Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
mattcutts.com
Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
1–10 of 65 posts
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#2It would be interesting if they set up a Google Retro and let people try and compare the old search and see if they still think it is an improvement over the newer systems.
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#3I guess the whole backlash against search results was Content Farms outsmarting Google (atleast temporarily) and distorting results.
Google's search results in 2000 were better than any competitor or Google itself 2 years before. But the same thing can't be said with certainty when comparing 2010's search results to 2008's.
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#4I can't speak for others, but my disappointment is with the margin of improvement. I know that results often sucked back in 2001, but with 10 years of progress I would hope to get better results. In the case of "buy domain name" (http://www.google.com/search?q=buy+domain+name), 4 of the top 6 results I get are How To articles, not sources to buy domains.
Google is trying to solve a hard problem, and I appreciate that. I just don't have the patience I did 10 years ago to click through all the results to find a legitimate site. If I get a set of results that look like spam, I try to refine the terms, but often just give up.
I know that Google tries to solve this problem algorithmically, but I can't help but think that mixing in a human review would immensely improve results. And by human, I mean a Google employee, not a sure-to-be-gamed community review.
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#5Is the post suggesting that the perception of drop in quality is only because google was much much better than other search engines back in 2000?
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#6I can't speak for others, but my disappointment is with the margin of improvement. I know that results often sucked back in 2001, but with 10 years of progress I would hope to get better results. In the case of "buy domain name" ( http://www.google.com/search?q=buy+domain+name ), 4 of the top 6 results I get are How To articles, not sources to buy domains. Google is trying to solve a hard problem, and I appreciate th…
From my results with that search, only 2 of the top 6 are How To articles, and they are the last two of the six.
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#7I'm not sure that a single hand picked result shows much. If Matt has 40,000 results, how about opening them so we can get an idea of how things have changed for queries we care about, and letting people do an independent review?
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#8I definitely agree that search results in '11 are better than in '00, although it would be cool if more search results from '00 were given since 1/40000 isn't the most representative of examples.
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#9Could it be that people who are having a hard time finding things on Google now are searching the same way they did in 2000? Google might (and arguably should) be attempting to cater to the way people are searching now, not the way they searched 10 years ago. Don’t forget that people using a search engine need to evolve as well.
Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011
#10I was skeptical when Google Instant was going to "change the way people search" -- but in early retrospect, I think it really has for me. I now click on one result maximum (and often zero), relying instead on rapid search-term tweaking.
Even just a few years ago I'd expect to click through several results, or heaven forbid to the next page, for what I felt was a difficult query.
Between google instant and other improvements, I am increasingly trained to look ONLY at the top several results. When google doesn't deliver, the results seem worse then they used to when they aren't. I think we're forgetting how we used to have to search.