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."

Post a reply to this message