[shermantanktop]

Search engines are an engineering problem. Tuning ranking and relevance to be “good” on a mass-market content site is an unholy black art.

The expectation is that results will accomplish numerous mutually contradictory goals, and be deeply personally relevant to a user who has used the search bar twice ever.

[ForHackernews]

What? Where do you come up with this?

Expecting to see the original video by the creator when you search for the exact title of that video, verbatim, is not a self-nullifying mysterious goal.

Google fails at this (deliberately, I can only assume): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3dSkkEr-wk

[shermantanktop]

Sure, but that’s a subset of what a search bar does. For YouTube, they are very likely getting queries like “funny cat,” “Taylor swift,” “prank,” etc. Those are not factual spearfishing queries, and ranking the results is a pitched battle between the people who want to drive general engagement, the people who want to promote specific categories, the people who are targeting demographic cohorts and want to push those results, the monetization people, etc etc.