4 ms·

This is not my experience. I search for exact phrases the same way I always have. Three to result does not contain the word I emphasized. This never happened b

This is not my experience. I search for exact phrases the same way I always have. Three to result does not contain the word I emphasized. This never happened before a few years ago. Now it happens daily.

charcircuit 3y ago
Are you sure the page doesn't contain it? It is not a simple as just visiting the page and searching for the thing you quoted as there may be punctuation between words or the text may be in the alt text of an image or somewhere else that is not obvious.
- unlikelytomato 3y ago
  I am quite sure. The kinds of words in question would not even really make sense for "SEO gaming" to come into play. Typically, it presents with trying to match a word vs a phrase(I don't ever try to match phrases). I try matching smaller and smaller fragments of the word and still... nothing. I remember this working back when it was common for pages on gray websites to stuff giant blobs of text with juicy keywords out of view with janky html. Yet, somehow those pages were ranked very low and results were good. There is a clear degradation in quality. Actually, it has happened with results that include hacker news discussions. I scrape through and expand EVERY comment on a 6 month old post and still find no partial or exact matches for my search keyword. It is very clear to me that Google has switched behavior. It used to flex on how awesome it was to bring you to an esoteric corner of the internet matching your exact query. Now, it tries to converge your queries into what it thinks you want(not what you asked for) and funnel you into large websites at the expense of utility.
- NegativeK 3y ago
  It will substitute similar things, such as the word ubuntu for debian. Which can be incredibly frustrating if you know the problem well enough to need a different answer.
  - unlikelytomato 3y ago
    This is a good point. I searched for "rename" today and the top result switched it to "name" instead. The TOP result completely changed the query. Infuriating. I also love when my search is narrow enough that Google instead starts to return more generic pages for totally different programming languages instead of the smaller result set that matches exactly. It is very easy to observe as you explore a topic. At some point, you got a wall where any increase in search specificity seems to yield worse results than queries that helped you get to that point.
    - NegativeK 3y ago
      Yeah; that's a good point. Google's desire to provide popular/well known information sources is outweighing the ability for people to be specific. It's infuriating to be ignored as a user. Hence using verbatim constantly, which feels like a checkbox for "stop failing me". Which... Why isn't Google learning that some users are constantly seeking out verbatim for results they'll click on and adjusting their search results to be more verbatim?

charcircuit 3y ago

Are you sure the page doesn't contain it? It is not a simple as just visiting the page and searching for the thing you quoted as there may be punctuation between words or the text may be in the alt text of an image or somewhere else that is not obvious.

unlikelytomato 3y ago
I am quite sure. The kinds of words in question would not even really make sense for "SEO gaming" to come into play. Typically, it presents with trying to match a word vs a phrase(I don't ever try to match phrases). I try matching smaller and smaller fragments of the word and still... nothing. I remember this working back when it was common for pages on gray websites to stuff giant blobs of text with juicy keywords out of view with janky html. Yet, somehow those pages were ranked very low and results were good. There is a clear degradation in quality. Actually, it has happened with results that include hacker news discussions. I scrape through and expand EVERY comment on a 6 month old post and still find no partial or exact matches for my search keyword. It is very clear to me that Google has switched behavior. It used to flex on how awesome it was to bring you to an esoteric corner of the internet matching your exact query. Now, it tries to converge your queries into what it thinks you want(not what you asked for) and funnel you into large websites at the expense of utility.
NegativeK 3y ago
It will substitute similar things, such as the word ubuntu for debian. Which can be incredibly frustrating if you know the problem well enough to need a different answer.
- unlikelytomato 3y ago
  This is a good point. I searched for "rename" today and the top result switched it to "name" instead. The TOP result completely changed the query. Infuriating. I also love when my search is narrow enough that Google instead starts to return more generic pages for totally different programming languages instead of the smaller result set that matches exactly. It is very easy to observe as you explore a topic. At some point, you got a wall where any increase in search specificity seems to yield worse results than queries that helped you get to that point.
  - NegativeK 3y ago
    Yeah; that's a good point. Google's desire to provide popular/well known information sources is outweighing the ability for people to be specific. It's infuriating to be ignored as a user. Hence using verbatim constantly, which feels like a checkbox for "stop failing me". Which... Why isn't Google learning that some users are constantly seeking out verbatim for results they'll click on and adjusting their search results to be more verbatim?