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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

> The idea that Search is somehow worsening doesn't make any sense.

Search is worsening. We've all seen it with our own eyes. I don't care how much analytics Google is gathering, that's irrelevant.

Just take on example: try googling for the release date of an upcoming video game or movie which you know for a fact hasn't had an announced date. Then view the top 5-10 results and let me know if you consider them to be of a high quality.

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I just searched for "Elder Scrolls 6 release date" and "GTA VI release date", and the results seem decent. Web pages including words like "prediction" in the title, and the summaries in the search results mention that the predictions are based on things like earnings reports and legal filings.

I did the same search and if you consider these to be decent quality results we should just agree to disagree because we value information differently.

I'm curious what you're expecting to be returned here. How can there be "quality" results when the information you're searching for doesn't exist?

I would expect results from reputable publications and not gpt filled click farms. I expect content that is information dense instead of padded and packed with keywords. I expect results that don't have a pointlessly huge number of redundant headers and subheaders that only exist for SEO purposes. I expect a huge bias towards original sources or sites that directly link original sources. And if I'm searching for information that doesn't exist I expect it to be clear right on the results page that this is the case.

Who exactly is it you're expecting to produce a high quality information dense web page to say Elder Scrolls hasn't been released so that google can rank it higher?

Are you arguing every information void should be filled? If things are not there, there should be no results. Not spam or other inaccurate stuff that doesn't help anyone.

I don't care if there's no results. I would rather have just the words "there is no release date" than 15 different chatgpt generated click farms.

> release date of an upcoming video game or movie which you know for a fact hasn't had an announced date.

What do you get? Speculation? If so … I mean what did you expect? No one knows the answer so neither would Google.

Is it your belief that in the case of asking a question without a clear answer that the quality of the result isn't relevant? Or that all results are of equally high quality? Do you think that the results on the Google SERP are of the highest quality when you ask these questions?

Google isn’t answering your question. That’s not its job.

Its job is to find websites talking about what you entered as your query. If all people are doing is speculating … that’s all Google will return.

If straight up keyword matching was enough then Google would never have overtaken Alta Vista. Ranking useful high quality information higher is the entire point.

It’s still keyword-based. They just weight the appearance of the keyword in the documents now.

No it isn't. Literally Google's entire initial innovation was a ranking algorithm based on inbound links, weighted by the authority of the linking party. At this point I'm bowing out because you don't even know the basics of the thing you're arguing about.

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