Personalized Search: Where is it?
For all of the innovation hubbub involving search technologies back in the early 2000s, one thing that has still not materialized is personalized search. What is personalized search? Let’s explore.
Generalized Searching
Today, when you go to Google or Bing and you type in search keywords, you’re likely to get the same search results that everyone else sees when typing in those same keywords. But, this is approach today is asinine, antiquated and stupid. While it may have been okay back in the early 2000s when search was new and the database was smaller, with the larger amount of listings, personalized search is long overdue.
When Google introduced Gmail, I thought they might be onto something when they were discussing personalized ads in Gmail. Unfortunately, Gmail is pretty much where all of that innovation ended. Nothing different materialized in Google’s main search product. And worse, it’s now 2014 and we still don’t have anything different.
Personalized Search
Since nearly every search engine requires a login and password, it’s no big leap to offer ways of storing search preferences right into each user’s profile. As you search for things, the system will learn of your likes, preferences and click habits. Even better, add thumbs up and thumbs down on listings to move them up and down in your own personal search rankings. If I don’t ever plan to use Reddit, then I can lower its search rankings in my preferences. If I heavily use Twitter, I raise search rankings involving Twitter when they are ranked lower.
But, my preferences are my own. With the sites I like and the sites I dislike, I should be able to tailor my search results to fit my needs. If I decide to start using Reddit later, I can re-rank these listings higher again. These are all my choices and affect my own personalized search results.
As a side effect of personalized results, it also forces everyone to sign into Google or Bing to gain the benefits of personalized search. That’s definitely a benefit to these search engines.
Why personalized search?
Generalized searching, unfortunately, yields results based on someone else’s likes, dislikes, payola or other criteria. I want to tailor my own results to fit my search needs. So, if I’m searching for a specific product and I use Amazon frequently, Amazon’s listings will always be the first to show at the top. Why show me Newegg or J&R Music listings if I have no intention of going there to buy? It’s a waste of the search engine time and mine.
It’s quite clear that personalized search’s time has come and it’s something Google needs to embrace. That is, rather than the next ‘WheatToast’ version of Android (or whatever clever food name they happen to use). Google has clearly been ignoring search improvements and the lack of innovation in this area clearly shows how out of touch both Google and Bing are.
As the size of search databases grow, individuals need better innovative tools to tame and distill the millions of listings into smaller more personal and useful listings. Personalized search must become the next innovation in search.
What will this break?
Search Engine Optimization. I know I know, I can hear a lot of SEO advocates groaning about how bad this will be for SEO. Note that SEO would only be impacted by each user who tweaks personal search rankings. For users who don’t do this, normal SEO rules apply. Though, I don’t personally care about how high some company is ranked in my personal search list. What I care about is the quality of the listings. In fact, in a lot of cases, SEO won’t even be affected in my own results. If I have made no preferences involving some keywords, the generalized rules still apply. So, if none of my sites that I ranked higher are in the listing, the generalized results will be shown to me and standard SEO won’t be impacted. It’s only after the first generalized results list that I can tweak the listings to my own preference.
After that, SEO may be impacted by my own personal preferences. But hey, that’s my choice. That’s the point to personalized search results. If I value one company over another, that’s my preference. I have the right to make that preference. That some third party wants their listing at the top of my search results is not my problem. You can use a paid listing for that. That’s the point in paying for a listing. The organic results are my own and I should be able to rearrange, tailor and shuffle them to my own personal likes. There is no other way to tame the mounds of links that get thrown at users during generalized search… results that are only to grow larger and larger.
So, to those people relying on SEO, I say, “too bad”. Learn to pay for listings if you want to be at the top of my personalized search results or, alternatively, give me a reason to rank you higher. That is, whenever we finally get personalized search.
Why Google’s search engine secretly sucks
While Google touts its speed in returning results, and indeed the speed is impressive, it’s not the speed that matters. What matters is quality of the results and this is why Google’s search secretly sucks. Let’s explore.
Google circa 1998
When Google first began in the late 90s, it fumbled to make a significant impact in search. It couldn’t quite figure out how to make searching that much better than what was already in place. From those early days until about 2005 and through many man hours of work, Google’s speed and results have improved. But, those improvements pretty much abruptly ended approximately 2005-2007. You know, right around the time that Android was a twinkle in someone’s eye. Since then, all we have pretty much seen is stagnation in search technology. Search hasn’t improved in recent years, and even Google acknowledges this because instead of spending time improving search, now Google spends its copious free time creating Android, Gmail, Google Apps, Google Chrome, ChromeOS, Chrome tablets, Google Play, Google Docs, Google Maps, YouTube and the list goes on. These are diversionary tactics to keep you from seeing just how bad Google search quality really is.
Searching Google Today
While Google’s search technology is still the fastest available and is still better than most other engines, it’s really become stagnant. So stagnant, in fact, that the quality of the search results really matter very little to Google. For example, I would say that at least 1-2 links out of every search I have performed in the last year is dead. Basically, it displays results for sites that are either down, sites that lead to placeholder pages or sites that lead to 404 or other unusable content.
I mean, what’s the point in that? I don’t want to look back in time at links that may have had revelance in 1998 or even 2003, I want to find links that are relevant to me today. It’s clear that while Google says they are doing quality optimizations, what they claim and what’s actually coming up in the search results is entirely different. Something about this situation isn’t working.
Dead Links
Really? I mean, come on Google. What’s the point in placing a completely dead link in the top 3 search results? What purpose does that really serve? What this says is that Google has so much cruft and garbage inside their database that’s now becoming dominant during search results. If that’s where we are today, it’s only going to get progressively worse, not better. Note, I’m finding it’s not just one link that’s bad, but several on the same set of results.
This issue is completely preventable. But, it’s going to take automation to fix this. Google needs to scour its indexed links and validate whether or not a site is actually providing the data it’s supposed to be providing. Instead, it appears Google found a page there some years ago, indexed it and that’s the way it has stayed. In reality, this cruft needs to be regularly cleaned out. If search results had index dates stamped near the results stating when the information was originally indexed, I could simply avoid clicking a link that was last indexed 5 years ago. In fact, with the right UI, I could even request it to include only results that have been indexed in the last 12 months, perhaps even in the last 3 months. Maybe this is there in the ‘advanced search area’? It’s certainly not there in the basic search results.
Fresh Content
By knowing when an indexed link was created in Google and by allowing exclusion of old links, I can then tailor my search results to the most recent and freshest content. Granted, Google should automatically be doing this on my behalf, but they aren’t. Instead, it’s just all manner of random old garbage that gets thrown up in search results… and this is exactly the reason Google’s search secretly sucks.
Can it be fixed? Yes. Will Google ever really fix this? Probably not. It’s not really worth their time at this point. They’re too interested in screwing over SEO, invading privacy in Android and doing other projects unrelated to search. All of those projects are far more attractive and cool to ever consider spending time doing ugly old janitorial work to clean up the mess they created in the first place. No one likes having to clean up a mess. Cleanup work never involves using cool new technologies, but yet it still has to get done. Unfortunately, this is the very real, very ugly secret why Google’s search sucks. It’s also the secret that Google doesn’t want you to know.
Google Android: How to fix Speech to Text “Couldn’t Connect” error
[UPDATE: 2019-06-25]: Google seems to have retired its legacy speech-to-text (S2T) services for older Android versions including Gingerbread (2.4) and below. If you have Gingerbread and S2T is no longer functioning for you, this is likely the cause. This service retirement likely impacts some newer Android versions, which also rely on this older service. Because Google has retired the service, it will no longer function ever. If you need this feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a device that can run a newer version of Android which supports the “Ok, Google” assistant. It seems that Google is moving forward by replacing this older S2T functionality with its newer “Ok, Google” voice assistant. If you have a Samsung, you may be able to use Bixby. This is Samsung’s own voice assistant. On with the article…
While this isn’t an overly common problem that I’ve found with Android, it is a problem that I have run into that has entirely baffled me.. until now. Note, I am running Android 6.0.1 on my Samsung S5. Even on my S5, the keyboard microphone button links to and uses the “Ok, Google” engine, not the legacy service. Note that this article was written in 2012. Some of the below, particularly as it pertains to downloading keyboard packages likely won’t help older devices. However, the portion discussing why this feature doesn’t work (i.e., Internet) is still valid. If you have an older device, you may find this functionality no longer works even if you DO have Internet available. This is because Google seems to have retired its legacy Android S2T service as of spring 2019.
To use the speech to text functionality (specifically voice search or voice keyboard input), you are required to download a package onto Android initially. After downloading, I thought that I would be able to use this functionality all of the time. Let’s explore why this isn’t true.
Text to Speech Input Troubles
On the Android Keyboard (that is, the non-Swype keyboard input), there is a small microphone symbol. Why this isn’t on the Swype keyboard is anyone’s guess? If you click the little microphone, the microphone feature activates and allows you to speak your text. The phone is then supposed to convert your speech into text. This is particularly handy while driving. Unfortunately, most of the time I always seemed to see the error ‘Couldn’t Connect’ when attempting using this functionality. After all, I had downloaded the necessary packages. At first I thought it had something to do with the microphone. So, I plugged in different headsets and different bluetooth devices, but it still only randomly works. Sometimes it works perfectly and other times not. I also tried restarting my phone thinking there was some kind of service that was not working properly. No luck with any of this. For a while, I had given up on even using it. However, I finally decided to get to the bottom of this issue.
This would seem to be a very handy feature while in the car. And, it is, when it works. In my car, however, most of the time it doesn’t work. I couldn’t figure this one out at all. I kept thinking how lame it is that the one feature you absolutely need while driving is Speech to Text. Yet, it is the single feature that is the most unreliable. However, today I have finally realized why this functionality only intermittently works. It requires the Internet to function.
The Internet?
Why would this service need the internet? Apparently, whatever data was downloaded only enables the feature, but it doesn’t actually do the speech to text conversion in the phone. Apparently, the audio input is sent off to one of Google’s servers on the Internet (can you say, “Privacy Issue”) to be processed and the text sent back to the phone after conversion. The phone doesn’t actually do the conversion.
My Rant
While I understand the audio processing needed to decode an audio file may not be capable within the phone (although, Siri seems to do a great job offline in the iPhone), the phone should at least have some offline capabilities. However, the error message here is just absolutely stupid. It doesn’t explain anything. If the Internet is not available and this service requires it, the phone should pop up a message that either explains that no Internet is available or it should simply remove that functionality from the keyboard (grey it out) until the Internet is available. Why try to allow use of this functionality when the Internet is not available? This is both a confusing and stupid design. Google, you need to fix this design fast.
So, you’re probably asking why it periodically worked in my car? First, my phone is not Internet enabled. Second, I refuse to pay $80 a month for a 3G data plan that’s half the speed of my cable service and offers half or less the amount of data at twice the price. Instead, I pay for an ‘unlimited’ MiFi device that I don’t always turn on in my car. Sometimes it’s on, sometimes it isn’t. That explains why this functionality sometimes works and sometimes not.
I use the MiFi specifically because it works with all of my devices and is not locked to only one device. It allows for more data throughput, due to the plan rate. It is also a non-contract prepaid service, so I don’t have to worry about being stuck in a hugely long contract. If something better comes along, I just stop payment and walk away with no penalties. Specifically, I use Virgin Mobile’s MiFi that is actually using the Sprint 3G Network. I digress.
How To Fix
If you’ve been searching all over the Internet trying to figure out why this functionality only sparsely works and how to fix it, this feature requires the Internet. If your phone is not 24/7 Internet capable and you use WiFi for connectivity in select places, like myself, you will run into this problem when trying to use ‘Speech to Text’ from the Android keyboard while there is no Internet connectivity. To fix this issue, you either need to subscribe to a phone dataplan so you have ‘Always On’ Internet service or carry a MiFi device around with you and turn it on when you want to use Speech to Text. A hassle yes, but complain to Google as they are the ones that designed it to require the use of a Google server to decode the audio.
So, there you have it. Problem solved, mostly. At least, it’s solved for Android 2.2. If your have a later version of Android, your mileage may vary.
[UPDATE: 2012-05-04]
My bad. It appears that Siri does, in fact, require the Internet for Speech to Text conversion just like Android. This also goes for Alexa, Bixby, Cortana and even “Ok, Google”. So, I guess this article applies to the iPhone and all other voice assistant devices as well.
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