'Reading Level' Filter Added To Google Search 266
entotre writes "A new feature has been added to the advanced Google search: reading level. From the blog post: 'The feature lets you filter or annotate the search results by reading level. The reading levels include basic, intermediate and advanced. You can either have Google label or annotate the results with those labels, only show basic results, only show intermediate results or only show advanced results.' At the time of writing, Slashdot is 1 % advanced, 64 % intermediate and 34 % basic."
But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about keyword searches? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that would be sweet. Especially if it didn't filter out special characters commonly used in programming languages, like .:()[]{}
Re:Reading level is useless (Score:5, Insightful)
In what sense is it a "guideline"? Perfectly clear text can get a poor readability index, incomprehensible text can get good readability.
A reading index is just like a measuring tape. It can't tell you that you built a crappy house with crooked walls and a leaky roof; it can only tell you that something is 40 feet long by 30 feet wide.
A reading index is a tool that simplifies understanding, reducing a very complex thing to a simple number that's useful for comparisons. Just like you can use the measurements of the house to figure out that it's 1,200 square feet, you can compare that to a house that is 2,400 square feet. Neither measurement tells you the quality of the construction, the color, the flooring, the lot size, or the neighborhood. But if you're looking for a home for a family of six, knowing the floor space is one thing that can help weed out the useless candidates quickly. If you're looking for a book for first graders, you don't trot out a book with a reading index of 18.
And claiming it doesn't work on incomprehensible text is like complaining that a measuring tape can't tell you the color of a house. A reading index is not an interpreter of syntax, grammar, spelling, or any other attribute of text. It just measures one simple set of dimensions of text.
A reading scoring system can only give you an indication, not a guarantee, of what kind of audience should be able to comprehend a given piece of text; and it can give you an indication of relative difficulty. For example, the widely used Flesch-Kincaid Readability Index bases its score on the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word, and outputs a "grade level". The grade levels were probably modeled on the textbooks and lesson books of the era in which it was developed. Is it still relevant? Perhaps the actual grade levels are different these days, but it's still a widely accepted model because it's useful for what it does provide.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oooo fun! (from highest to lowest Reading Level)
foxnews is 2% advanced and 73% intermediate
cnn.com is 2% advanced and 70% intermediate
pbs.org/news is 1% advanced - 84% intermediate
slashdot is 1% advanced and 64% intermediate.
And the surprise:
MSnbc is 0.5% advanced and 55% intermediate
"Tut-tut. I think I am experiencing cognitive dissonance. Obviously this google formula is flawed because everyone knows NBC is the best source for unbiased news. And FOX #1 in reading level? Bah. Humbub." - MSnbc viewer smoking his pipe. (I'm just joking - put down the guillotine.)
Re:What about keyword searches? (Score:4, Insightful)
For Pete's sake, I've never understood why they didn't support some simple subset of regular expressions. Just "simple" stuff, like character classes and multipliers.
Also, while I don't mind being corrected on my spelling (being that, despite trying to be diligent, I certainly make mistakes), what the heck is up with google flatly refusing to search for my exact text? It was fine when you searched for 'x,' they asked "do you actually mean y?" But now, it takes me three searches before I figure out the magic phrasing that will actually do my search and not return "corrected" results.