[DharmaPolice]

Unfortunately the fuzzy search thing is in a kind of feedback loop in terms of user expectation. Because of Google users are used to typing the wrong thing and getting the right answer. If I search for "how old is Roger Redford" Google tells me that Robert Redford was born in 1936 (it doesn't even display the "Did you mean...?" correction). And to be fair, in 99% of cases the person probably did mean Robert Redford.

But anyway, this is the behaviour I think people are being trained to expect from searches. I sometimes have to show new users our business systems (which manage residential property data) and it's seen as a drag that you have to have some level of precision when searching for anything.

It's like a spellchecker. As they've got better over time you can be less and less accurate with words you're not quite sure on and they still find the word you meant.

[WalterBright]

> the word you want

I was watching a new movie yesterday (The Lost City) with closed captioning on. The character said "synonym". The cc text said "cinnamon".

I see a lot of homonyms in the cc, but that one was the funniest.

[sokoloff]

In a presentation yesterday, I noticed “Jews” appear in the live closed caption stream of my talk.

It threw me off for a few seconds and I went back to the recording to figure out it took the word “choose” completely out of grammatical context to form a new clause of just “Jews”, as if I’d been speaking in complete sentences, then suddenly just decided to interject a random word between two half-sentences.

[WalterBright]

"There's a bathroom on the right"

"Wrapped up like a douche"

"When the rain washes you'll clean your nose"

The entertainment never ends!

[thunderbong]

Google is 24 years old. They track everything from email to searches to website behaviour across innumerable sites.

If they still need a feedback loop on their search results page, maybe they should hire some other guys to tweak their search engine!

[nine_k]

They do, partly because SEO spam never sleeps and ever evolves.

[ASalazarMX]

Seems like the search market is ready for Google Search Pro, where you can use advanced operators and syntax to get exactly what you asked. Just $9.99 monthly, or buy Google One and get it free!

[car_analogy]

And just like a spellchecker, a suggestion of what it thinks you meant is welcome, but an automatic change is extremely not.

[mecha_ghidorah]

The loss of "Did you mean..." is painful. I think that little button effectively meaning "I MEANT WHAT I SAID" is great for the general use case of typos and foggy memory, and not having it is such a loss of usability