Have search engines changed

In My Humble Opinion
1

It seem like over the last 4 or 5 years searching topics has become a lot more difficult. I try every approach and key word I can think of and still end up going to the same commercial sites.

One example is every now and then I have tried to find individuals or companies who actively hunt for and test new sources for natural fibers. Either no one on the internet is searching for natural fibers or I am somehow conducting a faulty search. 5 or 6 years ago I seemed to have a lot more success searching off the wall topics.

2

I think so. Basically, the modern search engine is really good at coming up with shallow answers to shallow, poorly-formed questions. It can guess what the searcher really meant to look for, rather than what they actually gave as a query. That’s what most people want, most of the time. And to be fair, most of the time that’s what I want.

Then there’s the search engine optimization, where unscrupulous advertisers put together web pages with all the enumerable combinations of possibly relevant keywords. Google seems to tamp those down pretty well for popular search topics where there’s a lot of data for the PageRank algorithm to figure out what most people actually think is a good answer. But then there’s the slightly more sophisticated version of search engine optimization, where actual humans write very simple articles about some popular search query. There’s a lot of garbage content there, but done well and you have a very successful web site like Buzzfeed…

Either way, I know I haven’t had much success using Google for deep technical searches. I’ll still give it a try and occasionally I’ll get a few really good search results.

3

My annoyance is that it seems like Google is trying to tailor my search results on the basis of my search history. Now I can understand why they might think this is a desirable thing but it comes across a lot more telling me what it thinks I want to hear rather than answering the question i asked it.

I’ve noticed that when I’ve clicked a results link to a particular site enough times in the past that site will be placed higher in search results than the relevance of that site’s content to my search terms would seem to warrant. This bugs me for a few reasons, one of which is that the “blank slate” relevance of a search result used to be information in it’s own right.

And don’t get me wrong, I know I’m not paying to use Google and when you aren’t paying for an online product you are in some way, the product that someone else is paying for. I know there’s a setting in your “One Account, All of Google” profile that pretends to delete your history (I just don’t know anyone who believes it really does) but even after clearing cache and deleting cookies since the last time I signed into a Google service it still remembers what it seems to think I want it to show me.

My only hope here is that I remember how bad Internet Explorer was when then held a dominating percentage of market share and how much better they’ve gotten since they could no longer pretend they didn’t have competition. I’m hoping for a legitimate competitor to get Google off their bloated bulbous back sides.

4

I haven’t had a lot of problems - except of course for having to skip the six or 12 paid results on the top of the list. And the keyword results: find three headed green extraterrestrials on EBay!

5

Keep in mind that different searches will result in different results. For example - one classification of search is:

Informational: Prostate Cancer
Navigational: Amazon
Commercial: LCD monitors

Some clearly aren’t in one or the other - maybe you are looking for information about the amazon rain forest - etc. google tries to assign probabilities to all these - and takes a ton of things into consideration. They are trying to please the average user - which sometimes makes it difficult to find what you are looking for.

I’ve been to several google offices and know some google employees. In general they really care about what they do, but sometimes get some tunnel vision. If you find a setting that says they will ignore your past history - I can assure you - unless they have gotten very evil recently - they are honoring your request.

It’s frustrating sometimes as the advent of social media has disturbed many of the traditional signals that worked well for search engines. Sometimes it is helpful to restructure your query. One i use often is adding:

filetype:pdf
To the end of my query - this - if I’m looking for say scientific information - often leads to better quality results. Also adding quotes around words can be helpful as well (although sometimes google ignores this - which really pisses me off)

Anther one is:
site:straightdope.com

If you know a site that is likely to contain the info you want - try restricting it to that site. Even if you want results from more than that site - sometimes you’ll still find what you need (or links/clues to those you do)

Often in can also be helpful to add words that aren’t really important for your search, but can be helpful to locate the documents.

This is especially helpful if their is ambiguity in the search typed. When there is google is less sure what to show and can screw up more. Often times the user won’t realize their search is somewhat ambiguous, but for example - when you type:

[Natural fibers]
You might want to restructure it telling what type you are talking about:
[“natural fibers” cotton]
Or
[“natural fibers” psyllium]

Sometimes you’ll miss certain documents, but often be able to find something like what you are looking for.

You can also type in “textiles” vs “nutrition”, but in my experience - adding words that I expect to be in the documents (but I don’t really necessarily want ranked for relevance) - works best for me.

I didn’t test it in your specific example - so maybe you’ll get the same crap, but think of other ways to ask the same question and sometimes you’ll come upon what you need.

6

Ok - apparently my
Colon P for pdf was turned into a smilie - I’m sure you can figure out what I meant :slight_smile:

7

For me google has been quite successful on finding sometimes obscure mathematical definitions. As ab example, I just googled “Bezout domain” and the definition came right up. This has not changed. So maybe shallow searches lead to shallow choices, but very specific searches seem to work well.

8

I used to find the option for discussions very useful on Google (they dropped this option in the last few years).