# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/81 "2012-07-27T16:11:56Z")
I consider myself good at searching, in fact I’ve written search engines. Here is an example of a bad search. On Mental Floss I had read a reference to Colonel Sanders inviting J Edgar Hoover to his birthday party, but Hoover declined because of something Sanders had done in the past. So I searched for: **colonel sanders criminal record** What does Google give me? **colonel sanders background**. No mention of the word “criminal” in the first 3 hits that I checked. That is really what’s wrong with Google, give me what I typed, not what you “think” I want. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/82 "2012-07-27T16:23:23Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > 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. And that’s what I’m talking about. Suppose you added “author” or “book” to your search; on a search like that, Google is just as likely to assume you didn’t really want sites with “book” or “author” (or “Did you mean ‘Arthur’?”). They make it easier for all the fucktwats out there but they simultaneously take away the functionality for people who know how to do searches. As for the people that say Cad you’re over reacting because “mystery shopper” doesn’t show up until the second page (on my search there were a couple near the bottom of the first page), they miss the entire point. I don’t want may search to pull up 1,300,000,000 pages that may be tangentally related to what I want. If there are exactly 32,619 pages with “mystery diners” “fake” on it, then I want those pages and nothing more. ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/83 "2012-07-27T16:50:53Z")
The other day I was searching for information on a shooting star I had seen. Google saw fit to come up with results containing the word “asteroid” when I searched for “meteor”, despite the fact that they’re completely different things. Chances are there was no useful information to be found, but if there was Google didn’t make things very easy. At other times it’s very useful when you’re not quite sure of the wording, for example if you’re looking for a quote. Perhaps some way to vary Google’s “helpfulness” would be useful. ---
**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, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/84 "2012-07-27T17:23:27Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > 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. Thanks for that example. It’s helping me see what you guys are talking about. What I’d really love to see is examples where the information is established by independent means to be available online somewhere (in a way accessible to general web search engines) but finding it through Google is inordinately difficult. Not what I asked for explicitly, of course, so I don’t mean to say you didn’t provide an example of what I asked for. You did. ---
**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, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/85 "2012-07-27T17:25:07Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > If there are exactly 32,619 pages with “mystery diners” “fake” on it, then I want those pages and nothing more. 32,619 pages? Are you going to read all of them? If not–if you’re actually going to just look at one, maybe two pages of links–then why are you concerned about the content of the other 32618 or more? ---
**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, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/86 "2012-07-27T17:28:00Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > I consider myself good at searching, in fact I’ve written search engines. > > Here is an example of a bad search. On Mental Floss I had read a reference to Colonel Sanders inviting J Edgar Hoover to his birthday party, but Hoover declined because of something Sanders had done in the past. So I searched for: **colonel sanders criminal record** > > What does Google give me? **colonel sanders background**. No mention of the word “criminal” in the first 3 hits that I checked. That is really what’s wrong with Google, give me what I typed, not what you “think” I want. From this I conclude there is no information on a criminal record for colonel sanders available through Google. I guess you’d prefer it if Google were to actually say so explicitly though. I can understand that. I just kind of take it as given–but I can see that the results could be considered ambiguous on this point. It would be good if we could see, independently, whether the information is actually there to be found. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/87 "2012-07-27T17:32:30Z")
> [@rmanbike](#): > > I would have to agree, but what I dislike is that now every search results, the top 3 results will be paid adds. And I have yet to figure out how to opt out of this Why would you expect there to be any way to opt out of seeing the ads? Displaying ads is the whole point of Google. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/88 "2012-07-27T17:32:58Z")
I’ll check out [Blekko](http://blekko.com/) now and then, but inertia and instinct keeps me returning to Google. I’ve found myself using quotes in Google searches now, which seems to help a bit. ---
**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, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/89 "2012-07-27T19:45:24Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > From this I conclude there is no information on a criminal record for colonel sanders available through Google. A very shaky inference, given the way Google now behaves. > [@Frylock](#): > > I guess you’d prefer it if Google were to actually say so explicitly though. I can understand that. And it _used_ to say so explicitly, by the simple expedient of returning zero results. The fact that it now does not do that, but just decides for itself to ignore some of your search terms, is why many of us no longer trust it. ---
**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, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/90 "2012-07-27T20:27:42Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > It would be good if we could see, independently, whether the information is actually there to be found. Yes the info typically is there, sometimes it’s something found previously or sometimes it’s something eventually found after much work. One of the reasons it’s difficult to give you many examples is that google searches are frequent enough that they don’t typically stand out enough to commit to memory, but the pattern is definitely noticed. You seem to hyper-skeptical about this, why? ---
**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, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/91 "2012-07-27T20:44:00Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > 32,619 pages? Are you going to read all of them? If not–if you’re actually going to just look at one, maybe two pages of links–then why are you concerned about the content of the other 32618 or more? 1. The searches that are problematic require far more than viewing 1 or 2 links, I will go through 10 pages of links looking for stuff 2. A smaller set of relevant pages also provides a smaller set of irrelevant pages due to search items that can then be eliminated with the minus, thus iteratively getting closer to the desired information 3. A smaller set of pages based on the specific terms required increases the chances that the first page will contain the desired information ---
**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, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/92 "2012-07-27T21:56:51Z")
Not skeptical, just incomprehending. This is probably related to the fact that it’s difficult for me to imagine a topic about which I would find a 10 page list of google links to be worth going through. ---
**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, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/93 "2012-07-27T22:09:03Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > A very shaky inference, given the way Google now behaves. I’m not sure it’s shaky. One of the first five links is usually sufficient for my purpose in searching, and relevance generally drops the lower down the complete list of links I go.\* So, if none of the first two pages or so are sufficient for my purpose, the information probably is not accessible to google. \*Generally in the sense that there’s some small number n such that in every case if I look only at every nth link each successive looked-at link will be less relevant than the one I looked at last. ---
**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, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/94 "2012-07-27T22:48:16Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Not skeptical, just incomprehending. This is probably related to the fact that it’s difficult for me to imagine a topic about which I would find a 10 page list of google links to be worth going through. Yes, if you can’t imagine the problem then it would be tough to understand the need for a solution. ---
**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, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/95 "2012-07-27T23:23:43Z")
nm ---
**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, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/96 "2012-07-27T23:24:42Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > Yes, if you can’t imagine the problem then it would be tough to understand the need for a solution. Exactly–that’s why I kept asking for concrete examples. ---
**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, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/97 "2012-07-27T23:26:52Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > **control-z** : I found what you were looking for: > > “After searching the Colonel’s criminal record, Hoover gently declined.” > > [Colonel Sanders and FBI](http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/134657) > > You may want to re-think what conclusions you can draw after viewing the first few search results. That’s actually the article **ctrl-z** already read–the one that sent him off on the search in the first place. 😉 I want to bet a hundred dollars that there are no relevant google results to be had on that topic–but my wife would kill me and “relevant google results” is probably too hard to define for betting purposes. 😛 ---
**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, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/98 "2012-07-27T23:27:22Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I’m not sure it’s shaky. One of the first five links is usually sufficient for my purpose in searching, and relevance generally drops the lower down the complete list of links I go. The fact that it is usually sufficient for your purposes is quite beside the point of whether it is sufficient generally. Not everybody has your search needs. Today’s Google does indeed make it easier for casual users to find commonly sought information, without them having to give much care and attention to teh construction of their search. However, it make sit much harder, if not downright impossible, for people to find certain sorts of more esoteric information, even if they are prepared to put a lot of effort into constructing their query. But I feel I am repeating myself, and repeating what **RaftPeople** and others have also been telling you. You have been given specific examples, but you reject them on the grounds that you personally have not had a problem. Just because you have not encountered a problem, it does not follow that there is not a problem. Have you ever had ebola? No? Does that mean it does not exist? Why are you finding this so hard to grasp? And yes it is a shaky inference. I would go so far as to say (on the basis of doing many Google searches back when it responded consistently and did what was asked) that, nine times out of ten, it is a _false_ inference. Very often, the information is there somewhere, but not in the most popular sources that Google now insists on serving up at the top of its list. You used to be able to winnow it out. Now you can’t. ---
**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, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/99 "2012-07-27T23:28:57Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > The fact that it is usually sufficient for your purposes is quite beside the point of whether it is sufficient generally. But it’s exactly relevant to the thing I said that you were responding to. > [@](#): > > Not everybody has your search needs. I know. This is exactly why I keep asking for specific examples. I’m really curious about this. ---
**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, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291/100 "2012-07-27T23:33:01Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > You have been given specific examples, but you reject them on the grounds that you personally have not had a problem. That’s not even close to the grounds I’ve given for my reactions–and the reactions weren’t even “rejection” but more along the lines of clarifying what I’d meant to ask for in the first place. What would really clear this all up for me, to reiterate, would be examples of searches for which the information is _definitely_ available through google, but for which the required search terms are somehow arcane, complicated, or nonintuitive in the way you guys have been describing–or for which there _are_ no good search terms and you must instead sift through many pages of results. It would also help me if I knew what kind of tasks you guys are talking about for which it is reliably relevant to look at many pages of results. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-google-search-horrible-now/628291.md?page=6)