8 ms·

I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two keywo

I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two keywords in my search (usually the most generic ones) and ignore the rest. In addition, the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work. It is like google is guessing what I want, rather than trying to find what I have entered as a query. I don't know if this is because SEO has poisoned their index, or if I'm not googling "correctly" anymore.

gregcrv 7y ago
They are definitely trying to guess what you are searching for. One thing that drives me crazy is that they assume all of your searches are geographically or linguistically "local", they don't have an international search mode where the most relevant result in the world shows up.
- extropy 7y ago
  Yes, Google is definately not a keyword search engine anymore, and not a great "question answering" engine yet. Uncanney walley?
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    "whats the movie where all the kids shoot ewch other on an island" Pretty good for me. Gives me Battle Royale. "whos the african warlord who has that laughing gif" Top result is video of "Idi Amin laughing on a boat". Just the thing I was thinking of. Pretty good. "whats the name of the principle that two particles csnt have the same characteristics" Pauli's Exclusion Principle as the top result. Great. Google has always worked really well for me.
- hunter-gatherer 7y ago
  Google trying to guess everything I was doing before me is what finally broke me from them. The day (not terrible long ago) I started typing an email in gmail and they were auto-typing entire sentences for me I lost it. I don't need an algorithm to help dictate my sentence structure. I can do that on me own.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    That one showed up as a pop-up box for me and asked me if I wanted to turn on suggestions. I don't think they changed that.
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      If you ignore/x/adblock the popup it'll assume yes.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  One thing that drives me crazy is that they assume all of your searches are geographically or linguistically "local" It wouldn't be so terrible, except that Google is extraordinarily bad at geolocation. Right now, Google thinks my work computer is in southern New Mexico. Google thinks my personal computer, right next to it, is in northern Nevada. Google thinks my mobile phone, in between the two, is in Los Angeles. All of those locations are hundreds of miles wrong. But it gets even worse when you want to know about something in a place other than where you're standing right now. It's like nobody inside Google has ever done any trip planning in their entire lives. Apple Maps has the opposite problem, though. If I want to search for a German restaurant near my location in the United States, it will show me places in Germany.
  - gowld 7y ago
    How is Google supposed to know which location you want if you don't tell it and you don't want it to guess? It can't customize results just for you and serve bad results to the other 99% of users.
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      It could just not customize my results. When I search for "peking duck recipe" show me a recipe for peking duck, and don't show me "local" restaurants which are 300 miles away.
rurp 7y ago
Google ignoring what I had actually typed and instead showing results to a more popular query that was similar, but distinctly different, is what finally got me to switch over to DuckDuckGo. Now that I've gotten used to DDG I find Google unpleasant to use. The amount of ads and clutter on the page is distracting, and the organic results seemed ever more skewed towards ecommerce results.
- lanstin 7y ago
  Some of that skew might be their algorithm noticing that the great unwashed masses are looking for ecommerce. I should give DDG another try, it was not that great last time I tried (few years ago?)
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    * Some of that skew might be their algorithm noticing that the great unwashed masses are looking for ecommerce* Not necessarily. The great unwashed masses may not be searching for ecommerce, but people not searching for ecommerce may not be monetizable. Let's say we run a basketball web site that has a search engine. People sometimes type the word "travel" into the search bar. We can show them results related to the rules violation of "travelling," and/or results related to physical travel such as "trusted partners" who provide charter trips to playoff games. It could be that we know that 90% of the searches for the word "travel" are for the rules violation. But the remaining 10% are the ones that click on ads. And we get a kickback when someone clicks on an ad on our site. If all we care about is the web site's revenue, we might choose to prioritize showing travel to basketball games, even though we know it's only relevant for 10% of the users who query the word "travel." It may only be 10% of our users, but it's 100% of our revenue from keyword searches for "travel." So we show the monetizable results, and maybe--if we are feeling generous--we'll show a little line, "Showing results for travel to games. Click here to search for travel (violation)." -- TL;DR: We don't need to assume that Google is trying to provide good search results for everyone. They might be trying to provide the results that maximize their immediate revenue.
  - aphextim 7y ago
    I bounce between DDG and Qwant. I usually can find what I am looking for from one of those two options. https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.qwant.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/
javiercr 7y ago
To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" (Tools > All results > Verbatim) It's a must if you're a developer searching for some obscure error message, yet still most people don't know about it.
- gnusci 7y ago
  While I find your answer very helpful. Now I first search with Qliqz and DDG coding related stuff! It is almost impossible nowadays to find an accurate technical result out of so many adds with Google.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" (Tools > All results > Verbatim) That hasn't worked for me for a long time.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" This isn't always honored. Google has been inconsistent with this for at least two years. It's noted on HN every time someone brings this up.
- gshdg 7y ago
  I tend to get zero results in verbatim and then find what I'm looking for after following a rabbit hole from some other search. It's like Google's given up on indexing more than 5% of the web any more.
- inetknght 7y ago
  > To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" This is IMO very power-user-hostile.
- mthoms 7y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. I just noticed that with "Verbatim mode" enabled, Google doesn't even try to estimate the number of results available. I find that curious.
coldpie 7y ago
> the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work I've seen people say this, but it still seems to work for me, and is even documented here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?visit_id=637154836244487301-2719189125&p=adv_operators&hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?visit_id...
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 7y ago
  Weird. It hasn’t worked for me in months. Maybe longer. Maybe I’m part of some UX strata.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Would you have an example to share?
II2II 7y ago
Perhaps they should create "Google Pro" that searches for what people ask for rather than trying to interpret what they mean. Don't get me wrong, the interpretations can be useful for generic queries. On the other hand, it is annoying when I know the exact terms that I need. > I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. Agreed. It also reminds me that the old engines weren't so much bad or that Google was better as the quality of the old engines degraded with time (may that be from the index being poisoned, paid inclusion of results, or something else).
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  It exists, there are several configuration options you can enable.
j4kp07 7y ago
The new UI with favicons was the last straw for me. Everything looks like an ad, which I'm sure is intentional. I've been adjusting to DDG for the past 4+ weeks.
toss1 7y ago
YEs. Switched to DuckDuckGo a few months ago and haven't looked back, the results pages are much cleaner, like the old Google results. One blatant issue with Google (& DDG still often does not get right) is the search for a specific busines - using the exact business name and sometimes even town - I expect their listing to be at the top. Instead there's piles of Yelp & listing pages, and I often cannot even find the actual Item for which I'm searching - sometimes have to go to the indexers, hunt for their posting of the intended [website], and go that way. Opportunity for someone to get it actually right...
- flyingfences 7y ago
  When I'm searching for local businesses, I find I get better results from searching GMaps than through the regular Google search.
dmos62 7y ago
What search engines are you using? I'm displeased with Google's search results, but others seem to be just trying to emulate it (and badly).
- BitwiseFool 7y ago
  A mix between Bing and DuckDuckGo for general keyword searches and I use Apple Maps to search for local businesses.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tsila 7y ago
  you might want to give shmoogle.world a try. It's growing rapidly in the artists community
aaronscott 7y ago
I noticed this behavior starting around the time the ranking algorithm became more ML driven. I think this may have been late 2015[0]. I switched to Duck Duck Go a few months back, at first for privacy reasons, but now find myself preferring that search engine's results for most things. [0] https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-updates-explained-282627 https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-update...
fiatjaf 7y ago
This. Please search engine, listen to this: it's ok if you don't have any results for what I'm searching. I want to know fast when there are no results, so I can try other queries. I don't want to open a dozen of pages before realizing you didn't had any results so only gave me garbage.

gregcrv 7y ago

They are definitely trying to guess what you are searching for. One thing that drives me crazy is that they assume all of your searches are geographically or linguistically "local", they don't have an international search mode where the most relevant result in the world shows up.

extropy 7y ago
Yes, Google is definately not a keyword search engine anymore, and not a great "question answering" engine yet. Uncanney walley?
- scarejunba 7y ago
  "whats the movie where all the kids shoot ewch other on an island" Pretty good for me. Gives me Battle Royale. "whos the african warlord who has that laughing gif" Top result is video of "Idi Amin laughing on a boat". Just the thing I was thinking of. Pretty good. "whats the name of the principle that two particles csnt have the same characteristics" Pauli's Exclusion Principle as the top result. Great. Google has always worked really well for me.
hunter-gatherer 7y ago
Google trying to guess everything I was doing before me is what finally broke me from them. The day (not terrible long ago) I started typing an email in gmail and they were auto-typing entire sentences for me I lost it. I don't need an algorithm to help dictate my sentence structure. I can do that on me own.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  That one showed up as a pop-up box for me and asked me if I wanted to turn on suggestions. I don't think they changed that.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    If you ignore/x/adblock the popup it'll assume yes.
reaperducer 7y ago
One thing that drives me crazy is that they assume all of your searches are geographically or linguistically "local" It wouldn't be so terrible, except that Google is extraordinarily bad at geolocation. Right now, Google thinks my work computer is in southern New Mexico. Google thinks my personal computer, right next to it, is in northern Nevada. Google thinks my mobile phone, in between the two, is in Los Angeles. All of those locations are hundreds of miles wrong. But it gets even worse when you want to know about something in a place other than where you're standing right now. It's like nobody inside Google has ever done any trip planning in their entire lives. Apple Maps has the opposite problem, though. If I want to search for a German restaurant near my location in the United States, it will show me places in Germany.
- gowld 7y ago
  How is Google supposed to know which location you want if you don't tell it and you don't want it to guess? It can't customize results just for you and serve bad results to the other 99% of users.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    It could just not customize my results. When I search for "peking duck recipe" show me a recipe for peking duck, and don't show me "local" restaurants which are 300 miles away.

rurp 7y ago

Google ignoring what I had actually typed and instead showing results to a more popular query that was similar, but distinctly different, is what finally got me to switch over to DuckDuckGo. Now that I've gotten used to DDG I find Google unpleasant to use. The amount of ads and clutter on the page is distracting, and the organic results seemed ever more skewed towards ecommerce results.

lanstin 7y ago
Some of that skew might be their algorithm noticing that the great unwashed masses are looking for ecommerce. I should give DDG another try, it was not that great last time I tried (few years ago?)
- braythwayt 7y ago
  * Some of that skew might be their algorithm noticing that the great unwashed masses are looking for ecommerce* Not necessarily. The great unwashed masses may not be searching for ecommerce, but people not searching for ecommerce may not be monetizable. Let's say we run a basketball web site that has a search engine. People sometimes type the word "travel" into the search bar. We can show them results related to the rules violation of "travelling," and/or results related to physical travel such as "trusted partners" who provide charter trips to playoff games. It could be that we know that 90% of the searches for the word "travel" are for the rules violation. But the remaining 10% are the ones that click on ads. And we get a kickback when someone clicks on an ad on our site. If all we care about is the web site's revenue, we might choose to prioritize showing travel to basketball games, even though we know it's only relevant for 10% of the users who query the word "travel." It may only be 10% of our users, but it's 100% of our revenue from keyword searches for "travel." So we show the monetizable results, and maybe--if we are feeling generous--we'll show a little line, "Showing results for travel to games. Click here to search for travel (violation)." -- TL;DR: We don't need to assume that Google is trying to provide good search results for everyone. They might be trying to provide the results that maximize their immediate revenue.
- aphextim 7y ago
  I bounce between DDG and Qwant. I usually can find what I am looking for from one of those two options. https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.qwant.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/

javiercr 7y ago

To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" (Tools > All results > Verbatim) It's a must if you're a developer searching for some obscure error message, yet still most people don't know about it.

gnusci 7y ago
While I find your answer very helpful. Now I first search with Qliqz and DDG coding related stuff! It is almost impossible nowadays to find an accurate technical result out of so many adds with Google.
JohnFen 7y ago
> To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" (Tools > All results > Verbatim) That hasn't worked for me for a long time.
reaperducer 7y ago
To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" This isn't always honored. Google has been inconsistent with this for at least two years. It's noted on HN every time someone brings this up.
gshdg 7y ago
I tend to get zero results in verbatim and then find what I'm looking for after following a rabbit hole from some other search. It's like Google's given up on indexing more than 5% of the web any more.
inetknght 7y ago
> To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim mode" This is IMO very power-user-hostile.
mthoms 7y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. I just noticed that with "Verbatim mode" enabled, Google doesn't even try to estimate the number of results available. I find that curious.

coldpie 7y ago

> the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work I've seen people say this, but it still seems to work for me, and is even documented here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?visit_id=637154836244487301-2719189125&p=adv_operators&hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?visit_id...

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 7y ago
Weird. It hasn’t worked for me in months. Maybe longer. Maybe I’m part of some UX strata.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Would you have an example to share?

II2II 7y ago

Perhaps they should create "Google Pro" that searches for what people ask for rather than trying to interpret what they mean. Don't get me wrong, the interpretations can be useful for generic queries. On the other hand, it is annoying when I know the exact terms that I need. > I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. Agreed. It also reminds me that the old engines weren't so much bad or that Google was better as the quality of the old engines degraded with time (may that be from the index being poisoned, paid inclusion of results, or something else).

dodobirdlord 7y ago
It exists, there are several configuration options you can enable.

j4kp07 7y ago

The new UI with favicons was the last straw for me. Everything looks like an ad, which I'm sure is intentional. I've been adjusting to DDG for the past 4+ weeks.

toss1 7y ago

YEs. Switched to DuckDuckGo a few months ago and haven't looked back, the results pages are much cleaner, like the old Google results. One blatant issue with Google (& DDG still often does not get right) is the search for a specific busines - using the exact business name and sometimes even town - I expect their listing to be at the top. Instead there's piles of Yelp & listing pages, and I often cannot even find the actual Item for which I'm searching - sometimes have to go to the indexers, hunt for their posting of the intended [website], and go that way. Opportunity for someone to get it actually right...

flyingfences 7y ago
When I'm searching for local businesses, I find I get better results from searching GMaps than through the regular Google search.

dmos62 7y ago

What search engines are you using? I'm displeased with Google's search results, but others seem to be just trying to emulate it (and badly).

BitwiseFool 7y ago
A mix between Bing and DuckDuckGo for general keyword searches and I use Apple Maps to search for local businesses.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tsila 7y ago
you might want to give shmoogle.world a try. It's growing rapidly in the artists community

aaronscott 7y ago

I noticed this behavior starting around the time the ranking algorithm became more ML driven. I think this may have been late 2015[0]. I switched to Duck Duck Go a few months back, at first for privacy reasons, but now find myself preferring that search engine's results for most things. [0] https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-updates-explained-282627 https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-update...

fiatjaf 7y ago

This. Please search engine, listen to this: it's ok if you don't have any results for what I'm searching. I want to know fast when there are no results, so I can try other queries. I don't want to open a dozen of pages before realizing you didn't had any results so only gave me garbage.