Tuesday 28 February 2012

WTF Google?

I noticed google search becoming less and less useful of late: it can be quite hard to track down meaningful results, and I started to suspect I was getting my own private view of the internets ... (which is precisely the thing I do not want from a global internet search!!).

So with in that mind check these two results out, one from my signed in google account - with verbatim enabled, and one from another machine in which I'm not signed explicitly into google's world-encompassing spy network.

Standard results:


Verbatim results:



(I also checked the non-verbatim results on my logged in version, which are at least in this case thankfully the same as the standard result; although i'm sure i've seen differences in the past).

One might note that the verbatim result is the only one that has anything related directly to the search terms, particularly for the most important keyword of high specificity - there is in fact no relevant result AT ALL on the first page of the non-verbatim search (as suggested by the title and/or preview content). I really don't think a generic '[Archive]' header applied to old mailing list views should rank highly.

The new search algorithm is quite good at finding home pages for projects and products; but for specific information it's starting to suck major arse.

At least verbatim taught me this isn't quite the search term i'm after anyway.

2 comments:

Sankar said...

I usually use Incognito window search (chrome private browsing) if I want some better search results. I can't help wonder why Google has not yet fixed the problem as it is so visible.

NotZed said...

I guess like most things in this world, I have to accept that I am simply not their 'target market'. Maybe if you're looking for info on some dull, septic waif of an actress and don't know how to spell her name, it does a wonderful job.

I really wouldn't mind if you could just turn verbatim on all the time though.