablers of this whole problem.

I don't know how to fix it, but somebody has to do something before the
internet becomes nothing more than an ad-ridden gogglebox in the same way
television has already become.

~~~
VikingCoder
If there were a better way to find the results that users are actually looking
for, then Bing and Google would be working their assess off to find it.

That you presume they have any other goal in mind is frankly bizarre to me.

Through experimentation they have arrived at these algorithms to maximize the
probability that you find what YOU were looking for. Based on who you are,
what you've searched in the past, what context they think you're in, what's
happening recently, what's happening nearby, etc.

If you want the search engines to ignore the context of the individual, then
most people will get what they are looking for far, far less often than they
currently do.

That's what Google and Bing are experts at optimizing.

There are search engines that don't try to optimize based on your personalized
context. You and everyone else are free to use them and you don't because
they're not as good at what you want. Statistically speaking. I admit there
are edge cases.

~~~
jumpman500
I think both yours and Jaruzels points are good. But...

> If there were a better way to find the results that users are actually
> looking for, then Bing and Google would be working their assess off to find
> it.

I don't think we should assume this. I'd only be wiling to assume that
Google/Microsoft would change how they do search if it could make them more
money. That doesn't mean 'better' search necessarily. If they could convince
users to accept it, I could imagine an extremely ad bloated search service, or
search service that just sells the top ranks of terms to the highest bidder.

~~~
VikingCoder
For the most part, Bing and Google make more money if users find results that
they're actually looking for.

Sure, that's not 100% true, but I think people overstate the degree that
that's not true.

Google and Bing _can 't_ convince users to accept something like that. In
fact, people abandoned search services like that in favor of Google and Bing,
because they _don 't_ do that.

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testplzignore
Google Search is like when you go into a store and an employee asks, "do you
need help finding something?". I tell them no, but they awkwardly follow me
around the store anyways.

~~~
rahimnathwani
It's more like going into a store, approaching an employee, telling them what
you're looking for, and then complaining about them doing their best to help
you achieve your aim.

~~~
Endy
To stretch the pained metaphor further and disagree, it's like when the
employee does not tell you about the low-cost item, but only the vaguely
related but high-commission item.

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brandonhorst
Google has been doing this for ages, not only with Books results but web
search results. If the query is associated with some Entity, it will return
various (hopefully useful) about that entity even if they do not contain text
involved at all.

This is how, for example the query "that movie where there are two magicians"
returns varied results about The Prestige, whereas "that movie where there are
four magicians" returns various results about Now You See Me.

A pure text search would likely return very similar results, but the entity
mapping heavily impacts the search results.

~~~
enriquto
If you quote a part of your search query, then google only returns pages
containing that text.

~~~
reaperducer
Used to. My recent experience is that this has either been disabled, or is
applied unevenly.

~~~
aendruk
Relegated to Tools → All results → Verbatim.

