# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/61 "2012-07-17T18:01:46Z")
Take the “mystery diners fake” search. Yes, people are seeing some different links than others. But in this thread, _everyone_ seems to agree that every link on the first page is to “diners,” not “shoppers,” and that there are plenty of directly relevant links on that page. And looking at the links I see, there is more than enough information linked to satisfy the curiosity of anyone who’s wondering about that particular topic. Why anyone would look at page two of such a search (except when researching the engine itself perhaps) is beyond me. It’s possible I’m lucky and others are getting worse first page results… but that remains a speculative possibility til someone can actually provide an image or something. I mean, if you’re searching “mystery diners fake” how much are you really asking for? What more can you want, if you’re executing that search, that is not provided in the first page or two of google search links? ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/62 "2012-07-17T18:11:56Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So then… if the punctuation thing isn’t bothering people, I’m still in need of examples of clearly bad google searches, or cases where another (general web search) engine does clearly better. Do you not run into searches that google and really no other search engine give satisfactory results? I do all the time when I am looking into detailed items (usually scientific or computer related) that just aren’t popular enough to be handled properly. In addition, there are times when I really need to make complex use of AND and OR to get past the things that are unrelated but show up due to the fairly simple linking of terms. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/63 "2012-07-17T18:18:09Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > Do you not run into searches that google and really no other search engine give satisfactory results? I guess for me a “bad search” would be one which gives results the engine can reasonably be expected to do better on–so if no one else gives me a “good search” this makes me suspect the problem is simply intractable at present, and so it’s hard for me to think of google as having given me a “bad search.” > [@](#): > > I do all the time when I am looking into detailed items (usually scientific or computer related) that just aren’t popular enough to be handled properly. I’d say general internet search engines just aren’t the right tool for that job, though. > [@](#): > > In addition, there are times when I really need to make complex use of AND and OR to get past the things that are unrelated but show up due to the fairly simple linking of terms. I guess I have never run into the need to do something like this. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/64 "2012-07-17T18:50:12Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I guess for me a “bad search” would be one which gives results the engine can reasonably be expected to do better on–so if no one else gives me a “good search” this makes me suspect the problem is simply intractable at present, and so it’s hard for me to think of google as having given me a “bad search.” AltaVista was able to handle advanced searches of this nature and google kind of was able to, but not to the same degree of control as AltaVista. > [@](#): > > I’d say general internet search engines just aren’t the right tool for that job, though. The point is that the capability has existed in the past and from a technical perspective could be in the product and that would increase the number of searches that are successful. You seem to be saying that because those capabilities have been removed then the tool is no longer the right tool, and that is exactly the point of the complaint. > [@](#): > > I guess I have never run into the need to do something like this. I do frequently. To the point of wishing I could take the million or so hits that google has returned, download them and perform my own advanced search. If google had an API that allowed me to get at the results, I would write this utility, but I don’t believe they allow that. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/65 "2012-07-17T19:18:24Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > AltaVista was able to handle advanced searches of this nature and google kind of was able to, but not to the same degree of control as AltaVista. Altavista is unfortunately a little before my time. (Not a function of age strictly–I was a bit of a latecomer to the internet for my age.) Did Altavista simply have a more complete index? (Could this be a function of how much smaller the internet was back then?) > [@](#): > > The point is that the capability has existed in the past and from a technical perspective could be in the product and that would increase the number of searches that are successful. I guess I see your point–but when I want to find out technical information, I’ve never encountered a problem. I just didn’t use a general web search, is all. And so while it might be nice to have one “go to” search engine for everything, the need hasn’t pressed itself on me too terribly. Maybe for others the felt need is greater, so maybe there’s more demand than I would have thought. > [@](#): > > You seem to be saying that because those capabilities have been removed then the tool is no longer the right tool, and that is exactly the point of the complaint. That’s not what I’m saying. For one thing, I am not fully aware of the capabilities actually having been removed. I’d still love to see something someone has written which gives specific examples to illustrate the kind of thing you’re talking about. And for another thing, I wasn’t saying that it’s not the right tool _because_ it lacks the capability, but rather _because_ it lacks the capability _and_ there are other tools which don’t _and_ the category under which this tool seems to fall (general web search) doesn’t pop out at me as being particularly relevant for the kind of technical searches you’re talking about. I mean, what exactly are you talking about? Journal databases? > [@](#): > > I do frequently. To the point of wishing I could take the million or so hits that google has returned, download them and perform my own advanced search. > > If google had an API that allowed me to get at the results, I would write this utility, but I don’t believe they allow that. So am I accurately hearing from you that there are certain tasks you would love to be able to do, in the course of your work, in a google-like context, and for which there are currently no convenient solutions? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/66 "2012-07-17T19:24:21Z")
I could be suffering from a kind of confirmation bias here–perhaps whenever I’ve run up against a bad search result, I’ve simply thought either my search-fu was weak, or else there simply isn’t anything relevant on the web. Perhaps I was wrong to believe that disjunction. I don’t know, though. No examples come to mind so it’s hard for me to make an evaluation here. I’ll try to watch for it in the future though. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/67 "2012-07-17T19:36:08Z")
Another Bing apologist. I’m no power user, but I find Google irritating in a number of mundane ways and prefer Bing. I think Google is about 5% better at delivering results, but that means that I need to turn to Google for one search out of twenty (Hmmm, that doesn’t match with my experience. Maybe it’s about 1% better for what I’m generally searching for). If Google is getting slightly worse every year, Bing is definitely getting better. Give it a few years and they could be equal. ---
**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 17, 2012, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/68 "2012-07-17T20:48:05Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Well, OK, but AFAIK Google (and probably all or most other search engines) has always ignored punctuation. This is really not a case of the worsening and dumbing down of Google search that is what most people (including me) have been complaining about in this thread. Furthermore, I can see Google’s point of view on this one. Including punctuation would surely vastly increase the size of their index, and the number of people like you, to whom it matters, must be minuscule. I’m not complaining about “dumbing down” the search. Just the opposite. There are times when it is being too clever. I want an option to do an absolutely stupid search. A search for exactly what I typed without wasting cpu cycles trying to parse it in any way. I don’t always need Ask Jeeves, sometimes I need Ask Amelia Bedelia. I’m not looking for a search that can do more, I’m looking for a search that will do less if I ask it to. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/69 "2012-07-17T21:34:12Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > Again, it’s my understanding is that if it included punctuation in its indexing, the index would be much larger (and hence it would require more resources to store and it would probably be slower to use). For instance, if you wanted the search terms “end” and “end.” and “end,” and “end;” to each be a separate entry, that’s four times as much storage as just storing “end”. Not really. First of all, it’s not actually stored that naively, secondly, they have to deal with this anyway. Look at car+a letter: cara (a name) carb, card, care, carl, carn, carp, carr (a name), cars, cart, cary (a name), etc. (And those are just the ones I know will give a good number of hits.) Look, as mentioned above, you are not the customer, you are the product being sold. They are trying to make money off of advertisers, not you. If you are trying to Google “seers”, they want to make that into “Sears” and then justify placing ads for Sears on the page, which they then charge Sears for. So, they try to “broaden” your search to include things that will make them money. Going all “vebatimy”, forcing the search terms to actually be on the page, matching all search terms, etc. returns too specific of pages. Ones that they can’t legitimately attach ads to without their ad buyers noticing and getting mad. So why should they do that? ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/70 "2012-07-17T21:53:55Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Going all “vebatimy”, forcing the search terms to actually be on the page, matching all search terms, etc. returns too specific of pages. Ones that they can’t legitimately attach ads to without their ad buyers noticing and getting mad. So why should they do that? Because the very essence of Google is that it is a useful search engine. Once they lose that identity, they’re going the way of Yahoo search and all the others. Advertisers want links, yes, but they mostly want eyeballs. If Google is displaced as the most useful (and popular) search engine, advertisers will move, even if Google does a better job at providing links to ‘customers’. ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/71 "2012-07-17T22:04:06Z")
I live in Denmark, and Google always gives me hits from the Danish wikipedia a little above or below the hits from the English wikipedia. I HATE it, and I can’t make it stop. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/72 "2012-07-17T22:26:59Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > I’m not complaining about “dumbing down” the search. Just the opposite. There are times when it is being too clever. I want an option to do an absolutely stupid search. A search for exactly what I typed without wasting cpu cycles trying to parse it in any way. I don’t always need Ask Jeeves, sometimes I need Ask Amelia Bedelia. > > I’m not looking for a search that can do more, I’m looking for a search that will do less if I ask it to. I think we are saying the same thing here, just using terms differently: you mean dumb as applied to the search algorithm, I mean dumb as applied to the audience it is catering to. I agree that Google, these days is often being too darn clever in trying to accommodate dumb people (or, rather, people who do not want to think about their search terms too much, and are searching for commonly used sites, which, no doubt, is all of us much of the time). However, sometimes smart people (or, rather, people searching for more recondite or more specific material) would like it not to try to be so clever trying to second-guess us, but to just search for what we asked it to search for, and in a consistent way, like it used to. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/73 "2012-07-17T22:40:14Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > Because the very essence of Google is that it is a useful search engine. Once they lose that identity, they’re going the way of Yahoo search and all the others. Advertisers want links, yes, but they mostly want eyeballs. If Google is displaced as the most useful (and popular) search engine, advertisers will move, even if Google does a better job at providing links to ‘customers’. I don’t know about that. Google controls the lion’s share of web advertising now, and you see it quite regardless of whether or not you actually use them to search. Google’s success does not just follow from their having, originally, built what was then the best search engine by far. There was a second brilliant coup (I don’t know who was responsible, but my guess is it was not Larry and Sergei) when they decided to corner the market not in flashy, high-price, attention grabbing animated banner ads, pop-ups and the like, but in relatively cheap, unobtrusive and non-annoying text ads. That is where their huge profits come from (and they came from not being evil!). Unfortunately, Google has now turned to the dark-side, but if it turns out to ultimately hurt them as well as us, it will take a long time. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/74 "2012-07-18T19:38:12Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > Because the very essence of Google is that it is a useful search engine. Once they lose that identity, they’re going the way of Yahoo search and all the others. Advertisers want links, yes, but they mostly want eyeballs. If Google is displaced as the most useful (and popular) search engine, advertisers will move, even if Google does a better job at providing links to ‘customers’. When they were small and coming up in the world, that is no doubt how they thought. If you’ve tracked Google’s business changes and the responses since then, it’s pretty clear they are so isolated from user needs and think of themselves as so invincible that no one in Mountain View is worried about losing users. They should, but they don’t. The only recent major rival to come on the scene is Bing, and MS is bleeding so much money that they’ve put it on the shopping block. (Last year to Facebook, more recently to anyone with $ and a stupid look.) Google is confident, overconfident. The changes we are seeing are the result of that. It wouldn’t be the first company to ignore its users (or customers) and go belly up. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/75 "2012-07-27T02:25:28Z")
I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve come to the conclusion Google is great at searching for ONE thing - a quote from a movie, a song lyric, what was the world’s first automobile accident, etc. You can hit it with illogical grammar. terrible spelng, different forms of words and it’ll still know what you’re looking for. But all these come at the cost of searching for ALL THE THINGS. If you want to find all the pages regarding safety pins, it won’t do so well. What it gives you are its best guesses at what you’re looking for, in descending order. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/76 "2012-07-27T02:27:51Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve come to the conclusion Google is great at searching for ONE thing - a quote from a movie, a song lyric, what was the world’s first automobile accident, etc. You can hit it with illogical grammar. terrible spelng, different forms of words and it’ll still know what you’re looking for. But all these come at the cost of searching for ALL THE THINGS. If you want to find all the pages regarding safety pins, it won’t do so well. What it gives you are its best guesses at what you’re looking for, in descending order. This sounds right to me. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/77 "2012-07-27T04:02:43Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve come to the conclusion Google is great at searching for ONE thing - a quote from a movie, a song lyric, what was the world’s first automobile accident, etc. You can hit it with illogical grammar. terrible spelng, different forms of words and it’ll still know what you’re looking for. But all these come at the cost of searching for ALL THE THINGS. If you want to find all the pages regarding safety pins, it won’t do so well. What it gives you are its best guesses at what you’re looking for, in descending order. It is not so much one thing versus all things, as popular things versus related but more esoteric things. Once, when Google behave predictably, if you knew the rules you could refine and narrow your search until you found the esoteric thing you wanted. Now, there is no guarantee you can do that at all, and you can’t learn the rules properly because they keep changing without notice. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/78 "2012-07-27T04:12:21Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > It is not so much one thing versus all things, as popular things versus related but more esoteric things. Once, when Google behave predictably, if you knew the rules you could refine and narrow your search until you found the esoteric thing you wanted. Now, there is no guarantee you can do that at all, and you can’t learn the rules properly because they keep changing without notice. **Raftpeople** above gave some abstract descriptions of the kind of esoterica you mention here. I’m wondering if you can provide a more specific example, though. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/79 "2012-07-27T04:46:48Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > **Raftpeople** above gave some abstract descriptions of the kind of esoterica you mention here. I’m wondering if you can provide a more specific example, though. Yes. Just the other day, in reference to recent Cafe Society thread, I tried to find information on a science fiction story I once read, by a Soviet author, called _Sigma Draconis_. A search for _Sigma Draconis_ netted me lots of sites with information about the star of that name, and several dealing with other science fiction stories that reference the star, particularly an episode of Star Trek. Adding in some other terms, like _Soviet_ and _story_ got rid of most of the astronomical information, but still left me with lots of Star Trek stuff (thanks, Mr. Chekov!), and no sign of what I was looking for. At that point I gave up. In the old days I might well have gone on refining my search, using boolean operators etc, and might eventually have found what I wanted (or not - it may be too old and obscure to be on the web). These days, Google no longer behaves predictably enough for it to be worth the effort. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/80 "2012-07-27T15:29:38Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > **Raftpeople** above gave some abstract descriptions of the kind of esoterica you mention here. I’m wondering if you can provide a more specific example, though. I think the term esoteric is too strong, anything that is overwhelmed by the massively popular or extremely current can be difficult to find, even if it wouldn’t be normally considered esoteric. It’s like google is a popularity/current event amplifier, causing the top 5 percent of items to sometimes grow to enormous proportions, drowning out much of the 95%. That makes it great for what is very popular/current and it limits the usefulness for other items. I don’t know why they don’t want to allow an advanced search, but ignoring it leaves open a legitimate niche for a competitor. Also, I’ve been tracking this issue, I run into it frequently, almost daily. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291.md?page=5)