Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

I think the issue here is that for you the correct results set would be reputable domain name providers, whereas for many other people, the howto articles are in fact what they're looking for.

Without having personal search switched on, they need to hedge their bets. (note: not having tried it I don't know how effective the personalized search is) In general these populist algorithms may tend to skew the results against techies, or those who 'know what they want', in favour of overall increase in perceived quality.

As far as I know there is a human component, and there is definitely significant weight these days towards CTR as determining quality. These would likely just reinforce the populist ranking factors.

One of the underlooked aspects of Google is the sidebar - using the 'fewer shopping sites' and time-based queries can be a huge help to relevance. I've for years used search modifiers (+, .., - etc.) in my initial queries with an expectation of what Google might expect. A search like "Buy Domain Names" still retains a lot of semantic ambiguity that their algorithm has to wrestle with. You have the tools to fix that yourself.

As such I tend to agree with Matt on this. We've just forgotten how bad it was.

I think Groucho Marx could sum up this article as "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

I didn't keep a record of my searches from 2000, but I do remember that I was extremely impressed and satisfied with google back then. That is no longer the case. I am frustrated on daily basis by the results of many searches.

It's not really your fault though. I blame it on mono culture. Google has such a huge hold of the search market that it's probably not even worth SEO peoples time to bother gaming other search engines. There is a whole industry feeding off your success and we all suffer for it.

After the china attacks earlier this/last year google put out a decree that they would phase out windows machines among their employees. I thought it made sense. Windows is too easy a target because of it's success. The same is true in nature and the same is true in search engines.

The best we can hope for is a new search engine that will be insignificant enough in terms of market share to avoid the scammers. As long as google is the dominant search engine it will never get better.

You bring up an interesting point. It would be nice if there was some sort of way real people could rank results. Even as an engineer, I am often frustrated by the results I get, but I have a hard time articulating what Google could do to show me what I wanted on the first page.

I think most people searching for "buy domain name" (and not something more specific like "where to buy domain name" or "domain registrars") are probably looking for introductory info on how to go about purchasing their first domain.

In that context, these results could actually be considered better for most people.

I think what Matt is trying to say is that your memory of what Google was like in 2000 could be inaccurate. So he's demonstrating what Google was actually like in 2000.

Of course you were impressed and satisfied with Google back then — it was so much better than the alternatives. I'm sure you would have been just as (perhaps more) satisfied if 2011 Google existed in 2000. We've had 11 years to pinpoint the deficiencies of Google. Couple that with 11 years of rapid progress on the internet — we just expect more now.

What's confounding to me is that there's an obvious solution to Google's biggest problem (spammers and scammers):

  1. Allow users to individually block URLs and domains on a permanent basis.
  2. Accumulate massive amounts of data regarding blocked URLs/domains (a good quality indicator)
  3. Integrate this data into the PageRank algorithm

I'm not sure why it's taking Google so long to do this, at least step 1.