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[–]Grayson81 37 points38 points  (8 children)

One thing that’s rather shocking to those of us who used search engines (and even directories like Yahoo before they got the idea of becoming real search engines from Google) is just how good they’ve got at understanding a vague, poorly written or mistaken search.

There was a time when you had to really know what you were looking for to find it online, and if you didn’t phrase your search query exactly right, you’d end up with a load of irrelevant results. Now Google has so much data from people who are thinking just like you that it feels like it’s reading your mind…

I remember trying to explain how Google works to my mother ten years ago and explaining why “who’s that actress? You know, the one with the eyes. Not Katy Perry” isn’t a question that a computer can answer. Now she can Google exactly that and all of the top results are telling her that she’s thinking of Zooey Deschanel!

[–]GerryQX1 16 points17 points  (1 child)

I can't help but feel mistrustful of search engines that have gotten clever like that.

When you had to put in an exact and well-formed query, at least you knew it wasn't trying to mislead you.

[–]Grayson81 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Funnily enough, it makes me feel like the algorithm is too much of a black box for any human to be smart enough to step in and lie to me subtly…

Though if you’re more worried about the algorithm or an unfriendly AI making the effort to lie to you, that’s not going to make you feel any better!

[–]Phanatic1a 30 points31 points  (2 children)

The thing that's rather shocking to me is how bad Google has gotten at understanding a highly-specific and detailed search.

[–]isovector[Put Gravatar here] 19 points20 points  (1 child)

Exactly this. I know what I'm looking for, and Google seems to intentionally ignore most of my keywords?

[–]BobbyBobRoberts 7 points8 points  (0 children)

That's because the default literally *does* ignore terms from your search query. Switch your Google settings to Verbatim mode to get better results.

[–]bjlinden 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Sadly, if you omit the "not Katy Perry" part, Zooey is nowhere near the top. Google hasn't quite figured out how to translate that question from Human Stream of Thought Language into something more like "which currently popular Hollywood actress has the most striking eyes."

I did find out that Sandy Duncan (Peter Pan on Broadway) had a glass eye, though!

[–]Grayson81 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Depending on your viewpoint, what it can actually do is even more impressive.

Being able to parse the language to come back with a ranking of actresses with the most striking eyes (everything really does exist on the internet, doesn't it?) would be impressive, but it wouldn't be answering the question.

Weighing the significant words in that stream of consciousness to understand that my mother isn't searching for the actress with the most striking eyes, but showing her the person who most people are thinking of when they can't remember the actress's name but mention Katy Perry is even more impressive in a different way!

It's like the way that you can type in some half-remembered song lyrics and still get the result. You type in "going down 9:30 flight song" and enough people have misheard or misremembered the lyrics to Toto's Africa in a similar way in the past that Google's algorithm seems to magically show you the right answer even though the only word you got right was "flight".

[–]gwern 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I have some examples like that in my search tips page, but I'm still amazed that works. (I wonder how much T5 and newer G models like MUM/LamDA/Pathways are responsible for that sort of query - 'Ask Jeeves' but now the asking actually works!)