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Tired of adding 'reddit' to your web search? Google says this feature will help
- Google has acknowledged efforts to show useful search results without having to add “Reddit” to a query.
- The company released the Perspectives feature for search this week to aid in this quest.
It turns out that many people append “Reddit” to the end of their search queries. In fact, a February 2022 Android Authority poll found that almost 70% of surveyed readers did so. The tactic suggests Google isn’t showing the content people want to see.
CNBC reports that Google held an all-hands meeting earlier this month where the subject was broached. Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice-president of search, told employees that Google was working to display useful results without users having to append “Reddit” to their queries. He also acknowledged user discontentment around the search experience.
“Many of you may wonder how we have a search team that’s iterating and building all this new stuff and yet somehow, users are still not quite happy,” Raghavan added. “We need to make users happy.”
However, even the existing tactic of adding “Reddit” to search queries isn’t as effective today owing to an ongoing but waning blackout on the platform. And this fact wasn’t lost on at least one Googler. An employee asked whether the search engine could more easily find “authentic discussion” as the Reddit blackout was making it tougher to conduct these queries.
Google’s solution to Reddit queries
HJ Kim, Google’s vice president of engineering in search, pointed to the Perspectives feature, which was announced at Google I/O last month and made available to US consumers yesterday. The option is currently available in the Google app and on the mobile web.
Perspectives in Google Search lets you more easily find images, videos, and posts from social media platforms and prominent forums. Of course, Perspectives might not work properly owing to the Reddit blackout, but it includes results from TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Quora, and more.
Have you noticed lower quality search results during the Reddit blackout?
Kim reiterated that there was an effort to show this content, but acknowledged that there was still room for improvement.
“Over the last couple of years, search overall has developed these large, cross-functional teams to go after this kind of content [Reddit and other forum content – ed],” Kim was quoted as saying. “We could do a better job. We realize that. And over the last couple of years, we’ve actually developed quite a bit.”
Either way, we’re glad to see Google bringing a search feature like Perspectives to the table, reducing the need for adding “Reddit” to a query.