Google isn’t a search engine. It’s an ad engine. The top results drive ad revenue for their ad network.
You’re not getting good search results because the information you want doesn’t make money for Google.
Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
271–280 of 433 posts
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#272It's definitely deteriorating, and the worst part is that it completely ignores quotes if it thinks you meant something else, and shows the results for what it thinks you want. Completely useless in a lot of cases
Google corrects spelling in the way you mention, but removes quotes only if there are zero results for the search with quotes. Example, finding one result; https://www.google.de/search?q=%22but+when+therefore+is+an+a... Getting this wrong is probably why people think we need more than definitive assertions from people operating from subjective impression. Changing a letter in the query, it says, right at the top: Sho…
This seems to depend on a lot.
I rarely see "No results found".
That is a completely valid result in my opinion.
I often see pages that doesn't contain my search string.
Sometimes is is something trivial like
query: "something about x y and z"
result contains: "... something about x. Y and Z however..."
which is understandable.
Often though I have no clue how a result got there. Maybe it is linked to using a certain text (link bombing)? I don't know.
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#273Ironically, my work on my own search engine has led me to be a bit more patient with Google's problems. At least I think I understand them better. Search engines fail in weird ways. I think in part that Google just has gotten a spectacularly confusing failure mode. If it can't find good matching contents, it starts second-guessing your query and producing other results, which makes you think it's not even considering…
On Amazon I searched in "CDs & Vinyl" for the band "The Birdstones". It showed me results in books. Criminy. Amazon does this all the time. If I wanted a book, I'd have searched under "Books". I am not confused about the difference between "CDs" and "Books". What's the good of having categories if they're completely ignored?
I now avoid Amazon for this reason. I'll search for something like "4k HDMI capture card" and half the results are 1080p (and don't say 4k or a synonym anywhere) and a tenth do DisplayPort. I end up having to open every linked product and use my borwser search to confirm that my requirements are actually present.
Same with any sort of requirement like "plastic" a colour...
It just wastes my time so I shop elsewhere.
I think a much better UX would be saying: No results but consider searching for "4k capture card" or "HDMI capture card".
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you provide name of this extension?
I use uBlacklist, it puts a little "block this domain from results" button next to google results
I just installed this! Thanks for the suggestion!
Don't forget to use ungoogled chromium if possible
The only downside is you will have to load unpacked extensions instead of using the Chrome "store" and you will have to manually install Chromium updates from the same site:
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#275I believe the theory that Google is optimizing for ad revenue. Sites without ads get ranked lower. The biggest example I can think of is Wikipedia. When I search a proper noun with a Wikipedia article, I almost want to go look at that article. Recently, I feel like I really have to dig for it.
Anecdotal evidence - but I feel like this could be completely valid. One of my biggest side projects for many years was a student tool centered around test scores. It was a niche use case with a huge amount of students using the tool on one day per year (1m+). There was exactly one competitor. I had a better domain but a much worse site in terms of design, speed etc. We were nearly the same in traffic, until I decide…
Could it be that the adverts you host add tags/content to your site, which is literally SEO without you actively doing SEO?
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm increasingly of the opinion that Google (the advertising engine) has destroyed Google (the search engine), by the two step process of making it profitable to produce blogspam then forcing search to remove blogspam - and a lot of the useful content has gone out with that bathwater. If you're looking for someone to blame google seems like the wrong party here. Surely the people abusing the system (i.e. blog spam)…
Sure, but emergent bad actors exploiting features of a system that pay them are kind of inevitable, faceless, and there's an endless supply of them. The internet would be a very different place if it wasn't for this phenomenon of human behavior. Google are just the most powerful and most visible actor in this, and replacing the early less profit orientated web with a dark forest of advertising and tracking is to a gr…
I’ve been on the internet since the 80s and the bad actors were still around back then. USENET was made unusable at one point by people spamming, mass cross posting, and playing cancel wars. This was well before ads or profit existed on the net.
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't that provide more data on who are the scammers?
Not really. In these areas there's a general principle that the moment you start using a signal to enforce on bad actors that signal's value decays. It's sad, I actually think web3 could help curb abuse at scale by making it too expensive to scale horizontally. Imagine paying a "stamp" to send an email on the blockchain, spam email would dramatically drop. Maybe similar mechanics could be in play for other things but…
What is web3? What exactly is it? And how could it be used in this case?
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#278No post body was provided.
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#279For tech stuff Google is usually pretty good, sometimes I have to change a little my query, but it works. For non tech stuff is a disaster. I recently looked for a specific brand and model car tyre datasheet, I know it may be a nich, but still I got ONLY ads. Not a single result was about data, let alone datasheet, all were ads.
>For tech stuff Google is usually pretty good, sometimes I have to change a little my query, but it works.
I rarely search programming topics nowadays. However anything related to electronics/mechanics/disassembly - tear downs/etc. is pretty a rather futile experience.
Re: Is Google Search Deteriorating? Measuring Google's Search Quality in 2022
#280I’m shocked that the original author didn’t think to put “series b” in quotes instead of as separate words. Doing that returns a table format of every databricks round as the second result.
In general, “term” is like the old +term format which we all used to use back when we thought search was good until google killed the +.
In reality the Web has gotten worse with far more bad spam actors and our search habits have changed partially because google steered us towards more natural language style queries away from the old style queries many people used to use in this community.
In other words, we got used the convenient of free form text without special operators, and when the webspam increased we feel that having to go back and futz with the query using these operators means search has degraded.