In response to a new member query about Loewe TV’s I went to the Choice web site and did a search on ‘Loewe’. The numbers of hits were remarkable considering there is nothing on Choice about Loewe TVs.
The search engine, as is increasingly common, understands Loewe is a TV brand, so returns the Choice TV tests, with nary a mention of Loewe brand.
Somebody is probably as sure such broad search returns are helpful as some of us find it is irritating. How nice it would be if the first response to a search where there are not actual hits were of the form:
‘Your search for Loewe did not result in any hits. Do you want to search for TV’s’?
As it operates one gets the Smart TV review in the returns and in one or another way has to look for Loewe on the page, although not to be found - unless I and my browser page search missed it.
It is possibly part of the chosen search product rather than something Choice conjured up. Am I the only one who finds it tiring?
I find the implementation of searches very annoying. Far too many are set up to return the maximum number of hits rather than the maximum number of relevant hits. For example:
too many do not give the option of how to logically combine multiple criteria, they assume you intend a logical OR between terms where in many cases I mean AND. The result is to expand the number of hits greatly to any page that includes either “hot” OR “bread” rather than reduce it to those having both “hot” AND “bread”.
too often phrases are not dealt with correctly, so “hot bread” returns the same as “hot” “bread”, which gives many spurious results.
I realise not everybody wants to delve into all the ways the return from logical operators and search terms can be interpreted but even in those engines that have a quick and an advanced search page the advanced does a poor job too often by making assumptions about what you want.
Data loses any value it may have if it cannot be accessed. Returning too many irrelevant results hides facts just as well as failing to return those that are relevant.
I have experience with building interfaces to large databases and in my experience most people can only deal effectively with a list to choose from that numbers dozens. That number goes up if the list is sorted in a way that the user understands and is familiar with but that is much easier to arrange when the list has an obvious identifier that the user will know.
Consequently search engines tend to sort by relevance as there is probably no identifier that is familiar to the user and/or it is embedded in a larger text body. The problem is that their idea of relevance is too often not mine and I have no way to tweak the criteria effectively.
Then there is the problem that search engines are often influenced by popularity that can be (and is) manipulated constantly for commercial gain. Too often the builders of the search feature are directly involved in manipulating what you see, the pay off is enough that they will ignore your frustration.
It operates in a lot of respects no differently to many search engines, where their algorisms use associated words as part of the search result. Usually where is an option during searching to search for the term only, or using " " as part of the search term to only find hits with the specific wording.
I have seen cases where “” has no effect at all, either in specifying that the string is essential or for forming phrases. I was not talking about the Choice web site.
I must say that the search facility on the Choice site is so limited in filtering options and ability to use logical operators like and, or, not, to be almost useless.
From what I can tell, the Choice online site does not use a search engine facility at all.
It seems to have a very basic keyword search through database indexes.
In contrast, the Choice Community site, which uses Discourse software, does have a search engine with a variety of filters that can be selected.
Firstly, the Google algorithm was designed, right from its beginning, to provide all the search results that an enquirer might need. That would include, in the case of TV sets, reviews of any named brand. Which would mean, almost of necessity, mention of Choice. The only question would be on what page: on Google’s first page, or last, 750,000 or more entries later.
By way of example, I did a Google search for “buy Bxglgo TVs review”, and Choice came up as the second entry - even though I feel reasonably certain that Choice has never reviewed Bxglgo TVs.
The " " method, and use of logical operators such as AND and OR are all search engine specific: that is, they depend on the individual search engine providing the facility. Most search engenes, except those run using Google’s software, don’t provide these options.
The post is not about a google search, it is about a search using the search tool on the Choice web site, not via anything google or eternal - save for unknown underpinings Choice might use internally.
They all have default logic about how multi-term searches work, there is no way resolve arguments like (hot bread) if they don’t. Some explicitly allow the user to specify the treatment and with others you take the default.
There are many other processes going on behind the scenes that have not been mentioned yet. For example many do stemming, that is they reduce terms to their stem word and match on that to the words in the corpus similarly treated. So (pollute, pollution, polluting etc) are all treated the same. This kind of thing may be useful in some cases but I have never seen an engine that allows you to turn it off. Consequently if you are looking for a specific string (pollutes) you are at the designers’ mercy if you are going to get the other word forms too. A nice one is if you type a search in the form of a question the engine will attempt to answer it and get it right quite often.
I realise that some of the clever features can be useful and many users are not in the business of forming their searches very precisely but preventing those who want to do that from doing so gets to be a real pain.
I too oft get frustrated at the plentitude of returns that I need to wade through to find what I am actually after.
Yesterday I did a search on the Choice website for Stick and cordless vacuum reviews without “” marks. It turned out that I had the wording correct, and had 100 results returned, but, the review I was looking for which is named Stick and cordless vacuum reviews came up second. I thought that the closest possible match would have appeared in first place. Using quotes around the search term does bring it up into first place.
I would think that only a small percentage of members would know or use Boolean operators or quote marks to do searches, so most searchers could be inundated with a lot of returns, but one that they want may not be readily visible.
Perhaps there needs to be a little help icon with the search icon that lays out Boolean operators, quote marks etc.?
This I understood. The fact that Choice’s search box accepts " " leads me to assume (purely on the basis of probabilities) that Choice’s website is using Google’s search engine (or, to rephrase, that Choice’s search box is powered by Google software). If you can assure me that I am wrong, and that Choice is using, for example, home-grown software, then I will cheerfully withdraw my remarks.
IF I am correct that Choice is using Google software, then the ‘plentitude or returns’ is by design, to ensure that everybody has a chance of getting a useful answer to their question. If your desired answer is too low in the page for your comfort, and if indeed the underying software is by Google, then the solution is to ask better questions. In my experience, most users desperately need help in the phrasing of their questions, so yes, Meltam, I think your suggestion that the Choice search box might offer a search-help link is fantastic. I’ll second your suggestion.
Stemming is easily refined with the Google search engine.
You want ‘pollute’ and not ‘pollution’ then minus the results you don’t want.
IE search pollute -pollution -polluter
That search in quotes would result in no results found. Without quotes it would return a list and tell you Bxglgo was not found, but a list based on the other words.
Not sure what point you are trying to make.
A valid point has been made that using a search for “Loewe TV” or “Loewe” only returns hits having the respective text. Yet a search for Loewe returns pages without as well as with Loewe being referenced. It is reminiscent of the increasing number of web sites that echo back what you are search for even though they don’t have it under the old sales mantra of sell what you have not what the customer came in for.
Hence a search for Loewe returns the articles on smart TV’s with no Loewe to be found, as well as some hits on the Community. How many Choice members are conversant with advanced searches, or basic ones requiring anything beyond the product or category they seek? Maybe more than I thought? Or only as many as I thought?
What do you do when the engine still provides a multitude of false positives no matter what you do?
Why do you think that the only engine that utilises quotes is Google? You may be right or wrong but unless you have some reason to know what the other engines do in this respect it doesn’t follow.
If everybody gets many returns that they do not want how is that useful?
Being presumptuous @BrendanMays, could Choice consider a parser for the Choice site search tool that automatically adds the quote marks when not present for a search?
And for returns with no hits a ‘did you mean’ suggestion? Or an option to then search broadly (eg sans quotes)?
Would there be down sides to doing so?
Would it be justifiably more consumer friendly, especially for those not search savvy. Maybe?
