Google has not understood the meaning of search, When someone search's for something they dont want to see a list of sites that have the words they typed in on it they want to be presented with exactly what they wanted EG: When someone types in a Name, Say Robert Langdon, They dont want to see a huge list of sites that have the words Robert and Langdon in them they want to be presented straight away with a Robert Langdon page explaing who he is ectEG 2: When the user wants to know how to change a part in the car they type in "Change Muffler F150" They dont want to be presented with a huge list of places to buy muflers and cars they want to be presented with the instructions on how to do it,Search is going to change dramasticly in the next few years Second Note: Google has lost controll of there algorythim , EG: go to www.google.com and search for "Search Engine"<a class="user" href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search</a> engine&btnG=Google SearchGoogle is listed like last on the list, even though according to alexa it is the second most popular site on the web, If thats not an algorythim gone wrong then what is
For sophisticated search algorythms to understand the true context of a query, beyond searching for text strings, they will require increasingly intelligent contextual AI. Eventually, google (or some other engine) will be as good as a human librarian who helps find information on top of the information structure already in place (the dewey decimal system), but not until google, and the internet, starts to have the intelligence of the human brain. Although, I would rather have to scroll through some links generated by text strings searches as opposed to living in a red plasma ecto-bubble being fed dead people while I fight in a billion intelligent robots.
That was definitely a lot of BS ranting to me. "If you want to be seen in Google, you have to pay to play - and create an Adwords account. How else are you going to be "seen"? In other words, it's pay to play" -- I don't pay a dime on Advertisements, my site SUCKS, and I get over 1000 unique visitors per day from google. I don't use SPAM or black hat techniques just very targeted content and SEO.Google definitely is not perfect but even with its faults it is 50% better than Yahoo! and 1000% better than all the lesser search engines including MSN.Funny how they publish the weakening of Googles algorithm do to money and then have Adsense on there site.
Would you call something like the "assembly line" an original invention? Not really. After all, cars have been made for decades before it. But what did Ford do when it created this assembly line? They created something better than everyone else, and REVOLUTIONIZED the world. Until that point, cars were not thought of as something to be owned by general consumers, and only a toy for those rich enough to afford them. Today everyone has them.To bring up a similar point with google, consider two examples:1) Google Maps. This was not the first mapping service, not by far. There was yahoo maps, mapquest, etc. But both were clunky to use, not accurate, took time, and were generally not accepted by consumers. Even those who were internet-savvy wouldn't necesserily turn to these products when looking for directions - paper-based methods and map books were still predominantly used.Google maps changed everything because it's so quick and easy to use and it is now ubiquituous in the "looking-for-directions" field. Whether you have a website for your business, or sending an email to friends inviting them to a party at your house, you use google maps links EVERYWHERE.2) GMail. For the longest time, everyone thought of email as something to be used on their own personal machine using desktop software (outlook, eudora, what have you). Hotmail brought on a revolution, but even that was always thought of by people as their "secondary" or "personal" email account. In recent years, hotmail became a clogged up uncomfortable-to-use website with horrible spam filters, and other flaws.Gmail revolutionzied online email for the second time after hotmail. Not only is it more respectable than hotmail, it's capacity, simplicity, excellent filters, etc all mean that more and more people use Gmail as their primary email account. Now, with google Calendar coming to the forefront and more features on the horizon, Google is slowly making software like Outlook completely obsolete. It'll take a while but it'll get tehre.
Well unfortunately for you, using the meta information as well as the text within a website is pretty much the only way a search engine can index a site and categorize what it is about. From these keywords combined with personal searching history and potentially many many other variables that the search engine may use, Google attempts to extract the true meaning and context of your search query and use that in combination with your keywords. However if pages that you want to see have not described themselves properly to the search engine, then you aren't going to see what you want to see on your first page of results. This isn't Google's or any other search engine's fault, its the website's.Now I really have no clue about what goes on in the deepest core of the Google search algorithm but my guess is that, when the Googlebots find your site and index the content within it, they probably store the data in what would resemble an ontology of sorts, and this is how they apply the context of your search to the results and not just the keywords. We will never see the true utopia of web searching until the entire web is designed like this, using ontologies. Until that happens the best anyone can do is use the keywords you enter and their own algorithms to determine the results that you are looking for. And since the algorithms that are used are trying to categorize websites that are can be structured radically different from each other, this would be a lot like making a web app that works on a million different web browsers.I have noticed Google's results getting a bit weird in some places lately and places where I used to see quality sites are now occupied by other garbage sites...but this is something that we already know about. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has openly come out saying that web spam is a HUGE problem for them, and when the CEO of a company with potentially over a million servers storing and serving data says that, you know you've got a problem. One thing is certain though...that all these web spam sites follow a pattern, and once Google can identify that pattern then I think we will see some ground gained back from the spam artists that use and abuse the PageRank system.
I'd like to see Google do a few things:1. Allow me to select sites (or network of sites) I always want filtered out of my search and remember those filters across browser sessions/computers (i.e. never show me about.com or amazon).2. I'd like to be able to easily include or exclude blogs from my search.3. I'd like to be able to report links I think are bad.Honestly, most Google searches can be drastically cleaned up by including the following in your search (plus a few others depending on what you are searching for):My search criteria -ebay -amazon -about.com -freeTry it!
nick_circostaMay 10, 2006
Google has not understood the meaning of search, When someone search's for something they dont want to see a list of sites that have the words they typed in on it they want to be presented with exactly what they wanted EG: When someone types in a Name, Say Robert Langdon, They dont want to see a huge list of sites that have the words Robert and Langdon in them they want to be presented straight away with a Robert Langdon page explaing who he is ectEG 2: When the user wants to know how to change a part in the car they type in "Change Muffler F150" They dont want to be presented with a huge list of places to buy muflers and cars they want to be presented with the instructions on how to do it,Search is going to change dramasticly in the next few years Second Note: Google has lost controll of there algorythim , EG: go to www.google.com and search for "Search Engine"<a class="user" href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search</a> engine&btnG=Google SearchGoogle is listed like last on the list, even though according to alexa it is the second most popular site on the web, If thats not an algorythim gone wrong then what is
charlesnorbertMay 10, 2006
For sophisticated search algorythms to understand the true context of a query, beyond searching for text strings, they will require increasingly intelligent contextual AI. Eventually, google (or some other engine) will be as good as a human librarian who helps find information on top of the information structure already in place (the dewey decimal system), but not until google, and the internet, starts to have the intelligence of the human brain. Although, I would rather have to scroll through some links generated by text strings searches as opposed to living in a red plasma ecto-bubble being fed dead people while I fight in a billion intelligent robots.
elamrMay 10, 2006
That was definitely a lot of BS ranting to me. "If you want to be seen in Google, you have to pay to play - and create an Adwords account. How else are you going to be "seen"? In other words, it's pay to play" -- I don't pay a dime on Advertisements, my site SUCKS, and I get over 1000 unique visitors per day from google. I don't use SPAM or black hat techniques just very targeted content and SEO.Google definitely is not perfect but even with its faults it is 50% better than Yahoo! and 1000% better than all the lesser search engines including MSN.Funny how they publish the weakening of Googles algorithm do to money and then have Adsense on there site.
npinskiMay 10, 2006
Would you call something like the "assembly line" an original invention? Not really. After all, cars have been made for decades before it. But what did Ford do when it created this assembly line? They created something better than everyone else, and REVOLUTIONIZED the world. Until that point, cars were not thought of as something to be owned by general consumers, and only a toy for those rich enough to afford them. Today everyone has them.To bring up a similar point with google, consider two examples:1) Google Maps. This was not the first mapping service, not by far. There was yahoo maps, mapquest, etc. But both were clunky to use, not accurate, took time, and were generally not accepted by consumers. Even those who were internet-savvy wouldn't necesserily turn to these products when looking for directions - paper-based methods and map books were still predominantly used.Google maps changed everything because it's so quick and easy to use and it is now ubiquituous in the "looking-for-directions" field. Whether you have a website for your business, or sending an email to friends inviting them to a party at your house, you use google maps links EVERYWHERE.2) GMail. For the longest time, everyone thought of email as something to be used on their own personal machine using desktop software (outlook, eudora, what have you). Hotmail brought on a revolution, but even that was always thought of by people as their "secondary" or "personal" email account. In recent years, hotmail became a clogged up uncomfortable-to-use website with horrible spam filters, and other flaws.Gmail revolutionzied online email for the second time after hotmail. Not only is it more respectable than hotmail, it's capacity, simplicity, excellent filters, etc all mean that more and more people use Gmail as their primary email account. Now, with google Calendar coming to the forefront and more features on the horizon, Google is slowly making software like Outlook completely obsolete. It'll take a while but it'll get tehre.
devlindMay 10, 2006
Well unfortunately for you, using the meta information as well as the text within a website is pretty much the only way a search engine can index a site and categorize what it is about. From these keywords combined with personal searching history and potentially many many other variables that the search engine may use, Google attempts to extract the true meaning and context of your search query and use that in combination with your keywords. However if pages that you want to see have not described themselves properly to the search engine, then you aren't going to see what you want to see on your first page of results. This isn't Google's or any other search engine's fault, its the website's.Now I really have no clue about what goes on in the deepest core of the Google search algorithm but my guess is that, when the Googlebots find your site and index the content within it, they probably store the data in what would resemble an ontology of sorts, and this is how they apply the context of your search to the results and not just the keywords. We will never see the true utopia of web searching until the entire web is designed like this, using ontologies. Until that happens the best anyone can do is use the keywords you enter and their own algorithms to determine the results that you are looking for. And since the algorithms that are used are trying to categorize websites that are can be structured radically different from each other, this would be a lot like making a web app that works on a million different web browsers.I have noticed Google's results getting a bit weird in some places lately and places where I used to see quality sites are now occupied by other garbage sites...but this is something that we already know about. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has openly come out saying that web spam is a HUGE problem for them, and when the CEO of a company with potentially over a million servers storing and serving data says that, you know you've got a problem. One thing is certain though...that all these web spam sites follow a pattern, and once Google can identify that pattern then I think we will see some ground gained back from the spam artists that use and abuse the PageRank system.
q3ctf4May 10, 2006
"Funny how they publish the weakening of Googles algorithm do to money and then have Adsense on there site."That says a lot now doesn't it?
emrikolMay 10, 2006
/me has google stock. It's okay. No thanks are necessary.
dalrothMay 10, 2006
I'd like to see Google do a few things:1. Allow me to select sites (or network of sites) I always want filtered out of my search and remember those filters across browser sessions/computers (i.e. never show me about.com or amazon).2. I'd like to be able to easily include or exclude blogs from my search.3. I'd like to be able to report links I think are bad.Honestly, most Google searches can be drastically cleaned up by including the following in your search (plus a few others depending on what you are searching for):My search criteria -ebay -amazon -about.com -freeTry it!