# Google jumps the shark **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 26, 2011, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882 "2011-10-26T17:51:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/81 "2011-10-28T20:29:34Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > Hmmm … something is up with that **oregon mushroom hunting festival** search. There are several results that don’t have the word “Oregon” in them. Okay … so I started trying other states: **iowa mushroom hunting festival** **california mushroom hunting festival** **louisiana mushroom hunting festival** … and I noticed I was’nt getting any bad hits (at least not on the first few pagees. Then I went back and and did the “Oregon” one again … and I noticed something. The preposition “or” was bolded in the result set. But **or** was’t one of the search terms … **Oregon** was. My theory is that when you type in a state (and perhaps other things), the search engine may “decide” to also use any common abbreviations in the search. A lot of times, that may be fine … but here’s a case where it can cause an issue. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/82 "2011-10-28T21:31:54Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > So … using the plus sign ensured that the subsequent word appeared in the results? So that this search: > > **+oregon mushroom hunting festival** > … would exclude that Mesick Mushroom Festival page? That is the way the Google search engine worked at one time. In this thread, the claim is that you replace the “+” modifier with double quotes surrounding the word. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/83 "2011-10-28T21:48:42Z")
> [@Arnold\_Winkelried](#): > > In this thread, the claim is that you replace the “+” modifier with double quotes surrounding the word. Gotcha. The double-quote function – as \*\*Carmady \*\*laid out in post #75 above – does, indeed, appear to do the trick. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/84 "2011-10-28T23:03:22Z")
> [@Arnold\_Winkelried](#): > > That is the way the Google search engine worked at one time. In this thread, the claim is that you replace the “+” modifier with double quotes surrounding the word. One modification: The quotes thing has worked forever. It’s just that the plus sign operator has been removed. They for some reason removed the redundancy. Also, Google does neither pure AND searches nor pure OR searches. It does a mixture based on what the data shows them that most people want for specific terms. Furthermore, it will, by default, also link similar words, and, here’s the big one: words in links that lead to the site. Finally, I agree that the arrows on the side are dumb. It doesn’t work with JavaScript turned off. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/85 "2011-10-28T23:13:51Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > They for some reason removed the redundancy. I expect the “+” will be reserved for “Google+” in some way. I’ve never used any operand other than double quotes and the “-”, so this has no impact on me whatsoever. All that “AND” and “OR” and “NOT” stuff seemed redundant to me, as Google operated in the way I wanted by its default guessing 90% of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/86 "2011-10-29T01:12:21Z")
I’ve become increasingly frustrated with Google recently for treating my searches as “OR” searches and for assuming I meant something other than what I actually typed. The other day I was trying to look up the work email address of a professional acquaintance named Kate Stevens. Among the first few results were several pages about musician Cat Stevens. :smack: And I was spelling “Kate” correctly, I didn’t enter “Kat Stevens” or even “Cate Stevens”. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/87 "2011-10-29T01:58:14Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I’ve become increasingly frustrated with Google recently for treating my searches as “OR” searches and for assuming I meant something other than what I actually typed. The other day I was trying to look up the work email address of a professional acquaintance named Kate Stevens. Among the first few results were several pages about musician Cat Stevens. :smack: And I was spelling “Kate” correctly, I didn’t enter “Kat Stevens” or even “Cate Stevens”. Really? I just did a Google search for “Kate Stevens”, and I didn’t see any results for Cat Stevens. Perhaps your search was just Kate Stevens without quotation marks, ergo a lot of the best page matches Google found were sites about Cat Stevens that had the name Kate somewhere inside them? ---
**Author:** ![horsetech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dec6dc/32.png) [@horsetech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/horsetech)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/88 "2011-10-29T03:41:10Z")
Google has also decided that synonyms, or even related terms, are acceptable replacements. Grr. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/89 "2011-10-29T03:46:04Z")
> [@straight\_man](#): > > Really? I just did a Google search for “Kate Stevens”, and I didn’t see any results for Cat Stevens. Perhaps your search was just Kate Stevens without quotation marks, ergo a lot of the best page matches Google found were sites about Cat Stevens that had the name Kate somewhere inside them? I didn’t include the quotes in my first search, but the Cat Stevens-related results I was getting didn’t necessarily include the word “Kate” at all. The #3 result was the Wikipedia entry on Cat Stevens, which according to [Google’s own cache](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uNDT2O6xEIIJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens+kate+stevens) only matched my search on the word “Stevens”. If I had meant Cat Stevens, I would have typed Cat Stevens. I don’t feel I should be expected to put quote marks around every word to get Google to recognize that the words I typed are actually the ones I want. I’d be fine with a “Did you mean…_Cat Stevens_?” link that would run that search in case I’d made a mistake (although I doubt that anyone has ever thought that the guy who wrote “The First Cut Is the Deepest” was actually named Kate), but don’t just throw those results in along with the ones for the words I actually typed. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/90 "2011-10-29T03:49:08Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I didn’t include the quotes in my first search, but the Cat Stevens-related results I was getting didn’t necessarily include the word “Kate” at all. The #3 result was the Wikipedia entry on Cat Stevens, which according to [Google’s own cache](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uNDT2O6xEIIJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens+kate+stevens) only matched my search on the word “Stevens”. > > If I had meant Cat Stevens, I would have typed Cat Stevens. I don’t feel I should be expected to put quote marks around every word to get Google to recognize that the words I typed are actually the ones I want. I’d be fine with a “Did you mean…_Cat Stevens_?” link that would run that search in case I’d made a mistake (although I doubt that anyone has ever thought that the guy who wrote “The First Cut Is the Deepest” was actually named Kate), but don’t just throw those results in along with the ones for the words I actually typed. …I just googled Kate Stevens no quotes and not one link to Cat Stevens on the first three pages of google results. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/91 "2011-10-29T04:00:41Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …I just googled Kate Stevens no quotes and not one link to Cat Stevens on the first three pages of google results. Well, that’s lovely for you. The Wikipedia entry on Cat Stevens is persistently coming up as the #3 result for me (after Facebook and LinkedIn profiles for women named Kate Stevens), with the first four photos in the image search preview also being of Cat Stevens and two of the three videos showing in the video search preview being for Cat Stevens songs. I am pretty sure I have never done a search on Cat Stevens in my life, so I don’t see any reason why my personal search history should be skewing the results in that direction. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/92 "2011-10-29T04:12:38Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I didn’t include the quotes in my first search, but the Cat Stevens-related results I was getting didn’t necessarily include the word “Kate” at all. The #3 result was the Wikipedia entry on Cat Stevens, which according to [Google’s own cache](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uNDT2O6xEIIJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens+kate+stevens) only matched my search on the word “Stevens”. …which would indeed happen, now that “AND” is no longer assumed between the words. Mea culpa. I personally would rather Google searched for all terms entered by default, but I don’t think there’s an easy solution here. On the one hand, you (without any insult whatsoever intended, I’m assuming you’re not a power searcher, just since you looked for a person’s name without using quotation marks) think of the searches as being for all the terms you type in; on the other hand, Google presumably has calculated that a lot of users are asking for “or” searches — or even, I suppose, the users want Google to balance page ranking with how many of the terms a page includes. All three of those possibilities are mutually exclusive, and you leave out a lot of users no matter what you do. ETA: when I search for Kate Stevens without putting quotation marks around the name, I do indeed get some entries for Cat Stevens. But it clearly isn’t a Google auto-correct feature — it’s some version of the process I describe above. ---
**Author:** ![Ennui](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ennui/32/3396_2.png) [@Ennui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ennui)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/93 "2011-10-29T04:20:04Z")
I’m another search geek who’s actively looking to break the Google habit. I hated instant but they let you turn that off so I’m fine with it. But unless I’m looking to purchase something local like a pizza I don’t want my physical location to affect the search results. If I’m looking to buy a piece of electronics I want the best price from a reliable distributor and I don’t care how many miles away the store is, unless shipping costs mean it’s no longer the best available price. Why can’t they give you the option of turning off location? The Google “Help” forums are a text book example of what’s wrong with the company, [here’s their topic](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=151ef6cf0a761b74&hl=en) on the + operand issue. “Kelly” the Google search community manager kindly explains that you can now just put the word you would have put a + in front of in double quotes but completely fails to address the fact that [“word”] will NOT yield the same search results as the old [+word], in fact she never addresses the issue at all. I’m sorry but that IS the entire issue of that thread yet she cheerfully marks the topic “answered.” In the long run this IS a good thing, Google had been evolving into something I was growing uncomfortable with. Near monopolies never work to the public’s advantage and until they provided it’s user base sufficient motive to look elsewhere it would be near impossible for any (non-Msft) competitor to gain market share. I.E. is now a much better browser than they were when they had unquestioned dominance in the browser market (though I still don’t use it when I have a choice) and hopefully legitimate competition will help Google in the long run as well. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/94 "2011-10-29T04:32:17Z")
> [@straight\_man](#): > > …which would indeed happen, now that “AND” is no longer assumed between the words. Mea culpa. I personally would rather Google searched for all terms entered by default, but I don’t think there’s an easy solution here. On the one hand, you (without any insult whatsoever intended, I’m assuming you’re not a power searcher, just since you looked for a person’s name without using quotation marks) I’m actually a very skilled searcher. I’m a professional librarian, and perform many databases searches every day. A person named Kate Stevens might be listed in a directory as either “Kate Stevens” or “Stevens, Kate”, and using quote marks would eliminate one of those options…unless one enters “Kate” “Stevens”, which Google apparently considers reasonable but I think is idiotic. I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered another search tool that handled “AND” searches in this awkward manner. Since Google does keep track of my location and the Kate Stevens I was looking for is fairly prominent locally, I expected the person I was looking for to come up high in the search results. I would have understood if she were buried beneath a bunch of other women named Kate Stevens, but _Cat_ Stevens? That wouldn’t have happened with Google in the past. > [@](#): > > think of the searches as being for all the terms you type in; on the other hand, Google presumably has calculated that a lot of users are asking for “or” searches — or even, I suppose, the users want Google to balance page ranking with how many of the terms a page includes. I very much doubt that there are many searchers who expect an “OR” search as the default. There are a (very) few academic databases that are set up that way, and these are a constant problem for users. People expect that when they put multiple words into the search box then all of those words will be included in the results. We used to say that they were treating the search box “like Google”, but I guess that’s no longer an accurate comparison as Google no longer works “like Google”. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/95 "2011-10-29T04:47:51Z")
I see that [Google’s help section](http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861&topic=1221265) does still say that they treat all searches as “AND” searches: > [@](#): > > **The OR operator** > Google’s default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type ‘OR’ in ALL CAPS). For example, [San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005] will give you results about either one of these years, whereas [San Francisco Giants 2004 2005] (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.) Either this is outdated or they have loosened their standards for what counts as a synonym that will automatically be included in a search. ---
**Author:** ![ErinPuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dbc845/32.png) [@ErinPuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ErinPuff)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/96 "2011-10-29T23:26:03Z")
A few months ago, I searched for **[something] sexist** and got results for **[something] _sexy_**. No no no no no, Google. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/97 "2011-10-29T23:53:48Z")
> [@ErinPuff](#): > > A few months ago, I searched for **[something] sexist** and got results for **[something] _sexy_**. No no no no no, Google. [What’s wrong with being sexy?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xF5TeHf5QQ) ---
**Author:** ![Cugel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cugel/32/1199_2.png) [@Cugel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cugel)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/98 "2011-10-30T08:15:21Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Well, that’s lovely for you. The Wikipedia entry on Cat Stevens is persistently coming up as the #3 result for me Number one for me, number two is also a WP entry - Katie Stevens. Then it gets to actual Kates, linkedin, FB etc. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/99 "2011-10-30T09:03:58Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Either this is outdated or they have loosened their standards for what counts as a synonym that will automatically be included in a search. The weasel word is “consider”. They consider all your terms but provide results that don’t necessarily include them. > [@Carmady](#): > > It seems like the article is saying that putting quotes around a word forces that word to be in the results. > > So a search for “cold” “war” would be an AND search, but a search for cold war wouldn’t. Great. So now I have to type two additional characters for each word (shift-characters at that). Bugger that. Someone would grab a share of the search market just by providing an interface that sent your search off to Google with double quotes round each word. ---
**Author:** ![BeaMyra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2bfe46/32.png) [@BeaMyra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeaMyra)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882/100 "2011-10-30T11:10:47Z")
Ever since Wikipedia, Google is going downhill in quality searches. The problem is scraper sites, copy the Wikipedia and load it up with Google Adsense. Of course this is duplicate. Who needs to search for something and have 15 of the top 20 sites return the exact same information, when all the sites do is scrape each other. In the old days the scraper sites would fall to the bottom. Now Google can’t afford to make the scrapers fall, as they get ad revenue off of them. Prior to Wikipedia’s popularity Google searches were good. Wikipedia isn’t the cause but it set the example for others. If Google would simply stop indexing Wikipedia and any site that scrapes it, you’d get a lot better results. Since you can search directly on Wikipedia, there’s no need for Google to index it [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-jumps-the-shark/600882.md?page=6)