I'll come out and say it: Google's search quality is terrible. It's better than the competition, but that's a low bar. Most people do pretty good with Google si

I'll come out and say it: Google's search quality is terrible. It's better than the competition, but that's a low bar. Most people do pretty good with Google simply because 1. their searches are "solved" by simply reducing the search space to pages that contain the combination of rare words in the query (e.g. "correct battery horse staple" is referring to the xkcd comic with high probability), along with the social signal of backlink ranking, 2. Google has trained us to use it effectively and so our expectations for search match that which Google can effectively deliver, and 3. All the meta-signalling that Google uses to turn obtuse queries like "that movie with the guy who does the thing" into the correct answer. But in general, if you can't figure out the exact words that are on the page you're interested in, the illusion fails and it reveals itself to be barely more than grep on steroids. Search is still waiting to be blown wide open and it very well could be by a competitor.