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Internet search queries and parameters

Orphia Nay

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Orphia Nay
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erlando said:
Crafting the proper search query is a very real and valuable skill.
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So this. This is something that needs to be taught, and keep up to date with.


Also, why the **** doesn't Bing have any search parameter tips?

You have to search the internet for other people's tips for Bing.

(Using Bing a fair bit because I use the Ecosia search non-profit, plus am protesting Google.)

And Google's seem to change fairly regularly (speaking as an old fart).



What have you learnt lately or taught about searching?
 
I try to teach Internet search simplicity and conciseness to family and friends. It isn't easy.

I see them habitually type questions into the search bar such as (token example)...

"What day does Thanksgiving fall on this year?" They even put the question mark on the end.

All that is necessary to get the answer is to type into the search bar "thanksgiving 2019".

It would seem easy to teach that sort of style, but I have found that it isn't. They will sort of grasp the idea initially and use it. But then the next time I'm with them I see that they have reverted to their old lengthy style.

Many people don't understand that many of the words they use in a search are superfluous towards getting the desired result. Sometimes unnecessary words will even cause the result to be unusable or only somewhat related. These things cause them to do another search with different words and the result can still be unusable for the same reasons.
 
One thing I detest is getting a lot of the top answers from forum-type pages that say nothing but "I had the same question!"
 
William Parcher said:
"What day does Thanksgiving fall on this year?" They even put the question mark on the end.

All that is necessary to get the answer is to type into the search bar "thanksgiving 2019".
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Actually I've found the former kind of search to be pretty effective. Unless you care about saving keystrokes, there's no real reason not to do queries like that.
 
If I get what I believe to be a scam email, or one of those fake political ones people send around, I copy/paste half the paragraph from it and search.

Showed my Dad how to do it because he was the source of some of the emails. I told him to add a minus sign to exclude certain terms from searches.

I hate doing a search (often a DIY search) and clicking alink that takes my to that - holy crap what is that site that looks like an image search result page but isn't? Not instagram but.....it's a terrible design that makes we want to shoot myself after seeing it it's so bad.

Oh well, you know what I'm talking about. Someone will remember for me.

Ah Pinterest! **** off and die, Pinterest!
 
One of the few skills I appear to have is formulating Google searches. I often quickly get a desired result after others in my family report failure. I’m not smarter than them; they just put a lot of junk into their queries.
 
alfaniner said:
One thing I detest is getting a lot of the top answers from forum-type pages that say nothing but "I had the same question!"
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Reminds me of George Carlin’s observation on the significant number of people who call in or click on internet surveys to state, “No opinion.”
 
arthwollipot said:
Actually I've found the former kind of search to be pretty effective. Unless you care about saving keystrokes, there's no real reason not to do queries like that.
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Yes! That's what I liked about Google sometimes.

When I forgot about it stalking me.

And you could put phrases in quotation marks to get more exact results, and include/exclude words.

It wasn't working for quite a while, and I found things that said they wouldn't tell more tips because of spammers gaming it, and, well, hence the thread.


mgidm86 said:
Pinterest! **** off and die, Pinterest!
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Haha, I agree completely!!!

Giordano said:
One of the few skills I appear to have is formulating Google searches. I often quickly get a desired result after others in my family report failure. I’m not smarter than them; they just put a lot of junk into their queries.
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Yep, I used to be able to find the rarest of things.

Now, either, I know too much and am looking for things that haven't been discussed, or the stuff that hasn't had its domain expire is now utter commercial crap or behind a paywall. :rolleyes: :boxedin:
 
Orphia Nay said:
Yes! That's what I liked about Google sometimes.

When I forgot about it stalking me.
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I don't think there are too many browsers out there that aren't tracking you, and that's just at the application level.

If you're not changing your DNS to use one that doesn't track you, it's just giving the same data to a different source. I completely agree that google knows entirely too much, but if you use an android phone, they're still getting the information. There are just too many different ways to be tracked in today's age.
 
arthwollipot said:
The only way to avoid being tracked is to use a VPN and Tor. And even those aren't perfect.
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I never thought of using Tor for general net use.

It's not so much the tracking, but the whole listening to conversations then selling you related things straight after.

Even with an iPhone and Siri turned off. :/
 
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Orphia Nay said:
I never thought of using Tor for general net use.

It's not so much the tracking, but the whole listening to conversations then selling you related things straight after.

Even with an iPhone and Siri turned off. :/
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Has that actually ever been proved I.e. that you are being listened to and have adverts instantly thrown at you about that?

I seriously doubt it myself as the processing required to do that live to literally millions and millions of ongoing conversations and so on would be immense as would the bandwidth that would be required. Plus we don't have that level of understanding when we actually purposefully interact with one of these PAs.
 
Darat said:
Has that actually ever been proved I.e. that you are being listened to and have adverts instantly thrown at you about that?

I seriously doubt it myself as the processing required to do that live to literally millions and millions of ongoing conversations and so on would be immense as would the bandwidth that would be required. Plus we don't have that level of understanding when we actually purposefully interact with one of these PAs.
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They'd just run it locally on the device. As long as the microphone is on they can pickup keywords. It wouldn't really take much to run locally, but you do see instances that are pretty uncanny. You run into someone at the store you haven't seen in forever and you get a suggestion to friend them on insert_social_media. I don't know that it would do it in real time, but doing data collection and uploading it a few times a day and then shooting the ads your way wouldn't be too tough.
 
Darat said:
Isn't that just the old "since I bought my Mini car I'm seeing lots more on the road"?
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It would be if you had bought the item already :D

ETA: For the record, I am not saying I'm right. I'm just saying, from a networking\bandwidth outlook, it really wouldn't take that much to do. People almost constantly have a network connection, and if the data was uploaded when the phone was connected to WiFi it would be practically unnoticeable to the end user. Sans some form of data tracker. Even then, most people don't care unless it's using data against their plan.

I've had some pretty odd occurrences when it comes to ads though, and I'm not really a conspiracy guy. With Google being able to get to your cookies, emails, text messages, etc. they might not even need anything voice related. You're probably searching it anyway. So I don't know if it's a result of being listened to, something worth looking into during my downtime.
 
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Nearly all the voice activated devices upload to the cloud to do the heavy processing, it's not the relatively simple speech recognition, that is done locally it's the "understanding" that is the computing resource heavy. That's why there is the noticable delay in response.

Interestingly in the new Nest Mini Google has built in dedicated hardware (they claim) to be able to answer thousands of the most commonly asked questions and tasks.
 
Darat said:
Has that actually ever been proved I.e. that you are being listened to and have adverts instantly thrown at you about that?

I seriously doubt it myself as the processing required to do that live to literally millions and millions of ongoing conversations and so on would be immense as would the bandwidth that would be required. Plus we don't have that level of understanding when we actually purposefully interact with one of these PAs.
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Facebook, for one, outright denied it in Congressional hearings. And they have so many sources for deriving knowledge about you that they really don't have to.

ALEX: So, like Debbie is going through the TSA in Oklahoma. She gets her perfume confiscated, and she's like, "Aw, crap. Now I've gotta buy new perfume." She searches for it on her phone.

PJ: She like- she looks at it, she's like, "Oh, it's kind of expensive, I'm not going to buy it right now."

ALEX: Right, but she goes to a page where Facebook has a, has a Pixel on it.

PJ: Facebook knows this person is now in the market to buy perfume. And-

ALEX: And it knows that-

PJ: -she's traveling.

ALEX: She's traveling-

PJ: Right. And they probably know that she’s traveling to visit her son because like he’s her son, he lives in San Francisco. She’s logging in in San Francisco, so is he.

ALEX: Right.

PJ: So why not show the son a perfume ad because he could be like, “Oh mom, isn't this the perfume you like?”

ALEX: Exactly.
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Source: Reply All Podcast, Episode #109 Is Facebook Spying on You?

I highly recommend anyone who is worried about Facebook listening in on conversations listen to this episode, or read the transcript. It won't make you feel better about Facebook's invasive ad targeting, because it's crazy, but it will settle your fears about it secretly using you're phone's microphone to do so.
 
plague311 said:
They'd just run it locally on the device. As long as the microphone is on they can pickup keywords. It wouldn't really take much to run locally, but you do see instances that are pretty uncanny. You run into someone at the store you haven't seen in forever and you get a suggestion to friend them on insert_social_media. I don't know that it would do it in real time, but doing data collection and uploading it a few times a day and then shooting the ads your way wouldn't be too tough.
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This.

Yes, a cellphone still needs to have a microphone.

And with the iPhone, there seem to be a hell of lot of places to alter settings for the microphone.

For example, you have to let the phone record your voice to call emergency. I'm fairly sure I haven't turned that off.

That would have to use conversation memory to aid in future emergency situations like if you get lost and lose battery/coverage.

I haven't found a way of deleting any past Siri data or voice recognition, besides resetting the phone, and I'd rather not have to resort to that. (<I keep wanting to delete that sentence but I do think it might be relevant.)

I do suspect phone OS developers don't know all the ins and outs possible when it comes to apps people install, on top of a phone's already very flexible permission settings.
 
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