Google (search) sucking

Google (search) sucking

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scifi
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Joined: 10 May 2009, 12:27

Google (search) sucking

Post by scifi »

im a quote this article

http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/12/google-search/

To sum up:

ItÔÇÖs a popular notion these days Google has lost its ÔÇ£mojoÔÇØ due to failed products like Google Wave, Google Buzz, and Google TV. But GoogleÔÇÖs core business ÔÇö Web search ÔÇö has come under fire recently for being the ultimate in failed tech products.

But hereÔÇÖs what these late-blooming critics miss: Yes, GoogleÔÇÖs search results do indeed suck. But GoogleÔÇÖs fixing it.

The much acclaimed PageRank algorithm, which ranks search results based on the highest number of inbound links, has failed since itÔÇÖs easy for marketers to overwhelm the number of organic links with a bunch of astroturfed links.

Facebook, which can rank content based on the number of Likes from actual people rather than the number of inbound links from various websites, can now provide more relevant hits,

But the secret to GoogleÔÇÖs success was actually not PageRank, although it makes for a good foundation myth. The now-forgotten AltaVista, buried within Yahoo and due to be shut down, actually returned great results by employing the exact opposite of PageRank, and returned pages that were hubs and had links to related content.


So i have been experiecing problems searching tecnical stuff, all the tecnical stuff i try to look for must be either from pre defined websites, that i already know, google isnt getting any better.

For a quick and fast search you can only find crap.
And i use ADDBLOCK and NOSCRIPT for firefox and my computer is free of adds and stuff like that.

Its just the good old plain information from blogs/websites from various universites are getting hard to find.

Internet is becoming a hub of ADDs and marketting skills are becoming so frequent in deciding what shows up at the top of the page, so what are your opinions on this.
Last edited by scifi on 26 May 2011, 10:43, edited 2 times in total.
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Gota
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by Gota »

So...its hard to find obscure information?
Is it easier to go and buy a book in the store than look for stuff on internet?
thats the real comparison....

If your saying its easier to find stuff on facebook than perhaps it is true...
But be sure that if facebook becomes a very popular place for searching stuff people will find ways to trick it's system as well.
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scifi
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by scifi »

Gota wrote:So...its hard to find obscure information?
Is it easier to go and buy a book in the store than look for stuff on internet?
thats the real comparison....

If your saying its easier to find stuff on facebook than perhaps it is true...
But be sure that if facebook becomes a very popular place for searching stuff people will find ways to trick it's system as well.
I was comparing to a couple years back when internet wasnt so full of crapy websites, what we are seing is a spam of websites that fit within the criteria you search for but theyr actual content is close to none.

this means that instead of searching a good hub of meaningfull websites, google trows at you a ton of several websites that all have the same information, simple unexplored.

What i meant was the fast painless search is gone, at least for a while, that kind of search you do when you dont feel like openening a book you have on your personal library, the instant spam that apears in front of you, increases the time you spend analizing page of search inquiries.

In the old days page 1 or 2 would be good, now sometimes page 3 or 4 has the meaningfull awnsers, and sometimes, full fledging scam websites apear on top page.

By no means am i saying that this is new, im not new to the internet, this stuff is prety casual, but making a comparison between a couple years back and now stuff is worse.
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hunterw
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by hunterw »

google will be what everyone uses until something comes along that's clearly better

before google there was altavista, and before altavista there was yahoo.

a great way to use google if you're trying to research a product or somesuch is to add the word "forums" to your search.
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Nemo
Spring 1944 Developer
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by Nemo »

Er, wrong forum? >_>
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knorke
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by knorke »

Facebook, which can rank content based on the number of Likes from actual people rather than the number of inbound links from various websites, can now provide more relevant hits,
That is only relevant for some things that can be rated on popularity: reviews of movie/music/games, entertaimnent stuff in generals and some stuff on big events ("bin laden killed")
I have not seen a facebook link on any technical or programming page.

But I agree with that sometimes things are hard to find because the relevant things get lost in crap: I especially hate all the automaticly created pages and lists that steal from wikipedia, blogs or news feeds.
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momfreeek
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by momfreeek »

I can often narrow searches effectively with some lateral thinking. Think of obscure words that will only appear on useful pages rather than just describing the subject. Searching for error codes is one obvious example.
knorke wrote:
Facebook, which can rank content based on the number of Likes from actual people rather than the number of inbound links from various websites, can now provide more relevant hits,
That is only relevant for some things that can be rated on popularity: reviews of movie/music/games, entertaimnent stuff in generals and some stuff on big events ("bin laden killed")
I have not seen a facebook link on any technical or programming page.
I guess thats to do with the nature of facebook as much as anything. If Likes were used for more serious business how easily would the system be subverted to drive traffic(as pagerank has become)?
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Cheesecan
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by Cheesecan »

Well Google also has had a huge success with Android, of course they can't win every battle. The larger they become the less innovative they will become, that's almost a rule of business. Never ever ever has a large group of people done anything innovative. It's always individuals and small groups of individuals who contribute to humanity.

As far as their search engine goes I don't think it's going to have a spot in Web 3.0, whatever that will be. Searching for information in that manner is probably a flawed way of thinking.

Technology is pretty much the same it was 10 years ago imho, what great advances has humanity made? We're living in the post-modern society where the great advances are funnier tv sitcoms and chocolate bars with blueberry flavor.
All this blog, twitter, youtube, etc crap we geeks knew about and were using way back, it's just that it took pretty design and a brand name for the mainstream to figure out that you could have useful things on a computer besides Ms Office and its paper clip.

Also if you think google sucks try bing. :lol:
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PicassoCT
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by PicassoCT »

you ve only got to refine your searches

-youtube for vids (doesent have the files it claims anyway)
- buy -sell -$ -Ôé¼ -and so on and so forth.. results are pretty good, once you know what to exclude


Marketin guys are pretty see through sooner or later
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Petah
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by Petah »

Any scholar know you don't use Google for highly advanced subjects. We used universerty funded article/paper/library searches. Google hardly fails me when searching programming related subjects though.
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scifi
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by scifi »

Petah wrote:Any scholar know you don't use Google for highly advanced subjects. We used universerty funded article/paper/library searches. Google hardly fails me when searching programming related subjects though.
Thats the point where i wanted this thread to go, Google doesnt serve its
purpose in that regard.

It served that purpose a couple years back.

I have always been a user of the internet, and I remember when I first discovered Google. Of course, like most worthwhile things it was from word of mouth rather than a Search Result. Before I knew it I was sucked into the world of search and internet.

Im not saying that i cant find those type of information, im just saying, that a good search engine has been forced to only show mainstream types of subjects, rather than be a neutral search engine that actual gets the job done. Many of these advanced subjects were more opened to the public, now they arent.

Google relies on its ÔÇ£godÔÇØ like status and the trust people have in the results they produce. Their results are far from perfect. Their search results are biased, corrupted by money exchange, full of spam and parked domains.

Again nothing new, as any company wants to make money, but then again we are looking at a monopolised market. And that is prety bad.
There isnt alternative to Google.
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Cheesecan
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Re: Google (search) sucking

Post by Cheesecan »

Petah did you try Google scholar? It's pretty good.
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Gota
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Re: Google (search) sucking

Post by Gota »

What happens when you search for porn in google scholar?
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Cheesecan
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Re: Google (search) sucking

Post by Cheesecan »

First hit I got was an article titled XXX: A woman's right to pornography.
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Petah
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Re: Google (search) sucking

Post by Petah »

Cheesecan wrote:Petah did you try Google scholar? It's pretty good.
Yes, I have tried it. It wasn't as good as the databases we had access to at UNI though.
yanom
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Re: Google sucking due to marketting skills

Post by yanom »

Gota wrote:So...its hard to find obscure information?
Wikipedia
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Cheesecan
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Re: Google (search) sucking

Post by Cheesecan »

So petah you knew about Google Scholar and still choose to complain about how bad regular Google is for searching scientific literature.

This thread mostly seems like an excuse to hate on Google, something which seems to be becoming popular on the net these days.
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PicassoCT
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Re: Google (search) sucking

Post by PicassoCT »

microsoft and google secretly work to share the weaboo spankings of the intertubes
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