Google has changed, at least for me, and it seems to be for the worse. I’ve always had problems searching, though I’ve learned to deal with it. But now with the newer changes I’m having a harder time.
Now Google has the drop down box that predicts what I want, not the newer Google instant. I hate this as it’s normally wrong and even when I do quotes around something it tends to get rid of them. This also means I’ve lost my previous searches, which was something I used quite a bit. I know before I could turn this off and I did, but now it seems I can’t.
I’ve also noticed that Google will change searches, even if I put quotes or + it will change things like add a 's to something, or change the spelling thinking I’ve spelled it wrong. Sometimes, like today, I will search for a family name, like Gue and it changed it to glue.
Is there any way to change these settings? I’d especially like to get my searches back, the ones that have been there for years. It’s annoying to have to retype full searches to try and tighten my searches.
Is anyone else annoyed by the change or is it just me?
I’m not experiencing any of the things you’re talking about, so it must be just you. If I search for “Gue family”, for instance, it returns results for… Gue family. Doesn’t change it to “glue”. Or drop quotes from anything. Or anything else you mention.
There’s a big kerfuffle on one of the Google support forums about the “new and improved” search. Most people seem to hate it. It’s weird, because search works the “new” way (providing search suggestions automatically, despite saved preferences to the contrary) on my laptop at home, but it works the “old” way (no autofill) on my PC at work. I prefer the old way myself (no suggestions/autofill).
To the left of the search bar is nothing but white space. To the right is ‘Advanced Search’ and under that ‘Language Tools’. Now on the page after a search I can turn off ‘Instant off’, but that’s actually something new. That will actually change the links under the search bar while you type. That’s even worse.
Instant on is something new, when you type something into the search box Google changes the links under the box. You don’t even have to finish typing to get a link. It’s not just a predictive typing, it’s predicting the links already for you. Try turning it on and seeing for yourself. Google has just put this out.
Well it seems there are two things that not everyone knows about. Autocomplete, which now it seems can’t be turned off, and instant on which loads the search page before you finish typing. I dislike both, but I can turn off the instant on feature.
I dislike Instant Search and was unaware that it could be turned off. Although I’m pleased that this is possible, it’s impractical for me because I’m certain that a cookie is involved. All of my cookies are flushed every fifteen minutes.
When Instant Search was announced, many tech sites made a huge deal about it. They said it would shave fractions of a second from everyone’s searches and save us all hours a year. I don’t see cause for hoopla. The majority of my time spent searching is deciding how to frame the question, not waiting for responses. Google’s desire to correct and auto-complete my queries goes for the lowest common denominator and causes me to spend fifteen or twenty seconds per search trying to outwit it. A savings of milliseconds to complete the search is not adequate compensation.
It’s like taking a car to go some place, you know where you want to go and how to get there, that was the old search. The instant search is a slightly faster car that comes with an annoying kid installed on the backseat that keeps reading out loud the names of every.single.place you drive through on the way.
Thanks but no thanks, it may save me the horror of finishing typing a full word and hit enter but I take the less obnoxious option.
I think Google, in the last 6 months has jumped the proverbial shark, there seems to be a push from the search department CEO to turn Google into what it never was, a cluttered, intrusive and commanding “user experience”.
That’s it in a nutshell, the new direction is Google telling you what you want; take the Google instant as an example, it displays only 10 results as you type, the top tier are paid for links, if your search starts with “A” the top result is Amazon, with “C” is Craigslists, “I” is Ikea IIRC, and so on and so forth.
Changes on a computer systems are sometimes to the better in my experience, but in the vast majority of cases they are not.
I’m an old grizzled DOS veteran and each time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows (and my employer forces it upon me) it is an even bigger insult to my intelligence than the last one.
Further proof that it’s impossible for a company to get as big as Google without turning into everything that it was supposed to be a reaction against. FFS Google, give us the option to turn AutoComplete off!
It’s only on for some people by default. Google seem to be turning it on in some areas but not others.
I had it a couple of days ago but haven’t now - in fact I can’t even now see an option to turn Instant on. Where should I be looking?
Edit: Ah, I see it’s because I have IE7 here at work. I got Instant at home.
Except I had some nice complex searches that I used that are now gone with the autocomplete on. I don’t want to have to retype it every time I want that search.
That’s exactly right. There’s a reason this is a horrible idea. It doesn’t even let you just type and hit enter. I’m an extremely fast typist; I’m on the fourth or fifth letter by the time this Auto-Shit even happens, and God forbid you make a typo, because your results will be horrifying. And in the time it takes the page to refresh itself, I could have hit the Backspace button and corrected the mistake.