Its also why Google Search "went to shit years ago"

Technically adept people would search using ordered keywords and phrases, which would have excellent results with Google 2006:

Dario Turkey NBA "never coming over"

But regular people agonized over this because to them a search was

What were some of the memes about Dario staying in turkey

Google put immense effort into calibrating search for regular people instead of engineers.

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helterskelter2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not an engineer, but this is how I was taught to use digital search back in my elementary school's library in the second or third grade (it replaced the card catalogue) and it's how I've searched ever since. We had an entire class period on how to keep our search keywords to the minimum so we'd get good results.

	▲	wpm 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The problem was our parents never got this course, and sadly, neither did the generations after us. "Computer" Class for me (born early 90s) was keyboarding -> how to find information online -> how to evaluate and rate itegrity of internet sources -> Microsoft Office. The kids who stopped getting that are probabaly old enough for a bachelors degree now. Today, the schools mostly just hand them an iPad and a Google Workspace sign-in and pretend everything is fine.

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HaZeust 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Christ, thank you! I’ve been saying this for years and no one I’ve spoken to, even engineers, could acknowledge the level of “chunking” that’s been engrained in them over the years for turning inquiries into keyword/phrase shorthand, and that this is NOT something most people want to do, and is the killer app of Google AI. This time around, you CAN type in an input box what you would say to a human in everyday conversation, AND expect a reasonable response. That’s invaluable to a casual user.

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Terr_ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> this is NOT something most people want to do

I've always felt that "proper" and responsible LLM use for search [0] would be two boxes: You can describe what you want in the first, and it'll propose search terms in the second, and then those get executed normally.

Yes, the "average user" [1] might not usually care about the second box... Until they need to because the query/results are wrong.

Showing them in tandem means:

1. Users are at least capable of learning through exposure.

2. Users may realize a key term can be added which the model could never have guessed.

3. Users may recognize a term in there that doesn't make sense, allowing them to detect a translation error.

4. If good search-terms leads to a bad outcome, it is possible for someone to report and diagnose it, rather than a fully black-box mystery.

_____

[0] Not just for websites, but also things like internal business software, or SQL queries.

[1] The average that might not exist. ( https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-disc... ) There are some features that everybody needs, just at different times.

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savory_pancake 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the words of Edsger Dijkstra, "Projects promoting programming in 'natural language' are intrinsically doomed to fail." I think for something as bespoke as a search engine, a DSL that accepts quotes, logical operators, and specific terms definitely allows for far greater specificity than natural language can (at least in an equivalent amount of text).

I think the two-tiered input-output approach you propose makes sense. Allowing users to inspect and mutate lower-level languages allows the user to make modifications as needed. I think it's very much in the spirit of free software.

But then again, for text-based search specifically (search engines, notes, etc.), I think there is some value in querying the LLM directly, as it is able to fuzzy search by inspecting its weights. This results in a lesser degree of specificity, which allows for more false positives, but can maybe capture similar words (i.e., synonyms / typos / tenses) or higher-level semantic concepts.

Maybe they're just two different search algorithms, and the user should be able to choose between them.

Thanks for linking the article, I found it very interesting.

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tokioyoyo 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Your described thinking pattern does not apply to 95%+ users, and might add confusion leading to retention loss (e.g. 2 text boxes? Wtf, two boxes? What do i type in the second one? Whatever i’ll switch to the usual). Every project with at least 100K non-tech users I’ve worked on, has shown that sort of thinking just doesn’t translate.

And regarding “average doesn’t exist” - that’s true. But no company does a/b testing to land on average. I’d assume a good 85%-kinda pass rate for these type of experiments.

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savory_pancake 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I think A/B testing may have value in selecting a specific path preferred by 85% of users, but it seems like alienating the remaining 15% doesn't feel great.

95% of users might not want the double-textbox, but 5% might, and some might want to use it someday.

I think, make enough of these decisions, and there's bound to be mounting friction for users with different preferences navigating your app.

Ideally, the app should offer a way for the user to intuitively configure the app to their own liking.

	▲	tokioyoyo 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		When an experiment passes, you don’t really lose that 15%. Most of the time they just get used to the other behaviour. Case in point - we’ve been whining about Google’s deterioration of search queries for ages, yet we’re still using it. Ideally, yeah maybe, but why bother with extra implementation, support, costs and etc., when people fold and use the new way anyways?

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ikr678 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not just engineers, I think it's more an age thing.

For a certain cohort (eg those currently between 35 and 45) who did any sort of grade school computer/library classes in the 90's/early2000's, 'chunking' or keyword searching was one of the main skills taught.

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xd1936 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, I'm in my mid-30s, and "keywording" and "how to use search engines" was taught in my US Midwest public school library/media center.

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zb3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Except sometimes I explicitly do not want to reveal what my search intent is / explain why I want to search for this. The Google 2006 method gave me some room to do this, but now it feels like I can't do that on my own and I need to talk to Gemini. Horrible experience.

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ozozozd 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you are a fast typer, maybe the longer query might just come out naturally.

If you are properly lazy, you must expect or at least attempt to get results for the shorter query. Especially on a phone.

	▲	hiddencost 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not about shorter vs longer. Many people who learned to search the Internet in early 2000s learned "boolean search queries" (terms connected with AND or OR). They're talking about the difference between boolean search queries and natural language search queries.