Google going downhill?

March 8, 2005 2:58 AM

Is it just me, or is Google search going downhill?

For example, I was looking for a free batch search and replace tool last night (that would replace the same text with other text in about 60 different files). Google searches pointed me to crappy software that you had to pay for that was badly written. MSN however shunted me straight to a free perl-written program that did the job perfectly.

I've noticed this on a number of other queries where I'm hunting for something that should be fairly common and google should grab me decent results first time but doesn't. Maybe I've got too complacent though, I'd rather not go back to the bad old days of Lycos or Webcrawler where you might find what you were looking on page 7.

posted by BigCalm to Computers & Internet (21 answers total)

just you.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:10 AM on March 8, 2005

It is getting harder to search for things on Google. I suspect that this is partly to do with the fact that as the #1 search engine, "Marketers" spend most of their time trying to game it.

However, searching for Batch "search and replace" on both MSN and Google gave equally poor results, so I suspect that the result you got is an anomaly.

It could also be that the phrasing *you* use is more suited to MSN. (The possibilty that how we phrase things will have an impact on what search engine we should use is pretty mind blowing, but seems somehow ... obvious)

Also, This isn't a snark, but why the fascination with search engines? You aren't shilling for MSN search are you?
posted by seanyboy at 3:20 AM on March 8, 2005

When I'm looking for a script like that, I rarely use the general Google search; I almost always do a search from their "Linux" page or one of the other specialized ones; I find that immediately narrows down the search to something more useful.
posted by ubernostrum at 3:47 AM on March 8, 2005

I'm not sure. Near the beginning it was nice to make a query and get lots of relevant stuff, but over the past few years I think there's been a growth in the number of sites and I think a concomitant increase in irrelevancy.

I find the search requires a few classifiers. Most of the time placing the query in quotation marks clears away a lot of cruft. Adding a (-pdf) option helps a lot, and there's lots of other hints to try out.

In the end, I think the level of service Google supplies is linked to the current state of the web, but that's just my opinion. Less utopian = more criticism, and so on. One could argue they should adapt, and I think they have to some extent, but the web is an amorphous thing -- uncontrollable and unpredictable.

I do wonder if search engines really are the best way to bring order to this chaos.
posted by gsb at 4:27 AM on March 8, 2005

gsb: I think anything else would just be a search engine that works differently.

I find google unpredictable. My main complaint is when I'm searching for information on some sort of product. I get far too many hits that are from sites shilling for yet more sites that wish to sell me said product.

Or I am searching for places to buy something, narrowing my search by country, I get sites redirecting me to sites in other countries. Pain in the ass.

Sad truth is, I ain't no brite star wen it cums to google. I kinda stoopid bout dat. YMMV
posted by Goofyy at 4:42 AM on March 8, 2005

The possibilty that how we phrase things will have an impact on what search engine we should use...

This seems like a good point to follow when finding why a search engine doesn't work for you. Try Jeeves, which uses quite different methods than Google. Also try Clusty, which shows results in semantic clusters.

Before you give up on Google -- Google's advanced search offers some powerful features.
posted by NickDouglas at 4:47 AM on March 8, 2005

I still use it most of the time but I agree that the results can be haphazard.

I think seanyboy and gsb make good points and it just underlines the need to be smart about your search terms and to branch out to use different search engines (I play around with a couple of backups).

It's also a case of different strokes for different folks - some things are probably better found without using google - the specialist sites for the esoteric things we each want regularly.
posted by peacay at 5:06 AM on March 8, 2005

I've found the results to be less helpful than in the past, the days of one search and "there is it" are certainly over. To be expected though, with everyone and their mother gaming the "organic" listings.
posted by alana at 6:02 AM on March 8, 2005

I haven't had a problem with google. Certain searches will pull out more than their fair share of commercial/spoof redirect sites, but those are mainly for search strings that would obviously pull out such sites. Perhaps it's the way that you're building your search terms? I know that doing a search for a batch search and replace tool for windows, I had fine free software on the first page, within the top 5 results (actually, the one I'd pick was 6th). My search terms were 'windows "search and replace" batch' (without the single quotes, of course).

Count me in for specialized search engines though. Freshmeat for linux software (and increasingly, other OS's), sourceforge for all kinds of free software, linux and windows, the specialized google searches, google groups for various things (especially useful for searching for solutions to obscure error messages), etc., etc. I also higly recommend the book "Google Hacks" by O'Reilly. Perhaps that'll help you aim your searches better.
posted by splice at 6:17 AM on March 8, 2005

Google is a very powerful search engine, but it takes a certain touch to get past much of the garbage out there. Often, it's a case of finding the proper search terms.

Ever since giving up WebFerret in favor of Google, I haven't found any other search engine that meets my expectations. If you can develop the touch it takes to work with Google's raw undisciplined power, it's as good as ever.
posted by Saydur at 6:43 AM on March 8, 2005

Google is getting harder to use for me as well. All of these fake return sites.. What's with that? And many of the caches don't work any more.

Signal to noise ratio is definitely on the decline..
posted by eas98 at 6:43 AM on March 8, 2005

Answering the question that brought you to Google in the first place, Textpad does batch find and replace quickly and beautifully.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:55 AM on March 8, 2005

Google search has been going downhill for years, but it's especially bad right now due to a couple of things: The first is Google Update Allegra, which causes the index to be goofy for a couple of weeks. The worst factor, however, is Google's vulnerability to gaming and seeming unwillingness to drop spam from the index, which makes it very attractive to index spammers.
posted by majick at 7:04 AM on March 8, 2005

Has anyone searched for a product on Google and found literally dozens of pages that just forward you to an ebay search? The names of these sites are stuff like "findauction.com" and "finditonline.com". It's incredibly frustrating... If I wanted to search ebay, I would search ebay.
posted by knave at 7:47 AM on March 8, 2005

One simple trick for efficient searches is to add to your first-choice keyword another that is closely related but unlikely to be found in the background noise.

A example I used to give to students was the following: some years back, swine feeding always returned a good number of Bible quotes (Matthew...) that were pretty useless to me. Adding protein to the search terms took care of that problem, since this word isn't in the Bible but can be found in any serious paper about pig nutrition.

Scientific papers about swine feeding now outweigh the Bible quotes in the Google index, but the trick is still valid and I use it whenever I'm facing a lot of crap sites.
posted by elgilito at 8:13 AM on March 8, 2005

Response by poster: I guess I've been spoilt really, when I first starting using it, the google search box was as close to a 'do what I mean' search as could be - the 'I'm feeling lucky button' was a statement of intent from google - we will return the best result, first. I guess I just want it to work as simply as possible - type in what you want and it returns what you need, without any need for hacking around of the search string.

Years of hammering by people trying to up their own page rank has left it's mark sadly, and those that do not try to up their own page rank but nevertheless have excellent content get shunted down the index. The only 'new' feature that google's added that I actually use is the calculator (well, and gmail).
posted by BigCalm at 8:30 AM on March 8, 2005

Really spoilt. Yea, once upon a time, it worked as advertised. Now it doesn't. Once can only hope that google is paying attention and will choose to act to defend their position. Of course, now as a publicly traded company, they are legally obligated to do so, and management can be sent to the poor house for failure.

I used to use a program that got results from several search engines and allowed me to save the results. I could go through and delete the returns that didn't suit. Google got me away from that. Now I think I need it to deal with google, at times. This time, hopefully, with the ability to annotate the results.
posted by Goofyy at 9:27 AM on March 8, 2005

i think part of the problem could be that google's profit is based on the ads, not the search results, so there isn't a direct incentive to have the best search results all the time. In fact, take the scenario people keep mentioning, where you get crappy results for a product search. in this case, its to google's advantage to have you pick a google ad rather than a search result.
Largely agree with overall thesis that the state of the web is part of the problem as well. Most of the original ideas about search ranking assumes that the web doesn't know--or actively plan--that its being ranked. Its sorta like that Jim Carrey movie about the TV show, Truman show--as soon as he figured out what was going on, the gig was up.
posted by alkupe at 9:44 AM on March 8, 2005

Man you want a good "google falls down" search try searching for a solution to a problem with Acrobat.

I loved the I'm feeling lucky button when Google first came out but I haven't hit it in a long time. A good result seems rarely to be the _first_ result though I'd say at least 50% of the time it's still in the top ten.

elgilito suggestion is good to but It'll bite you sometimes the other way. If you were to search for "pig feeding" your results may be way down because everyone in the industry uses the word swine instead. That's what is so fustrating for me (and not something I can see a search engine do anything about).

Prime example I spent probably a couple dozen hours trying to track down propane injectors. I finally just slogged my way thru a few hundred results on google and free associated off some of the links. Somewhere along a chain of links about a dozen degrees off of google I found out that Europeans call propane CarGas at which point a fresh search resulted in dozens of manufacturers.
posted by Mitheral at 2:23 PM on March 8, 2005

You're all missing the real reason. The internet has become a global marketplace. There is no profit in providing free information!
This became painfully obvious to me a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to help my son find some webpages on how dogs grow up (born, nurse, learn, etc..). Despite having years of ANSI SQL programming experience, I was unable to come up with a single suitable query that would find me anything close to the information I desired. All the search results were commercial in nature.
Oddly enough, I turned to an old Encyclopedia disk I had from a couple of years ago and it gave him everything he needed (with pictures even).
As EAS98 noted, the SNR is quickly becoming deplorable. :-(
posted by Lactoso at 10:55 PM on March 8, 2005

Probably this thread isn't read much anymore (already!), but for those really interested in searching techniques, I highly reccommend Fravia's search lores. You might remember him from Fravia's reverse engineering pages. Try to take a look at The synecdochical method of searching.
posted by splice at 12:15 PM on March 10, 2005