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Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

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Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#51

Post by pfedor »

joeyh wrote: post #20

I've used google since it was google.stanford.edu, and it's clear to me the results have suffered. My feeling is that two of the problems are SEO and feedback effects of google's own popularity. SEO: When you cut through all the BS, the entire goal here is to make a less good match come first. And it works (sorta). Just consider crap sites like Experts Exchange that we've only learned about because they pollute many…

The results from Experts Exchange are typically useful, but you have to scroll all the way down past the ads and other crap to see the actual answers.

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#52

Post by catzaa »

We had the exact same discussion on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9s6p2/google_is...

It is starting to get incredibly difficult to do specific searches (such as for documentation). It also seems that SEO have become incredibly successful in gaming Google.

It would actually be good if there were some competition.

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#54

Post by fjabre »

Hate to disagree with everyone here but I haven't noticed much of a change. For me, Google is still the best search out there by a long shot.

My behavior has changed slightly though. Increasingly I'm using twitter, reddit, delicious, & hacker news to search and browse for content. Google site search for Hacker news has also come in handy.

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#55

Post by catzaa »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #36

Yes, and this is why I started Duck Duck Go: http://duckduckgo.com/ . Thanks for posting specific cases--they help me immensely. Anyone else have more?

I've used Duck Duck Go a bit and the results are okay. Maybe just a shorter URL would be awesome (such as ddg.com ddgo.com, etc...).

Here is a search that I have had problems with :

octave "--eval"

Your site does pretty well with this (fourth link is somewhat relevant).

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#56

Post by klon »

Erf wrote: post #3

Yes. One thing I noticed is that searches no longer require that all words in the query be present in the search results. Adding a + before a word is now required to ensure that it's present in results. That frequently results in me having to do 2-3 searches to find something that could previously be found with one.

I have noticed this too and find it very irritating. I expect ALL words to be present. Why did they change this?

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#57

Post by jrockway »

I think you picked two bad terms. "Linux asynchronous IO" has meaning more than just "IO under Linux that's not blocking". That's what most pages using those terms are referring to, so it makes sense that that's what Google would give you.

"Hashmap", the term you searched for, is a term popularized by the Java world; I think most C programmers still call them "hashtables". (Hash map is a better term, as many excellent map implementations aren't actually based on hashes; see "Judy" for example.) A search for "C concurrent hashtable" gave me a lot of useful results. (You are also suffering from C's lack of a coherent community here. Lots of people write this sort of thing, but few think to share it. Hence, not many search results.)

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#58

Post by 10ren »

So, was Yahoo - or any other search engine - any better? You didn't say how good Yahoo was for your two examples.

It's possible that Google doesn't give you perfect results, merely the best of a bad lot. If so, it suggests the problem is the web, not the search of it.

And the web certainly has changed.

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#59

Post by mojonixon »

The autocorrect is maddening. I've been researching Riak recently. It's new so there isn't a lot available. Paired with another search term I frequently get results only for "risk." Let me know if I might have made a typo, but don't assume I'm an idiot and do something different than what I told you to do.

Dropping keywords also annoys me. If the keywords don't exist then tell me that so I can adjust my search. Don't give me a long list of results that I have to click through before realizing you screwed up the search.

The only reason the google search bar is still my default is because I use it as a quick and easy calculator.

Re: Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down?

#60

Post by pqs »

Erf wrote: post #3

Yes. One thing I noticed is that searches no longer require that all words in the query be present in the search results. Adding a + before a word is now required to ensure that it's present in results. That frequently results in me having to do 2-3 searches to find something that could previously be found with one.

Thanks for the tip of the + !!
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