Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
But as a average user, I have been searching for various queries in (my) fav search engine GOOGLE, but the results which it has been throwing up were very vague due to which I had to go through 5 to 6 pages of the serach to get the content which I really needed.
Then I switched to Yahoo, using the same keywords and the search results was pretty relevant to what I needed on the first page itself.
My question do u feel that the serach in the google is deteriorating day by day.
The above example which i gave is not for just one search, I have been noticing this since 30 to 45 days.
what do u guy think about it?
Of course there are many such reports here from webmasters on the same issue, but we all want to see our own projects on page one, so those reports can tend to biased. This is the first time I've heard this criticism from people who aren't web developers.
The issues seemed to start mildly mildly, with the three part "Jagger" update last fall - but then it became much more pronounced with the recent roll-out of the new Big Daddy infrastructure. The data that is currently being used seems often to be way out of date and that can mean noticeably poor results.
I would like to see Google back in top form -- but then again I also would like to see more significant traffic from the competition search engines. At any rate, your observations are certainly being echoed by others.
[edited by: tedster at 10:05 pm (utc) on April 14, 2006]
Before 4-5 months back I used Google 95% of the time to find what I was looking for.
I just hope that one day Google's search results become as relevant as they were before Big Daddy and some of Jagger......
She told me that when she finds a site she wants to spend more time on, she usually doesn't bookmark it - she just remembers where she saw it. She was finding that on Google, she would return, sometimes just hours later and the site would be nowhere to be found. This was happening to her pretty much on a constant basis.
When I explained that serps change all the time on all the engines, she told me that she understands that but she expects to find what she was looking for within a page or so of where she first saw it.
At any rate, she is extremely happy with Yahoo. I think her methods are fairly typical which doesn't bode well for G.
I think it's important to remember that Google is having to aim its junk-fighting efforts at constantly moving targets, and the sheer volume of spam (such as massive keyword-driven, computer-driven sites) is growing exponentially. Considering what Google is up against, it's amazing that the search results are as good as they are.
Just went to Kelkoo, a popular UK price comparison site, searched for a Digital Camera - picked one out and then ran it through the Google search - the results were pretty much the following.
Personally I can search with Google with little trouble as I would use techniques like -kelkoo -price -compare etc to remove results I did not want and I never have expected G to come up with the result first time around, therefore I refine my search etc, always have been happy doing it this way.
I am more worried about what Google are missing at the moment though and I think that is what is being experienced more than anything - whether this is due to over zealous filters (is a balancing act of course) or issues with crawling due to hijack/canonical and other issues may become clearer in time.
do u feel that the serach in the google is deteriorating day by day.
No, in fact the opposite. (it's harder to rank, thats for sure!)
We tend to focus on the areas we work so our experiences will admittedly be some what skewed. However, we see Google pulling a head more and more. Yahoo has some serious ranking issues that they mask with hand editing, (lets not debate the merits of it here), in addition to the problem with the penalties, and MSN is the Google-of-3-years-ago.com
I really wish it were a tighter race, but right now technically it's looks to us like a horizon job.
Of course the person who really needs to answer this question is Joe surfer who doesn't know a thing about crawling, caching and fighting spam.
That said, I do have one complaint about their SERPS right now. That is, the SERPS tend to be dominated by the same sites over and over and over again. Searches for products almost invariably have Amazon, Nextag, Shopping.Com and similar type of sites high in the SERPS - regardless of what you are looking for.
Maybe that is a good thing, maybe not - guess it depends on your perspective. But it does seem to makes the results a bit stale
Yesterday I was looking for comparison tests on environmentally dishwasher detergents. Google thinks that if I'm looking for "dishwash*er* detergent" I must also want "dishwash*ing* detergent" which is a completely different product. Put dishwashing detergent in a dishwasher and you have a sitcom incident on your hands.
So most of the results were irrelevant right from the start. And then most of what came up was effectively ads for single products and no comparisons. I'm having this kind of problem with most of my information-based searches. Poor results.
For comparison I did the same search on Yahoo. The results were a bit better, and at least I got some relevant information on the first page, even if it was result #8.
I've heard the same from a research librarian and a college professor -- both unsolicited opinions that came in the past week.
what where they searching for? IMO google gives pretty nice results for non-commercial terms.
I get much better search results in Google than in Yahoo or MSN. As for the question of whether Google search is deteriorating, I'd have to say "no." Example: It wasn't that long ago that a search for a digital camera would return page after page of affiliate spam or boilerplate dealer copy. Now it's likely to return results for the manufacturer's information page and high-quality review sites
how about the tripadvisor and yahoo travel 'be the first to rate city hotels' pages ranking everywhere in your niche, EFV?
i personally hate that. it looks like it is enough to saturate your pages with the word 'review', auto-create zillion of pages and you get high position in google for anything you want within 2-4 years.
I've switched to Jux2 myself. Getting by for now, but have wondered why the public outcry hasn't come sooner or louder (despite what Google's sycophant says).
I do not see "authority sites" as someone claimed at the top of the SERPs: I see a mix of scrapers (mostly of the fake dirctory variety), a few perennial corporate giants (oddly selective), domains/subdomains in multiples and borderline spam.
I find Yahoo and MSN both deliver a much fairer, current, relevant keyword oriented top 10: search for Florida Widgets and you get Florida Widgets with less duplication and less spam which results in more relevant top 10 results (in which there may actually be 10 different sites).
I would attribute this to Google having created a monster with the PR system and the layer upon layer of filters they apply to try and protect it. I think it is past the point that they can predict the overall effect of any tweak and the recent trend with each change has been to make things worse, not better as the unintentional filtering of valid results leaves less and less relevant results at the top.
I think part of the reason for the differing opinions tedster noted is that Google appears to be handling the most popular searches much worse than in the past. Niche searches are much less affected.
Even if that's true (and I'm not conceding that it is), it could simply mean that Google is putting greater emphasis on delivering optimum results for "long-tail" search phrases in response to user search patterns. After all, without knowing what's in the user's mind, there's no way to deliver universally acceptable results for "widgets," "elbonia," "loans", or "sex."
And on Yahoo? The largest center was #1. This is sad, Google.
Honestly, I've been using Google for 99.99999% of my searches since it was launched, but I can't see any reason for not switching.
Ironically, I'm forced to agree with bobmark on this one. Keyword phrases I watch have been gone from Google SERPs since 11APR06. Whereas, they continue to top out on Yahoo search, and show high on MSN.
Little consolation, of course, since the logs now record minimal SE referrals for these phrases.
When Google sneezes...
Good morning Folks
Brain washed of Google Datacenters Watching, you may as well say. When people talk about specific things about Google, I usually ask; on which DC you saw that?
We all know by now that the new infrastructure is at present in the Everchanging.. Everflux mode. Different serps on different datacenters sets. And talking about DC sets, there are several of them at the moment for sure.
And to make things more complicated, our good friend Matt Inigo Cutts wrote recently on TW at Fri, 2006-03-24:
"Anyone who knows about Google knows that different data centers get different data at different times, especially during Bigdaddy."
To be objective, we should keep in mind above when talking about current quality of Google Search.
So.... how about you folks who have posted on this thread untill now start posting which default Google IP you based your observations on ;-)
Wish you all a shining day.
After readng ur replies, I guess I was right, Google search is indeed deteriorating. And I am not giving this opinion as a webmaster but a s "average joe" who uses the Google for general search.
I m for sure switching to Yahoo for search and as a webmaster may be, will be little inclined to optimize site to suit Yahoo or MSN than to gung-ho behind Google alone.
that makes no sense to me. How does not having brand new sites in the top 50 mean search quality is deteriorating? If all new sites were in the top 50 then youd ONLY have new sites in the top 50. And why does being new qualify you for a top 50 spot?
