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Digging Holes in Google

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i'm-feeling-lucky dept.

Kurt LoVerde writes "Though google has become synonymous with searching, the folks over at MSN have written up an interesting article on our favorite search engine's pitfalls. Included among these are a tendency to skew results toward shopping, a lack of diversity for searches containing synonyms and its impact on research."

3 of 644 comments (clear)

  1. Points by saskwach · · Score: -1, Redundant
    Well...
    1. When I do a search for a PDA, it's because I want to go to a site that sells them. If I don't, I'll be more specific with my search terms.
    2. As for skewing synonyms, if the guy had done a search for, say, "apple trees", the first unsponsored link points to Growing Apple Trees In The Home Garden.
    3. Books: If I want to do a search for data in books, I'll use an academic search engine through my university that is specifically designed to look through publications and books. Google is about web sites and web sites are not books.

    The article concludes by calling Google "filled with bias, polemics, and a skewed sense of proportion". What the heck? It isn't an encyclopedia, it's a search engine. If you give it properly formed searches, it will give you great results.

    This article was just bunk designed to make people start looking for alternatives to a perfectly good, ingeniously designed, fast and clean engine.

    (end rant)
  2. Correlation != Causation by taped2thedesk · · Score: 2, Redundant

    In some cases this be because there are just a shitload of shopping sites out there? For example, do a search for 'credit'. You get page after page of various domains from the same companies offering credit reports. Keep in mind, search engines are nothing but algorithms. Furthermore, the pagerank system that google uses takes into account how 'helpful' users found various sites, the number of times a word appears on the site, etc.

  3. Article's big problem with Google (paraphrased) by operagost · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It doesn't read the minds of morons who expect to get relevant results by plugging single search words like "apple" and "flowers" into a search engine that indexes millions of pages.

    --

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