Re:Google Memory Loss
by mathattack on Monday January 15, 2018 @10:10PM
(#16155492)
Yes. The problem seems to be compounded by Google's intention to correct spelling, and (for the long tail searches) to assume you're really just looking for whatever everyone else is searching for.
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Yes! You need to beat Google with a stick to enable searching for the furce awakens (that's not a typo) poster which Disney itself produced. Used to be that quotes around a phrase stopped this typo correcting but no longer.
BTW. this is my go-to example for the "piracy is a service problem" -- this is 100% Disney IP for the fans of two billion dollar movies and you can't buy it as a poster. https://images.moviepilot.com/image/upload/c_fill,h_470,q_au... So I went on eBay, found a custom poster printer service and got it printed and shipped for 12.48 USD: https://i.redd.it/x4mmmvayunbx.jpg I would've been glad to pay double, triple for an official version but no. You just can't buy it.
Huh? I just searched for "the furce awakens". And got:
Showing results for "the force awakens"
Search instead for "the furce awakens"
Re:Google Memory Loss
by mattowen_uk on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @01:47AM
(#16156295)
CHX is still right in what they say. The point here is that Google override peoples searches based on some random fuzzy logic, and whatever you've searched before, regardless of whether you are logged in or not.
To be fair, >90% searching for "furce" probably meant force. For the rest it's one click more.
Re:Google Memory Loss
by userbinator on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @06:31AM
(#16157421)
I can understand "firce" and "fprce" or even "f9rce" but "furce" is, on a standard QWERTY keyboard, two keys away so more unlikely to be a typo.
Do Google do spelling correction based on letter locality on the expected user keyboard? Never seen any corrections that would suggest that, often wondered why not.
There used to be a service that would, given a query, search eBay for listings that matched it or common misspellings based on nearby keys. I wonder if any of that logic has made its way into modern autocorrect explicitly or if it would be gathered implicitly through studying what users actually correct.
But this is the wrong way around. At least make it an option to offer the typo correction instead of forcing it on you. Think of how much money Amazon made with one click. Two clicks is twice the clicks. Focus on fast and relevant searches not trying to guess what I meant. It's great to have a typo correction on offer but let me decide whether I want that to be default -- I don't. I know what I am searching for.
I agree that having that option would make sense. But arguably the default should be correction, because most users are probably making typos.
Fine but I am logged in, if it were an option I could fix it once and carry on.