# Why is Google Search horrible now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 15, 2012, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291 "2012-07-15T11:27:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wakinyan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wakinyan/32/352_2.png) [@Wakinyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wakinyan)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/21 "2012-07-15T19:10:11Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I’m not getting any ads. Can you give me an example to search for? Perhaps you have an adblocker? I have Adblock on Firefox and doesn’t see any ads, switching to IE there’s loads of them (after a particualr search, for instance “Excel training”.) ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/22 "2012-07-15T19:15:27Z")
This may well be the ‘Google Filter Bubble’ issue. More [here](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-google-filter-bubble-and-its-problems/29879/). ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/23 "2012-07-15T19:32:44Z")
> [@zombywoof](#): > > It’s the [Verbatim tool](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1734130). Except that verbatim isn’t really verbatim. It still changes things to be “helpful”. In particular, it ignores punctuation, which makes it nearly useless for finding some things. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/24 "2012-07-15T20:13:38Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > First of all, it doesn’t use all of the terms in the search box unless you put a + next to it to tell Google, “Yes I’m sure I want to use that word that I put down” Actually, it is worse than you think. The + symbol stopped doing that quite a few months ago, because Google wanted to reserve it for directing searches to Google+. I started a thread complaining about this at the time (and was promptly told, by another Doper, that I had no business complaining about anything Google does because it is free, and I am the product not the customer :rolleyes:). Supposedly you can get the same functionality that the + used to give you by enclosing the word you want to be mandatorialy included in your results in double quotes, but I am not convinced this works reliably. Bing, if anything, is even worse (though sometimes in different ways) than Google now is, although I am grateful to Microsoft for spending the money (and it is costing them a lot) to maintain at least some semblance of competition in the search market. Duck Duck Go does seem to provide clean searches, but its index of the web is a lot smaller, and it does not have many of the basic options that Google and Bing have. It does not even have an image search. These are the consequences of allowing one company to gain an effective monopoly, folks. Google _was_ the best, they drove all the real competition out of the search business, and now, even though in most respects they still remain the best, by some distance, they no longer have to be all that good, or responsive to what their users want. Do be evil! ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/25 "2012-07-15T20:35:12Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I was looking up: mystery diners fake to find allegations that the new show “Mystery Diners” is scripted. You would not believe how many sites about mystery shoppers came up. > [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > The question is why is it giving me ANY results with “shopper” replacing “diners”? If I wanted to look up mystery shoppers, I would have done something really stupid and searched for “mystery shoppers” You are not using the search engine correctly. Try using quotes around phrases. \*\*“mystery diners” fake \*\* Try that. You’ll get only hits containing the exact phrase **mystery diners** , and not to mystery shoppers. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/26 "2012-07-15T20:39:31Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > You are not using the search engine correctly. Try using quotes around phrases. > > \*\*“mystery diners” fake \*\* > > Try that. You’ll get only hits containing the exact phrase **mystery diners** , and not to mystery shoppers. Your last sentence is not correct. True, it helps, but it also brings back results that do not contain the exact phrase, but do contain similar phrases such as “mystery diner”. That page was on about the tenth page of results, but if you search for rarer phrases, the false positives are much higher. Quote and verbatim help, but they don’t quite do what they purport to do. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/27 "2012-07-15T22:34:41Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > These are the consequences of allowing one company to gain an effective monopoly, folks. Google _was_ the best, they drove all the real competition out of the search business, and now, even though in most respects they still remain the best, by some distance, they no longer have to be all that good, or responsive to what their users want. All of the complaints here are somewhat missing the point. It’s not that Google isn’t innovating and it’s not that Google is making its products worse. Instead Google is responding to its research of what will make the greatest number of general users the happiest. If you are not a general user, then you may be slighted. If you are a power user then you might get annoyed at Google trying to anticipate you. But Google doesn’t care about you as much as it cares about one million users who are cheering these changes. It can’t be McDonalds and Per Se simultaneously, and if it has decided to be more like McDonalds that only means more billions in their pockets. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/28 "2012-07-15T23:01:04Z")
My complaint is somewhat different. I find a lot of searches seem to give me useless link aggregator sites whose only purpose is to generate ad revenue. I search, for example, for a computer error. I get a page with a few hundred error messages as links to wishywashy content, but broad enough to contain many keywords. Alternatively I search for a specific problem on, say, outlook disconnects from Exchange, and find the same discussion on Several totally different pages, word for word. is someone lifting content, or linking and rewrapping it? Much had been said in the past years about how Google tried to defeat those trying to exploit the search algorithms, but I see no progress to fix this problem. Have they stopped caring? ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/29 "2012-07-15T23:04:01Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > All of the complaints here are somewhat missing the point. It’s not that Google isn’t innovating and it’s not that Google is making its products worse. Instead Google is responding to its research of what will make the greatest number of general users the happiest. > > If you are not a general user, then you may be slighted. If you are a power user then you might get annoyed at Google trying to anticipate you. But Google doesn’t care about you as much as it cares about one million users who are cheering these changes. It can’t be McDonalds and Per Se simultaneously, and if it has decided to be more like McDonalds that only means more billions in their pockets. This is just the “it’s free so you shouldn’t ever complain” red herring again. They could actually do both (although, no doubt, it would cut into their massive profits a bit). They could allow both the option of searching for Google’s guess at what you mean, or allow you to search for what you actually type. Indeed, not so long ago you could do the latter via the “advanced search” page. The page still exists (last time I looked), and may give you a little more control over the search than you have at the front page, but even Advanced Search sometimes ignores certain search terms, or changes others into what it thinks they ought to be. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/30 "2012-07-15T23:20:51Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > This may well be the ‘Google Filter Bubble’ issue. > More [here](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-google-filter-bubble-and-its-problems/29879/). More about the “Google Filter Bubble”: DuckDuckGo has an illustrated essay on the subject [here](http://dontbubble.us/). Several posters above have written words to the effect: “Strange, I just did the same search and didn’t get the same results you [earlier poster] said you got.” One point DuckDuckGo emphasizes, that many posters above may have missed, if that _the same search returns different results to different people_. Based on the volumes of data Google has allegedly collected on everyone, they filter results according to what they think you would like to see, and build the results page accordingly. ---
**Author:** ![Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunzio_Tavulari)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/31 "2012-07-15T23:27:12Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’m also puzzled about the comments here. I put mystery diners fake into Google and got a page with hits for the show Mystery Diners on top and hits on mystery shoppers mixed in lower down. When I added quotes to “Mystery Diners” the word shoppers doesn’t appear until hit #66 and a total of four appear in the first 100. There is not a single ad-based link either time. > > What can you possibly be doing to get results like yours? “Mystery Diner” fake I only got 29 valid results in the first 40, and 4 of them referenced this thread. Everyone’s reality is different with Google which is one of the things that is most frustrating. Overall there is none better than Google but on an individual query there can be several better options. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/32 "2012-07-16T08:44:45Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I started getting disgusted with google months, perhaps a year ago and switched to [DuckDuckGo](http://www.duckduckgo.com). I have not been disappointed. Is it just coincidence that the name of this search engine is very similar to **Duck Duck Goose** , a poster who was known for googling the answers to GQs? ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/33 "2012-07-16T11:47:18Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > You are not using the search engine correctly. Try using quotes around phrases. > > \*\*“mystery diners” fake \*\* > > Try that. You’ll get only hits containing the exact phrase **mystery diners** , and not to mystery shoppers. > [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Your last sentence is not correct. True, it helps, but it also brings back results that do not contain the exact phrase, but do contain similar phrases such as “mystery diner”. That page was on about the tenth page of results, but if you search for rarer phrases, the false positives are much higher. Quote and verbatim help, but they don’t quite do what they purport to do. One of the biggest problems is that Google, lately, keeps changing the rules about things like this, as they also did for the effect of the + symbol, and not publicizing the fact very well, if at all. Indeed, it is not at all easy to find information about Google’s more advanced search options. You can Google for them, but you have to know at least something about them to know what to search for. I think that once upon a time, putting a phrase in quotes did ensure a strictly matched phrase search, just as, in the golden days, you wold once get a strict boolean AND search on a sequence of terms (and then, until fairly recently, you would get that if you prefixed each them with a plus sign. No more. Now your results are served up according to complex rules that we probably could not understand even if we could discover what they were, and the effects of using “advanced” search techniques have themselves become ill defined, unknowable, and changeable. I have no faith, incidentally, that the _Verbatim tool_ being touted up thread will really consistently do what is advertised, or that it will work at all for very much longer, after Google makes some more of its behind-the-scenes changes to its interface. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/34 "2012-07-16T12:25:46Z")
I also don’t get why searches are OR - the more words you use, the more hits you get. You’d think the searches would be more specific. Also, they don’t mention how to use the +, " etc, maybe because they change too fast. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/35 "2012-07-16T13:51:39Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > I also don’t get why searches are OR - the more words you use, the more hits you get. You’d think the searches would be more specific. Also, they don’t mention how to use the +, " etc, maybe because they change too fast. Huh? Does that happen? ( glances around room, picks a couple of random objects in sight ) \*\*clock \*\*- 648 Million hits \*\*shelf \*\*- 223 million hits \*\*lamp \*\*- 381 million hits \*\*clock shelf \*\*- 29.1 million hits. \*\*clock shelf lamp \*\*- 12 million hits Seems to me the search is AND - the more words you use, the fewer hits you get ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/36 "2012-07-16T13:57:35Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > Except that verbatim isn’t really verbatim. It still changes things to be “helpful”. In particular, it ignores punctuation, which makes it nearly useless for finding some things. I’m not an expert on indexing software, but my understanding was that including punctuation in the index would make it much larger. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/37 "2012-07-16T15:13:17Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > All of the complaints here are somewhat missing the point. It’s not that Google isn’t innovating and it’s not that Google is making its products worse. Instead Google is responding to its research of what will make the greatest number of general users the happiest. > > If you are not a general user, then you may be slighted. If you are a power user then you might get annoyed at Google trying to anticipate you. But Google doesn’t care about you as much as it cares about one million users who are cheering these changes. It can’t be McDonalds and Per Se simultaneously, and if it has decided to be more like McDonalds that only means more billions in their pockets. I think you have come to the wrong conclusion. It’s not that some people are satisfied with search and some people aren’t, the problem is that some searches return good results due to simplicity/popularity and other searches do not due to context/meaning. Searches for advanced and beginner users are in both of those sets but only the advanced users may be aware/motivated to try more complex ways to get at correct data. Basically we are at search 2.0 (AltaVista was 1.0) but many users realize the need to get to 3.0 (semantic search). ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/38 "2012-07-16T17:15:45Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > Basically we are at search 2.0 (AltaVista was 1.0) but many users realize the need to get to 3.0 (semantic search). The trouble is that Google is trying but largely failing to do something like 3.0, and in the process ruining its ability to do 2.0 well, something it used to pretty much have down. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/39 "2012-07-16T17:19:13Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Is it just coincidence that the name of this search engine is very similar to **Duck Duck Goose** , a poster who was known for googling the answers to GQs? I certainly hope so. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/40 "2012-07-16T17:48:38Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > This is just the “it’s free so you shouldn’t ever complain” red herring again. > > They could actually do both (although, no doubt, it would cut into their massive profits a bit). They could allow both the option of searching for Google’s guess at what you mean, or allow you to search for what you actually type. Indeed, not so long ago you could do the latter via the “advanced search” page. The page still exists (last time I looked), and may give you a little more control over the search than you have at the front page, but even Advanced Search sometimes ignores certain search terms, or changes others into what it thinks they ought to be. I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t complain. Complain all you want. I’m trying to explain why I think your complaints are likely to go unheeded. You seem to think that it should be possible for Google to adapt its main claim to fame, its intuitive search, in ways that would satisfy the majority of users and at the same time be flexible enough to individuals to use in individual ways. It may not be even theoretically possible to do so with the complexity of its current search algorithms. If it is, then it’s unsure whether the payback from the extra staff work would make up for it. What’s cheaper is teach the users to adapt to the software than to get the software to adapt to a billion users. Google seems to agree. [Google Announces Free “Power Search Strategies” Class](http://www.inquisitr.com/264822/google-announces-free-power-search-strategies-class/). > [@](#): > > Want to learn how you can better utilize Google to create advanced searches that yield the results you want? Google on Wednesday announced a new free course called Power Searching With Google that aims to help users looking for advanced search options. > > The program which will allow thousands of Google fans to participate was built around the “Massive Open Online Course” structure pioneered by Stanford and MIT. The search company will also use Google+ and Hangouts to answer questions in small groups that will be moderated by search experts. Google will also provide Google Groups for collaboration with other students. All additional questions will be answered by Google employees. > > Here’s the official response from Google: > > ``` > “Today, we’ve opened registration for Power Searching with Google, a free, online, community-based course showcasing these techniques and how you can use them to solve everyday problems. Our course is aimed at empowering you to find what you need faster, no matter how you currently use search. For example, did you know that you can search for and read pages written in languages you’ve never even studied? Identify the location of a picture your friend took during his vacation a few months ago? How about finally identifying that green-covered book about gardening that you’ve been trying to track down for years? You can learn all this and more over six 50-minute classes.” > > ``` > > Google will begin offer the classes starting on July 10, 2012 and users will have two weeks to finish the classes at their own leisure. I think I’ll sign up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291.md?page=3)