Comments on: UI fun: Better queries

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:32:27 +0000

I think you do a killer job - considering you take the garbled pile of rubbish most people type in the search box and still manage to figure out what they really mean just about every time is an incredible feat. Mark

By: Arnab

Arnab — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:52:25 +0000

At this url:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334&topic=8523

This is what is written:

“We only show Sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or we don’t think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.”

How can one determine whether the structure of the site is good enough for the Google to consider it worth as a good sitelink.

By: lazer epilasyon

lazer epilasyon — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 16:26:48 +0000

a very good idea and will be useful

By: WebMaster ToolBox

WebMaster ToolBox — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 19:12:43 +0000

This is why I like Google search. They always try new things to give the searcher the best results.

By: Limestone

Limestone — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:23:05 +0000

How come a search for ‘endangered species Africa’ without quotes produces an offer of results for ‘cookie recipes’?

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 03:52:35 +0000

Sorry that post is in the wrong spot

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 03:51:53 +0000

Another search which I think shows that google doesn’t tamper with the ranks is “free email” no quotes on google it shows yahoo in number1 position, while gmail is around 23 (which BTW was around 9 before Jagger started) also I notice google pay themselves for ads for that search as well. On yahoo the same search shows Yahoo on number 1 and gmail is around 5?

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 18:10:51 +0000

Adam, Comcast isn’t getting special treatment–that’s what the algorithms suggest is the best search for people doing the search [on demand]. And money isn’t involved. You’re welcome to believe that “the only possible reason is money,” but you’d be incorrect. And cynical.

Here’s another example: [abc survivor] returns the suggestion [cbs survivor]. (The program Survivior runs on CBS, not ABC.) Did CBS pay us to suggest that search? Of course not. We suggest it because it’s probably more likely to be what the user wanted. But I appreciate your point that the UI could be different and that could make for a better experience. They’ve been playing with different UI’s for quite a while.

Guy, I wanted to provide the background/context so that people would understand, but you make a fair observation. Just to say it clearly, these are not ads interspersed in our search results (they’re alternate searches which we think are useful) and no money is involved.

By: Adam

Adam — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 16:15:28 +0000

I can see the logic in offering people corrections to help find more relevant results. Changing to be or not to be into “to be or not to be” seems a valid suggestion. But how is changing ‘on demand’ into ‘Comcast on demand’ a relevant change. Why is it not IBM on demand servers?

Why do Comcast get special treatment, surely the only possible reason is money. Even if it isn’t a paid advertisement, it sure as hell looks like it and people will think that it is.

Leaving the reasoning aside, personally, i hate the new UI anyway. Adding a block or extra results into the middle of the page makes it hard to follow and is very distracting. It stops the eye scanning as quickly and if the user meant to search for the query they entered you’ve just placed a whole load of utterly irrelevant results in front of them!

By: Claudiu

Claudiu — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 18:45:09 +0000

Google does not necessarily show additional results for your query with quotes. For instance if you search for harry potter book it will display results for harry potter book 6 in the same manner. I've blogged about this: google's new toys Also, does anyone know why that strange ad for aol appears when you search for book? Do aol use some sort of automatic keyword bidding system?