As a funny challenge I like to come up with simplified, stupid-sounding, 3-word search queries for complex questions, and more often than not it’s good enough to get me the information I’m looking for.
Google and all the other major search engines have built in functionality to perform natural language processing on the user’s query and the text in its index to perform a search more precisely aligned with the user’s desired results, or to recommend related searches.
If the functionality is there, why wouldn’t we use it?
I just tested. “Angelina jolie heat” gives me tons of shit results, I have to scroll all the way down and then click on “show more results” in order to get the filmography.
“Is angelina jolie in heat” gives me this bluesky post as the first answer and the wikipedia and IMDb filmographies as 2nd and 3rd answer.
Have people just completely forgot how search engines work? If you search for two things and get shit results, it means those two things don’t appear together.
both queries give me poor results and searching “heat cast” reveals that she is not actually in the movie, so that’s probably why you can’t find anything useful
Search engine algorithms are way better than in the 90s and early 2000s when it was naive keyword search completely unweighted by word order in the search string.
So the tricks we learned of doing the bare minimum for the most precise search behavior no longer apply the same way. Now a search for two words will add weight to results that have the two words as a phrase, and some weight for the two words close together in the same sentence, but still look for each individual word as a result, too.
More importantly, when a single word has multiple meanings, the search engines all use the rest of the search as an indicator of which meaning the searcher means. “Heat” is a really broad word with lots of meanings, and the rest of the search can help inform the algorithm of what the user intends.
Because that’s the normal way in which humans communicate.
But for Google more specifically, that sort of keyword prompts is how you searched stuff in the '00s… Nowadays the search prompt actually understands natural language, and even has features like “people also ask” that are related to this.
All in all, do whatever works for you, it’s just that asking questions isn’t bad.
Google is not a human so why would you communicate with it as if it were a human? unlike chatgpt it’s not designed to answer questions, it’s designed to search for words on webpages
Because we’re human, and that’s a human-made tool. It’s made to fit us and our needs, not the other way around. And in case you’ve missed the last decade, it actually does it rather well.
We spend most of our time communicating with humans so we’re generally better at that than communicating with algorithms and so it feels more comfortable.
Most people don’t want to learn to communicate with a search engine in its own language. Learning is hard.
Surely you see how using a search engine is a separate skill from just writing words?
Point is, people don’t want to learn. Natural language searches in the form of questions are just easier for people, because they already know how to ask questions.
Why do people Google questions anyway? Just search “heat cast” or “heat Angelina Jolie”. It’s quicker to type and you get more accurate results.
“How to to describe a character in my story hiding a body after they committed a murder?”
⬇️
“killed someone, how to hide body?”
see? it’s easy
Why use many word when few work
As a funny challenge I like to come up with simplified, stupid-sounding, 3-word search queries for complex questions, and more often than not it’s good enough to get me the information I’m looking for.
Because it gives better responses.
Google and all the other major search engines have built in functionality to perform natural language processing on the user’s query and the text in its index to perform a search more precisely aligned with the user’s desired results, or to recommend related searches.
If the functionality is there, why wouldn’t we use it?
that is true but the results will be the same at best, not better
It works. It will also find others who posted that question.
I just tested. “Angelina jolie heat” gives me tons of shit results, I have to scroll all the way down and then click on “show more results” in order to get the filmography.
“Is angelina jolie in heat” gives me this bluesky post as the first answer and the wikipedia and IMDb filmographies as 2nd and 3rd answer.
So, I dunno, seems like you’re wrong.
Have people just completely forgot how search engines work? If you search for two things and get shit results, it means those two things don’t appear together.
both queries give me poor results and searching “heat cast” reveals that she is not actually in the movie, so that’s probably why you can’t find anything useful
That’s why you just add “movie” to the search.
Or do IMDb heat or IMDb jolie or something
Search engine algorithms are way better than in the 90s and early 2000s when it was naive keyword search completely unweighted by word order in the search string.
So the tricks we learned of doing the bare minimum for the most precise search behavior no longer apply the same way. Now a search for two words will add weight to results that have the two words as a phrase, and some weight for the two words close together in the same sentence, but still look for each individual word as a result, too.
More importantly, when a single word has multiple meanings, the search engines all use the rest of the search as an indicator of which meaning the searcher means. “Heat” is a really broad word with lots of meanings, and the rest of the search can help inform the algorithm of what the user intends.
You won’t get funny answers if you do it correctly.
Because that’s the normal way in which humans communicate.
But for Google more specifically, that sort of keyword prompts is how you searched stuff in the '00s… Nowadays the search prompt actually understands natural language, and even has features like “people also ask” that are related to this.
All in all, do whatever works for you, it’s just that asking questions isn’t bad.
Google is not a human so why would you communicate with it as if it were a human? unlike chatgpt it’s not designed to answer questions, it’s designed to search for words on webpages
Because we’re human, and that’s a human-made tool. It’s made to fit us and our needs, not the other way around. And in case you’ve missed the last decade, it actually does it rather well.
Except Google has been optimizing for natural language questions for the last decade or so. Try it sometime, it’s really wild
typing keywords instead of full sentences is still quicker so nah
Tell me you’re too young to have used “Ask Jeeves” without telling me
We spend most of our time communicating with humans so we’re generally better at that than communicating with algorithms and so it feels more comfortable.
Most people don’t want to learn to communicate with a search engine in its own language. Learning is hard.
what’s there to learn about using search terms
Do you think you were born knowing what search terms are?
They’re literally just words? All you need is the ability to speak a language
You weren’t born with the knowledge of written language either.
Surely you see how using a search engine is a separate skill from just writing words?
Point is, people don’t want to learn. Natural language searches in the form of questions are just easier for people, because they already know how to ask questions.
Do you really need to learn to realise the words “is” and “in” aren’t that important and that “Angelina Jolie heat” is good enough for a search query?