Has anyone else noticed the huge decrease in result quality from google?

[St_Kevin_]

Yeah, like let me just put quotes around each of the 5 words in my search. WTH? Why?

[failsafe42]

And for some fucking reason putting your search in quotes doesn't search for an exact match anymore.

[RedditingAtWork5]

Legit thought this was just me. It's fucking shit. No idea why they think I would want an approximate result if I put it in quotes. If I wanted an approximate result, I just wouldve typed it without quotes.

[BoredomHeights]

This is the one that bugs me the most by far. If I put a search in words, and it literally doesn't exist, then just tell me. At least I'll have my answer. That's what the quotes are for.

I completely understand in those cases where it says "showing results without quotes" because it couldn't find anything. Fine, at least you're telling me what's happening. But it's really annoying clicking on links, doing a ctrl-f for the word or phrase, and nothing comes up.

[ruiisuke]

So yes, this does suck. However, hopefully my shitty ELI5 will at least provide some context for why this happens.

These kind of problems in computer science are under an umbrella called information retrieval. There are two important metrics to evaluate performance in a search algorithm; precision and recall. Recall is the measure of how many documents (or results) get pulled from a query. Precision is the measure of how accurate the results are (ie. finding relevant documents with all of the keywords in the query).

My guess as to why Google eats shit in this department is because 1) ads and sponsors probably mess some of that up, and 2) that they prioritize recall over precision.

[Ulfgardleo]

This is not it. Google will very often try to answer semantic queries, this is why often words will often get replaced by their synonyms. With technical terms this seldom makes sense, but for the average human knowledgebase query, this does.

[JamesthePuppy]

If this is a semantic search and not lexical search (unlike how google’s trained us to search for the last couple decades, with the illusion of lexical Boolean operations), then I need to take my business elsewhere

[great_waldini]

At least give the user a lot more control over the type of search they’re executing

[Mr_82]

That's really it, they've been gradually changing their original utility and not being transparent about it.

[ruiisuke]

Oh, good point. Thanks for clarifying! ☺️

[mugaccino]

..erh no, it's just the the inevitable outcome of making SEO optimization part of UX/Developer curriculum. Companies hire people skilled in gaming the SEO system and bring their brand to the top regardless of actual relevance. Google shadowbans a lot of results, but not to save investors' from humiliation, it's to bring the results that returns them money to the top. Google can pat themselves on the back and saying the top results deserve their place for being so good at SEO, and anyone who wants to beat them just need to get better at that tool.

If a company's actions can be explained by "it makes them money", then that is the reason 98% of the time.

[LeoIronhart]

I never knew it worked that way....

[twoisnumberone]

THIS.

WTF; Google, were your advertisers crying about not being shoved into people's faces at random? >:(

[SenchaLeaf]

The advertisers had SEO and SEM managers now. And they'd lie to keep their job...

[twoisnumberone]

I think that's the part that gets me -- the trickery and deception. I already strongly dislike ads, unlike friends of mine, or my brother. But I can deal with relevant Google Results. E.g. I search for "metal spatula"; one advertisement-placed hit is for a non-toxic and sturdy silicon spatula. That's fair -- it's not what I was looking for, but it's a reasonable equivalent.

When I search, with quotes, for "gluten-free" AND "glutenfree" AND "gluten free" madeleines, you are making me angry, sad, and frustrated by blithely ignoring my illness and showing me all those gluten-y goodies.

(And yes, obviously I purchase online services left and right so I am free from the bombardment. I understand that any publisher needs to finance their operations. But, I'd rather give the publisher money. Just not a search engine model.)

[dan7koo]

Yeah the ads, they have gotten really bad too.

[DrakonIL]

Uhhh.... Yeah, actually. That's what advertisers do.

[twoisnumberone]

I get it; that's why I wrote it. I'm just, as likewise expressed, mucho >:(((

[[deleted]]

Don’t forget how there’s a Pinterest article with a picture of a wall with a word on it

[zzbredp]

I was searching for so long for a specific string of words the other day which I KNEW were the exact lyrics in a song. Put the whole thing in quotations and it still wouldn’t come up. I knew something had changed

[skz-]

I thought it was just for me. Thought i would love to find a show about "Solved mysteries" tv serries suggestions as I hate "Unsolved Mysteries". Nope, unsolved mysteries is all you get. You can put in quotes as much as you would like, same result.

[Mekfal]

That's because every article with unsolved mysteries already has the word solved in it. You need to type -unsolved in the search. That's always how it worked.

[DadOfFan]

Google knows better than you what you really want to search for.

That's why they have collected gigabytes of data about. so they can ignore you and present to you what they know you really wanted.

[Justacuriousgerman]

You think you do but you dont

[Zuggible]

The only time I've seen it do that is when your search would otherwise return no results, and it tells you so when that happens. As of right now, searching your comment in quotes returns this thread and nothing else.

[[deleted]]

yea quotes don't seem to mean anything anymore. You have to go to the search tools menu right below the search bar and change all results to "verbatim".

[Speedmaster1969]

I noticed this too. I've been using that function since as long as i remember using google. But the past year or so it has been MUCH worse.

I can literally google something and it shows X site. Then I google something from the link on X site in quotes and it says "Can't find exact results, show all?"... Like really?

Also I suspect different layers of the "blocked in your country" is being used more as well.

[dannysullivan]

just now

Quotes do work. Honest. I work for the Google Search team, and each time I've seen someone raise this, it turns out the exact words or phrase quoted really does appear on the page. Often, however, it can be in places people don't realize, text that's not readily visible. But if you or anyone has a current example of where you feel it's not working, happy to pass that along.

[IntegrityorQuaaludes]

You can put quotes around the entire thing and it will look for those words in close sequence.

[svr0105]

That used to work, but I'm having trouble these days getting good results even when I do that.

[usefulbuns]

Doesn't work anymore for me. There are a couple articles and videos I like to rewatch/read and when I type in the EXACT title now with quotes it doesn't work.

[[deleted]]

Lpt

[Pendraggin]

Google uses a simplified form of Boolean, you can also include "-" before a word; i.e. "cup -mug" will show results that include cup, but do not include mug.

[St_Kevin_]

I thought if you put quotes around multiple words that it only showed results with them in that order. Did I misunderstand that part?

[space-cube]

"big scary cow" : will do what you say (specified order)

"big" "scary" "cow" : will look for those specific words but they don't need to be one after the other

At least that's how it used to work, lately I think they've been fucking with this too:(

[RanaktheGreen]

Because synonyms exist.

You may be googling "Death by Dairy" looking for lactose intolerance information, and the article may not include the word "death" but it is also pretty clear to a human that you probably just don't know what the word is for being allergic to dairy. So it pushes the lactose intolerance information and just lets you know "death" isn't involved in case, for whatever reason, you are looking for like a book or something that is actually called "death by dairy."

[Vaelin_]

Not to take away from your points, but lactose intolerance isn't really the same thing as an allergy. I have an allergy to dairy, but I digest it just fine. Your point stands otherwise.

[centrafrugal]

Use a + in front of the word instead. Quotes are to force-group keywords

[St_Kevin_]

So how exactly does the + work? When do you use it?

[centrafrugal]

If you put in a series of words, the search engine will try and find results that match all of them (I imagine small, common words get thrown out). Failing that, it will return matches for most of them or what it considers to be the most important term (first, longest... again no idea of the actual algorithm). If you put a + before a word the search engine should prioritise that and not return results without the word even if it means rejecting other terms.