Topic change:

I was trying to search for a public religious figure, Paull E. Spring [sic].  I
typed into the search bar, "Rev. Paull E. Spring." Google's answer is:

>> Showing results for Rev. Paul E. Spring.
>> Search instead for Rev. Paull E. Spring

Then when I click on the thing I actually asked for, I get my literal text
showing up in the first two entries.

On another occasion, I was searching for an Asian-American U.S. citizen who has
a very Asian-sounding name.  I *never* found him on Google, even though he's a
professor at an American university.  Google basically gave me every Asian whose
name started with that J.  (I believe in that case I also used + signs).

On a third occasion, I was trying to search for creative-commons licensed music
collections at archive.org.  I thought I'd hit on a cool approach by using the
"link:http://foo.org" URL for creative commons (using a syntax that exists on
some of the archive music pages).   Result: I get basically every site with a
URL, because of the spelling permutations.


Of course it's asinine.
Q: Is it actually a sound engineering approach-- does Google expend less units
of "energy enough to boil a cup of tea" by giving people common expressions
first?
Q: Could it have come about by a engineering decision-making process that is
scientifically flawed according to Confirmation Bias:  "I instituted this change
in the algorithm, and tons of people clicked on the URL's provided, so therefore
it is the right decision."

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Topic change:
>
> I was trying to search for a public religious figure, Paull E. Spring [sic].  I
> typed into the search bar, "Rev. Paull E. Spring." Google's answer is:
>
> >> Showing results for Rev. Paul E. Spring.
> >> Search instead for Rev. Paull E. Spring
>
> Then when I click on the thing I actually asked for, I get my literal text
> showing up in the first two entries.

I get lots of links for both, none from you.

Perhaps you have a bad char encoding that is messing up searches?

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"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> "gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> > Topic change:
> >
> > I was trying to search for a public religious figure, Paull E. Spring [sic].  I
> > typed into the search bar, "Rev. Paull E. Spring." Google's answer is:
> >
> > >> Showing results for Rev. Paul E. Spring.
> > >> Search instead for Rev. Paull E. Spring
> >
> > Then when I click on the thing I actually asked for, I get my literal text
> > showing up in the first two entries.
>
> I get lots of links for both, none from you.
>
> Perhaps you have a bad char encoding that is messing up searches?

WHOA.

I *have* always detested all the extra characters that firefox (or google)
inserts into the URL.  Perhaps somewhere I have in my account an "idiot = ON"
setting.

But my Firefox search doesn't show the guy:
http://bit.ly/cMHkMN

But I get the same thing in Safari:
http://bit.ly/bn87ml

AND my problem with that Asian prof was off an Android phone.

So you get a reasonable response to that "Paull" query?  Any tips on how to fix
Google?

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gregjohn escreveu:
> So you get a reasonable response to that "Paull" query?  Any tips on how to fix
> Google?

http://i51.tinypic.com/259z53k.jpg

for this url:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Rev.+Paull+E.+Spring.

it shows both "Did you mean" and "Search for", I clicked search for. 
I'm guessing they're using javascript now to display results, so I hope 
yours is turned on.  I'm also guessing it's really Paull rather than Paul.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> gregjohn escreveu:
> > So you get a reasonable response to that "Paull" query?  Any tips on how to fix
> > Google?
>
> http://i51.tinypic.com/259z53k.jpg
>
> for this url:
> http://www.google.com/search?q=Rev.+Paull+E.+Spring.
>
> it shows both "Did you mean" and "Search for", I clicked search for.
> I'm guessing they're using javascript now to display results, so I hope
> yours is turned on.  I'm also guessing it's really Paull rather than Paul.
>

Sorry if I'm a bit dense here-- fighting a flu-- but it appears to me you're
saying you got satisfactory results only after you did the second click, on
"search for."  That's the whole point.  Such a strong bias towards popular
results is i) new IMO; ii) annoying ; iii) outright prevents me from finding
information sometimes.

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I asked for "Paull" but Google tells me about "Paul."

What I fear in all of this is Google becoming a search engine that tells you not
"what you asked for" but "what most reasonable people are looking for", which is
a stone's throw from "what my sponsors think you ought to see,"  not unlike many
of it's pre-dotcom-bust competitors.

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gregjohn escreveu:
> I asked for "Paull" but Google tells me about "Paul."
> 
> What I fear in all of this is Google becoming a search engine that tells you not
> "what you asked for" but "what most reasonable people are looking for"

AFAIK, it's been always like that.  It's how their algorithm PageRank 
works:  basically, by clicking on (supposedly) more relevant links, 
people themselves do promote pages up in their indexes.

>, which is
> a stone's throw from "what my sponsors think you ought to see,"  not unlike many
> of it's pre-dotcom-bust competitors.

the difference is that sponsor links are clearly delineated as such and 
they are not as intrusive as in, say, Yahoo!.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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On 9/14/2010 4:14 AM, gregjohn wrote:
> I asked for "Paull" but Google tells me about "Paul."

I actually like this behavior, since most of the time I made a typo.  In 
any case, if you search for "paull" (quotes included) it'll do what you 
want.

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