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The man who killed Google Search?

(www.wheresyoured.at)
1884 points elorant | 5 comments | 23 Apr 24 16:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.758s | source
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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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willvarfar ◴[24 Apr 24 07:41 UTC] No.40141729[source]▶
I think a case can be made that the spam problem can be traced all the way back to Google buying Doubleclick.

Its really easy to spot the crap websites that are scaping content-creating websites ... because they monetize by adding ads.

If Google was _only_ selling ads on the search results page, then it could promote websites that are sans ads.

Instead, it is incentivised to push users to websites that contain ads, because it also makes money there.

And that means scraping other sites to slap your ads onto them can be very profitable for the scammers.

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octopusRex ◴[24 Apr 24 12:28 UTC] No.40143563[source]▶
We need a Reverse Google search that will weed out the garbage.
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KetoManx64 ◴[24 Apr 24 18:23 UTC] No.40147864[source]▶
https://kagi.com/ de-prioritizes SEO ad sites and also lets you blacklist sites from your search reaults. Never going back to google after trying it
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1. chrisallenlane ◴[24 Apr 24 19:27 UTC] No.40148500[source]▶
I've also been using (and paying for) Kagi for a few months now. It's fantastic.
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2. krick ◴[25 Apr 24 03:14 UTC] No.40152976[source]▶
Feels a bit silly to ask such an anecdotal question to somebody I don't know, but is it really better than Google? If you don't consider all the privacy yadda-yadda issues. I mean more like the size of the index, how quickly it updates things, how good is it at actual searching (like finding an almost exact quote which happens to exist on only one obscure site on the internet), stuff like that. I could also mention stuff like blacklisting doorways, but honestly it's less interesting, and I totally believe that it does it better than Google.

Personally, I use DDG on the daily basis, and it's mostly ok, but very-very far from perfect. More so, at least once in several days I have to switch to Google, because it is seriously better at updating the index, and DDG often fails to find something on some obscure forum, even if I know it's there (because I was a part of discussion myself!) and try to assist it with finding it as much as I can. Also, Google is immensely better at knowing local shops and finding products.

Also, Google search, being bad as it is, it still the only thing I find usable on mobile. First off, it's faster, it is integrated nicely into Pixel UI, and it's somewhat good at all these "more than just a search" type of things, like converting a timezone for me, showing wikipedia summary, flight schedule, etc. Also, integration with Google Maps, working hours and venue locations, it is actually far more reliable than, say, Tripadvisor.

Still, I feel reluctant to vendor-locking myself into payed service unless it's actually far better than everything else and can replace DDG and Google completely.

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3. barbariangrunge ◴[25 Apr 24 03:39 UTC] No.40153145[source]▶
> Privacy yadda yadda

?

4. friendzis ◴[25 Apr 24 06:36 UTC] No.40154196[source]▶
> Also, Google is immensely better at knowing local shops and finding products.

Tangential, but this is precisely the "problem" with Google search. Whatever the internal decision-making process was, Google search at some point embraced race to the bottom incentivizing outspending others, either by paying for ads or showing ads. This race is ultimately won by content scrapers/generators slapping ads on top and businesses selling stuff.

Anecdotally, there is a pet supply store near me. It's nearly impossible to find on Google maps. If I zoom over the shopping mall this particular store does not appear, if I search for "pet store" it does not appear. Only if I do search for "petstore inc." it appears in results and map. So Google knows about the store, but actively tries to hide it, presumably because Google does not make money off it.

> I have to switch to Google, because it is seriously better at updating the index

On one hand yes, Google is in some cases really quick at updating the index with new entries. However, at the same time it is equally good at updating the index with removals making old content very hard to find.

5. beej71 ◴[25 Apr 24 17:18 UTC] No.40160368[source]▶
I'm a paying subscriber.

It's not "that much" better for some definitions of "that much".

But they're working on making the best search engine for their customers, and it does have a lot of features for helping make your search better and less ad-driven.

I was trying to find the age of an obscure local lava flow. Google was useless for it. Kagi had it on the third hit. So sometimes it's brilliantly better.

But what I like the most is that their incentives are aligned with mine (because I'm paying them to be).

Google is going to maximize revenue which means making it as shitty as possible without you leaving. How many ads can I cram down their throats before they split? Kagi is also maximizing revenue, but they want to make it as great as possible so you don't leave.

Are the results worth it? It's up to you, really. Try it for free--if you don't miss it after you run out of free searches, then it's not for you.