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Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, how does google judge search result quality? It seems as though search is trending toward the idea that more results are better, when usually the opposite is true.

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Here's an official post on the subject: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/search-evaluation-at-...

A bit speculative: this is more related to Ad revenue. A wider spectrum of search results means more Ad variety and the ability to serve more advertisers per search query.

I'm annoyed by Google's search quality by the day. I'm starting to use DuckDuckGo more (unless there are other alternatives).

I know it's tempting but please don't speculate like that, it raises my blood pressure. :)

Google keeps ranking changes completely siloed from the ad side of the company, and the decision makers about ranking changes don't see statistics about how it might effect ads. We don't even have a way of collecting that data. (At least as far as I've ever seen.)

I couldn't resist the speculation temptation :)

Correct me if I'm wrong; When I'm searching for (unquoted) "Canadian equivalent to SOPA Bill". I'm getting results about Soap, Telenovela, Spas, Dishwasher Soap, TV shows (and 1 related hit). The result, as you mentioned, could be ranked independent of Ads, but the Ad spectrum is wider (Soaps, Spas, Soap operas, TV shows, etc...) [I'm not getting any in this particular case].

If it's restrictive search (quoting each word - sigh!), the search result quality is slightly better (first 3 hits), but the potential of Ads is also low.

I know you put the user first - but wouldn't you speculate in my case?

I'm not sure that logic works. You're assuming that the Ads are matched to the query in the same way that results are matched to the query - that a more restrictive query necessarily translates into fewer ad matches.

There's another possibility which is that the ads are the query and the search query is in fact their match result. In that case, adding or removing quotes within the search query might not have any impact on the ads being shown.

Don't know which way it works, but it seems to me the latter would be better for showing ads without having any negative impact on search results.

Ads has a very sophisticated system of matching ad topics against queries. That's how they make the big money. :) I work in search though, so I don't really know anything about how it works except at an extremely high level. I'd be really surprised if that sort of effect actually happened though.

Moultano: I 100% believe google keeps ranking changes siloed from the ad side, but Google 100% favors its own properties within its search results so you can't be surprised that someone thinks this way? Here are some examples for you that need major changes in my opinion.

www.google.com/#hl=en&q=san+francisco+restaurant+reviews www.google.com/#hl=en&q=hollywood+cauldron

-when i previously used google for retail reviews I would just bypass all of your results to get to yelp. sometimes trip advisor.

-look at those youtube video results for the 2nd query. So off the mark, but you guys keep them in there because it is good for google. it doesn't help your users and makes you look bad. I don't know what you guys are thinking.

I use Bing for 95% of my searches now. For tech searches I still think you guys are better, but for everything else I use Bing.

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