Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by basil-rash on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @12:42PM (#18601677)

I had actually forgotten about those until just now. I use Bing for most of my searching (I fall back to Google in the semi-rare cases where Bing doesn't work), and fake answer sites don't seem to be as prevalent on Bing. Maybe those sites tailor their SEO to Google's algorithms?

Or maybe I've just grown numb to their presence.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by nottorp on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @12:44PM (#18601695)

Fake answers are another problem, I'm talking about stuff like Google dropping a word from my query because it feels there aren't enough results that include it.

Edit because I can't reply any more: As dsfyu404ed says below, it tends to drop the central term of the query, making the results 100% useless. Not that they're particularly useful even if it doesn't do that...

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by dsfyu404ed on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @01:02PM (#18601893)

> I'm talking about stuff like Google dropping a word from my query because it feels there aren't enough results that include it.

It's particularly infuriating when it drops the location word from a search query for info on law and regulation.

I don't care if broad form automotive insurance is available in some non-specific state, I care about if it's available in the state that I put in the query.

Edit: Why is this downvoted?

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by reaperducer on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @03:10PM (#18603193)

Edit: Why is this downvoted?

It's lunch hour at Google, and people there are hitting their phones and HN.

You can see a lot of interesting trends on HN by day and time of day. Watch what happens to any story critical of insert nation here after 6am in that nation.

Or notice how on Fridays (NA time), HN is pretty much a ghost town.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by godelski on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @01:38PM (#18602291)

I've observed that too. Then force the words to be there with quotes, finding that I still get plenty of resume. Which seems weird to me, because most people don't travel to the second page. I'd rather have an exact result than more pages.

But then again, it doesn't seem like a simple problem and one that has companies in either way.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by Wowfunhappy on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @03:21PM (#18603275)

I suspect this is one of those features that helps the less technically inclined majority, while hearting those who know what they're doing. I can see the average Googler including words that aren't actually relevant to their query.

As long as I can force it with quotes, I'm happy. Google has even started suggesting next to the results "include only results with the word XXX", to remind me the quotes might be needed.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by baroffoos on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @06:05PM (#18604332)

I have noticed this too. I tend to include all the key words and the problem domain in my search and get bad results on google and then other people just type a whole sentience exactly like you would say it to a human and get back good results.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by dingaling on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @02:20AM (#18606294)

Sadly DDG has recently adopted this antifeature too. A page of irrelvant results is served with a small disclaimer that "Not many results include ${DROPPED_SEARCH_WORD}"

I should investigate how to write a search plugin for Firefox that " puts" "every" "word" "in" "quotes"

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