Misleading Help Information in Google

Are there other instances of this?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I touched on this issue in another thread and I think important enough to be considered on its own because Google seem to be misleading people by providing wrong information in their help pages.

The info on their [google.com...] page says ...

Since Google only returns web pages that contain all the words in your query ... (their emphasis)

and

By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms.

Both of these statements are wrong because we all know for a fact that Google returns pages that in some cases contain none of the search terms used. This can happen when the page returned has inbound links containing the search text. Why do they mislead people like this and are their any other cases where the information they provide is wrong?

[ThomasB]

I think it's easier to understand for Joe Surfer, but you're right, it might be good to change that. Maybe GG can pass that along to the right people...

[claus]

>> it might be good to change that

IMHO, it might be better to change the action and really do that in stead of changing the words ;)

[Spica]

>>>> it might be better to change the action and really do that in stead of changing the words <<<<

I can't agree more. Google is going too far in its new algo, with loss of relevancy.

Meanwhile, as an alternative, Google could state that they return pages containing all the keywords OR RELATED WORDS (e.g., it's obviously ok, if you search for cats, to get pages about kittens).

[jtbell]

At least they no longer claim that the "link:" search shows all pages that link to the specified page. At least I can't find that statement any more.

[oops, fixed a typo.]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

IMHO, it might be better to change the action and really do that in stead of changing the words

This is a good point Claus. I brought this subject up originally in this thread [webmasterworld.com...] There would be no problem if they changed the help statement to explain why they sometimes display results that don't include any of the search text and I still think that long, exact search strings should figure at the top of the SERPs.

Google probably have to be economic with the truth in their help files and guidelines to avoid giving too much away. After they go public perhaps they will be more answerable in cases like this.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I think it's easier to understand for Joe Surfer

It must be more confusing for Joe Surfer when he looks for the text he searched for on a page that is returned and cannot find it?