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The man who killed Google Search?

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1884 points elorant | 10 comments | 23 Apr 24 16:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source | bottom
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gregw134 ◴[23 Apr 24 20:15 UTC] No.40136741[source]▶
Ex-Google search engineer here (2019-2023). I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at least contain it as much as possible, so that ranking stays debuggable and understandable by human search engineers. My impression is that since he left complexity exploded, with every team launching as many deep learning projects as they can (just like every other large tech company has).

The problem though, is the older systems had obvious problems, while the newer systems have hidden bugs and conceptual issues which often don't show up in the metrics, and which compound over time as more complexity is layered on. For example: I found an off by 1 error deep in a formula from an old launch that has been reordering top results for 15% of queries since 2015. I handed it off when I left but have no idea whether anyone actually fixed it or not.

I wrote up all of the search bugs I was aware of in an internal document called "second page navboost", so if anyone working on search at Google reads this and needs a launch go check it out.

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barbariangrunge ◴[24 Apr 24 03:58 UTC] No.40140388[source]▶
Machine learning or not, seo spam sort of killed search. It’s more or less impossible to find real sites by interesting humans these days. Almost all results are Reddit, YouTube, content marketing, or seo spam. And google’s failure here killed the old school blogosphere (medium and substack only slightly count), personal websites, and forums

Same is happening to YouTube as well. Feels like it’s nothing but promoters pushing content to gain followers to sell ads or other stuff because nobody else’s videos ever surface. Just a million people gaming the algorithm and the only winners are the people who devote the most time to it. And by the way, would I like to sign up for their patreon and maybe one of their online courses?

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1. baryphonic ◴[24 Apr 24 04:13 UTC] No.40140491[source]▶
What I don't understand about this explanation is that Google's results are abysmal compared to e.g. DuckDuckGo or even Brave search. (I haven't tried Kagi, but people here rave about it as well.) Sure, all the SEO is targeting googlebot, but Google has by far more resources to mitigate SEO spam than just about anyone else. If this is the full explanation, couldn't Google just copy the strategies the (much) smaller rivals are using?
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2. yannickt ◴[24 Apr 24 04:59 UTC] No.40140751[source]▶
I've been using Kagi for a while, and I find that it delivers better results in a cleaner presentation.
3. freeone3000 ◴[24 Apr 24 07:17 UTC] No.40141579[source]▶
When a large search engine deranks spam websites, the spam websites complain! Loudly! With Google they have a big juicy target with lots of competing ventures for an antitrust case; no such luck for Kagi or DDG.
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4. raincole ◴[24 Apr 24 07:21 UTC] No.40141604[source]▶
Have you read the article this thread is about?

To summarize it: Google reverted an algorithm that detected SEO spams in 2019.

(Note that I never work for Google and I don't know whether it's true or not. It's just what this article says.)

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5. baryphonic ◴[24 Apr 24 11:12 UTC] No.40142939[source]▶
I wasn't responding to the article; I was responding to the claim that Google's results are bad because of all the SEO. It's a claim I've heard from Google apologists including some people I know at Google. I think it's nonsense both for the reasons I stated and for the reasons enumerated in the article.
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6. baryphonic ◴[24 Apr 24 16:10 UTC] No.40146100[source]▶
This is an interesting theory. Is there evidence that it's happening? Is Big SEO unreasonably effective at lobbying the Justice Department?
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7. eitland ◴[24 Apr 24 16:58 UTC] No.40146914{3}[source]▶
You are totally correct I think.

This isn't about what is possible.

It is about Google not wanting to say goodbye to the sweet dollars from spammy sites.

Otherwise making the probably number one requested feature, a personal block list, wouldn't have been impossible for a company with so many bright minds.

I mean: little bootstrapped Kagi had it either from the beginning or at least since shortly after they launched.

People always think they lost against SEO spam. But my main reason for quitting as soon as an alternative showed up was because they started to overrule my searches and search for what they thought I wanted to search for.

For a while I kept it at bay by using doublequotes and verbatim but none of those have worked reliably for a decade now.

That isn't SEO spam. That is poor engineering or "we know better than you" attitude.

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8. freeone3000 ◴[24 Apr 24 17:34 UTC] No.40147345{3}[source]▶
It’s definitely a concern where I work (not Google). Deranking anybody who happens to share a vertical we’re in is colorable as an anticompetitive action[0], and due to our dominance in another sector (not search), effectively any anticompetitive action anywhere is a no-go. And since we don’t have time to review whether a particular competitor also competes in one of our verticles and run everything by legal, nothing gets de-ranked manually.

0: for context, us doj does not take antitrust action against companies simply for market dominance; it requires market dominance plus an anticompetitive action. However, they don’t like monopolies, so effectively any pretext can be used — see the apple lawsuit or the 90s ms lawsuits for how little it takes.

9. kelseydh ◴[24 Apr 24 23:26 UTC] No.40151201{4}[source]▶
Google's search results are just bad. For example, search: "Does Quebec have an NHL team?"

The results suggest that Quebec does not have an NHL team, because it confuses the province of Quebec with Quebec City. Montreal, in Quebec, has the Montreal Canadiens and this isn't mentioned in the search results at all.

10. deanishe ◴[25 Apr 24 00:44 UTC] No.40151821{3}[source]▶
The EU fined Google for prioritising Google Shopping results after complaints by other shopping/price-comparison websites.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Goog...