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To get on the gripe-fest: When I use the quotation marks "xyz" to ensure that the result contains the string "xyz", goog no longer gives me results that have "
by Balgair 4y ago
To get on the gripe-fest:
When I use the quotation marks "xyz" to ensure that the result contains the string "xyz", goog no longer gives me results that have "xyz" in them.
It's not for all cases, but is most noticeable when trying to debug a program. I'll get an error, then search for that error online, putting the outputted error in quotation marks. Granted, these tend to be obscure errors and I'm not exactly expecting to find an answer.
But goog will return a bunch of SEO spam, ads, and then ~2/3rds of the way down the page, finally some real answers. But! These 'real' pages/answers don't contain the string that I made sure to specify to return. Often, it's very badly related to what I'm searching for to begin with.
Like, I'm okay with goog not returning anything. That helps me know that the thing I'm trying to do is headed in the wrong direction.
But goog is very much not okay with not returning anything.
I imagine that some KPI was set by some manager at google that they have to decrease the number of pages that don't return anything. So to do that, some check was implemented to strip the quotation marks away if a query doesn't have a result. And I just so happen to get caught in this a lot. I understand, google get more money when that happens, as it makes sure to show a lot more ads to me when it does this (pretty certain of this, but not 100%).
Still, yeesh!, it's so frustrating when I try to use the tool and it just ignores me!
- Tostino 4y agoYup, this has been my experience too. It's absolutely amazing how terrible the results have gotten for the majority of my queries.