Comment by jimmytucson
2 years ago
If you wanna know why Google (or any search engine) sucks, just look at how it measures its own search results. Most search companies do this “at scale” according to very specific guidelines, like what the author did here but on steroids. For example, take a look at Google’s 168-page instruction manual for search quality raters:
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...
It talks about figuring out a query’s meaning(s), judging the user’s intent (were they looking for some specific answer, etc.), evaluating the “quality” of a website, rating the site’s usefulness in relation to the query’s meaning/intent, etc.
All this is to say, it’s not that search companies don’t do exactly what the author did here, it’s just that they have different standards than the author. And I’d venture their standards match their users’ better than the author’s, but maybe not or not forever, anyway.
I really don't think that's true. For example, page 29 of your link describes "Lowest Quality Content." Most of the search results that the author rated as spammy or scammy clearly fit these guidelines, which means that either (1) the raters aren't knowledgeable enough about the subject matter to determine that the website they're rating is harmful or misleading; or (2) the raters are rating these sites correctly, but it still isn't having the desired effect.
> If you wanna know why Google (or any search engine) sucks
While I obviously don't know it may be related to how Google believes a "normal" person search. I have come to view Google as a product search engine/price comparison site, that's what it's great at. Google can find you the most relevant products for any purchase you may consider, so maybe that's what Google has optimized for. The majority of my searches are related to IT, programming, software and computers in general, but what does "normal" people search for. They search for products, news, opening hours for a store, Google is pretty decent at that, but the money is in the "go buy something". The ads on a product search on Google is always way more accurate than the actual search result.
I think Google has optimized for selling products.
Why would an average user want blog spam search results?
My hope is as LLM’s improve, they can be more discriminating about the results returned.
> Why would an average user want blog spam search results?
I didn’t say they would :)
In fact, I can’t figure out how your comment relates to mine. Are you claiming that Google doesn’t factor blog spamminess into its evaluation of search results? If so, that’s quickly put to bed by the document I linked, pretty much section 4.6. Excerpt:
> Creating an abundance of content with little effort or originality with no editing or manual curation is often the defining attribute of spammy websites.
You could claim that they fail to capture some essential quality of “blog spamitude” or that they don’t weight it heavily enough in their eval but to say they just, like, don’t know about blogspam over there, is pretty far fetched IMO.
I was responding to this part, “And I’d venture their standards match their users’ better than the author’s”, which I understood you to mean people like these seo’d results.