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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

> Search for "GM" and the Gmail homepage ranks prominently. Is Google pushing its own products on people? Well, yes, but not here. This is an example of a query refinement algorithm at work. Google is altering its results in recognition of the fact that many people who search "gm" subsequently search for "gmail."

I tried this and there are three news articles about General Motors, an infobox for General Motors, 4 search results for General Motors (their web page, another of their pages, a New York Times article about them, and the Wikipedia article about them), a box containing tweets from General Motors, two more news articles about General motors, and finally a link to GMail. Then the other "GMs" start, including GraphicsMagick for node.js. I think they did a pretty good job interpreting "GM" here, and I don't think the Internet is exactly ruined.

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Just tried this. GMail was the first link, validating "the Gmail homepage ranks prominently." Also, all the suggestions were gmail (before the search.)

The rest of the results were GM related news/Twitter/links.

Are you sure you're not confusing Google and DuckDuckGo? (I know I do from time to time)

For me, a Google search returned only General Motors results in the top spots, while a DuckDuckGo search had Gmail as the first result after the news stories.

https://i.imgur.com/m2iXSN9.jpg

I also get gmail as first result for gm. However I also get a GM.com entry to the side of the search results.

I get the same as you for DuckDuckGo, but my Google does look different. I guess Google is customising the results: https://imgur.com/dccAZBg

To add another data point, my Google results for "gm" look like those on your screenshot, with a market summary card and then GMail being the first result, and General Motors second - with one extra difference that "Top Stories" card in my case is above, not below the GMail result.

Just as an anecdote, DDG also suggested Gmail as the first result for me (past the news carousel, ofc).

Even as a Gmail user, my results align with yours.

If I type it into the browser search bar however it is the first result. This is not Google's fault, as I'm on Firefox, which is smartly trying to look for sites I frequently visit.

Yeah, same here, gmail is the last result in my try. Oh, as a gmail user, why not it ranked as number 1? I don't care the GM news : ) I think people have different standard for a good/bad search result.

GM is in the news because of its respirator production and the search results are dynamic. I've seen Gmail rank #2 or #3 for that search.

I use gmail and the first suggestion for me was "GMT time".

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