OK, I noticed that Google results had got a lot less reliable in the last few years, but, distracted by the severe annoyingness of Google Instant, I never figured out quite why:
I did know, however, that things could be brought back to something like normal (so you actually have a chance of finding what you want to find) by liberal use of the “+” operator, there since Google’s early days (but usually, in the good old days, unnecessary). Now, apparently, without even announcing it, they have killed of this functionality! Now, it seems, unless we jump through increasingly complex hoops (and how much longer will the hoops even be there to jump through?) we can only search for the stuff that Google thinks most people will want to search for.
I think I am done with Google now, or I would like to be. For a long time, you were the best, but now, having killed off most of the competition, you have turned into a whore. Does anyone know whether the other big engines (which I guess just means Yahoo and Bing these days) will still actually search for what you ask it to search for? Has anyone tried this DuckDuckGo that the article mentions? Does it have a decent sized index? Are there any other “lesser known” engines still out there that are worth using? A few years ago I used to know a lot of them, but I stopped bothering with them because Google, back then, always seemed better. Not any more!
[I am pretty sure Bing is not much better. A couple of days ago I was doing a search on Bing that included a word that is often used in searches for porn, *but I was not* (on this occasion:o) *looking for porn sites!*. Nevertheless, Bing would not allow me to do a search including this word while I had Safe Search (or whatever they call it there) turned on! In the end I had to pick the sites I wanted, by hand, out of the mountains of smut that inevitably got returned.:(]
You know, this line of thinking really needs to die a quick and quiet death on these boards. The whole “it’s free, so don’t complain” meme is snide, exhausted, and just plain ignorant. It’s been done to death about Facebook, and now Google.
Look, these companies aren’t providing you services out of the goodness of their hearts. They are making money off of you. If they don’t respond to customer needs and desires, the customers will go elsewhere and cease being a source of revenue.
You have the right to complain about shit that’s free if the provider is getting something out of giving it to you. Would you raise concern if you got a free heart transplant and they installed a colon in your chest instead?
They broke the plus operand, which I couldn’t figure out why. You can still use quotation marks, though (which they suggest). Does that not replicate the same functionality?
First of all, Google doesn’t really make money off of me specifically, since I never click on any of their ads (let alone buy something from one), but that’s besides the point. They make money off people, yes. But they are still far and away the best game in town, and it’s a ridiculous complaint when there is no “elsewhere” for the “customers” to go.
ETA: also, like TV viewers, the people doing searches are not the customers, they are the product. That does subtly change the dynamic of the relationship.
Not really. You might want to find a page that has two specific terms, but those terms might not run together.
These two searches are not the same:
cold +war
“cold war”
Jesus, this is even more silly than your first post.
The fact that there might not be many (or any) reasonable alternatives doesn’t change the validity of the complaint. If it were somehow impossible for Google to restore the older functionality, you might have a point. But it isn’t, so you don’t.
On one of our mailing lists, someone claimed that you could get much the same functionality by putting search terms into double double quotation marks (why am I craving Tim Hortons all of a sudden?). So if you wanted to look up “Thomas” and not “Tom” you’d have to type ““Thomas””.
As for why it matters for Google stepping back on this…they’re the brand leader. If Google drops the + functionality, it’s only a matter of time before other search engines do, which is a real problem for people like me who do vast amounts of internet searches.
Actually it does, because it means the complaint doesn’t have any teeth. If the premise that they are superior to other search engines is true (and you can argue this if you want, but I assert that it is), then the OP and anyone who agrees with him or her have zero power if Google’s response is simply “No”, because they will still use it anyway.
They essentially broke Google as a reliable search engine when they started ignoring search terms. Removing the + operator for dealing with it is just spitting in the face of people who actually want to search for whet they say they want to search for. What is worse, they did not even tell us about it. “Don’t be evil,” my ass! If I had not happened to run across that article in Wired, I would still be searching with the + operator and wondering why my results were still useless. Indeed, I did not know until now that it started deliberately ignoring search terms back in 2009; I just knew that it no longer worked as well as it used to.
Furthermore, this change is completely unnecessary. If they were worried that the operator would conflict with searches for Google+ (even though it is at the other end of the word), they could have called Google+ something different! It is not like it is that brilliant name for a social network.
Rigamarole: so your attitude is that they treat us like shit because they can, and that is how it should be, so shut up and take it. I am glad I do not live in your world. I like at the very least being allowed to complain when I am treated like shit. This “product” no longer wants to be a product of theirs (when once I was happy to be so).
Apparently the changes are making it an inferior product to their competitors’, which is the whole basis for this thread. The OP was asking if there is a better alternative to Google now since the +/- functionality has been removed.
If you don’t feel like you have a right to complain, that’s great. But telling people their concerns aren’t justified simply because a product or service is free is, in my opinion, unintuitive and incorrect.
And here’s a cite showing Bing to now be more accurate than Google.
Has the “-” functionality been removed too? The Wired article did not mention it, but if so, it is even worse than I thought.
Anyway, I guess I will be experimenting with Bing more in future, if they don’t always force me to accept porn mixed in with my results. (And if I can find where the fuck their advanced search options are, if they even exist.)
By the way, does anyone know whether, if you use the Google Advanced Search page (at least that is still there, for now), and use the “Find web pages that have…all these words” box, it really does do whet it says on the tin? Or does it act like the main search page does now, and silently decide for you that you don’t really want to include some of those terms?
Joining a complaint thread just to say “stop complaining” is pretty much the definition of threadshitting as I understand it. If you don’t sympathize and can’t help, you should say nothing.
njtt you should totally beta test WIREDoo, the new search engine backed by MC Hammer.
Let us know if it ends up being better than Google or Bing. Seriously, not trying to snark…if you are unhappy with Google, and want “the next best thing” do some research in the name of SDMB and let us know if Hammer’s new thing works.
I’ve hated Google search for awhile now. I used to have a lot of complex searches that got lost when they added that stupid auto drop down crap. Now I have to type them in every time. I also hated how they would pluralize my words or even shorten them. I know what I’m typing and that’s what I’m looking for. I get that not everyone searches well, but I know what I want.
eBay is getting this way too. I look for Golden Earring CDs and such, they are always changing it to Earrings. No that’s not what I was looking for and now there’s a ton more crap to search through.
A search for Kenderson Castle, an ancestor of mine, returns Henderson Castle. I can see making the suggestion but not forcing me to search for that.
I guess it’s time for some new search engine then.
When I used + a few days ago, Google helpfully informed me that I couldn’t use it, but I could use “” instead. So +yoghurt becomes “yoghurt”. That’s not really a change in functionality, just convenience: + is one character, “” two.
Silently ignoring search terms is a much bigger problem.
I see is as the equivalent of spell-check. Sure, for the vast majority of casual searchers, this is great: saves thinking. But there should be a way to turn the helpful nanny search OFF.
Nah, because your Chicken Little theatrics are way out of proportion to the issue. As others have pointed out, it can be circumvented by simply using quotes around individual words. And the reason for the change is exceedingly reasonable. And you were being disingenuous by claiming they didn’t “tell” anyone about it, since others are reporting that using searches with a + is now giving them a warning with a helpful suggestion for an alternative (and also I said it above but you seemed to have missed it, the minus sign still works: the poster who said that misstated the issue).