Do we need more than one Google?

[superclown2]

Time and again like everyone else I want information about widgets. No matter which search terms I enter, though, I get SERPs full of sites that sell widgets. The actual information about them is almost invariably sparse, at least on the first few pages.

I don't want to buy one. I want information about them. Sometimes very deep, technical information.

I appreciate that there is a grey area between information and marketing but this shouldn't be a problem beyond the abilities of Google's engineers so: is it time to have a split search facility; one side for people who want to buy, and one for those who want information? The first search engine to find the biggest brand, or whatever Google judges to be the biggest; and the second to list the sites with the most useful information, period?

[tedster]

A year or two back, both Yahoo and Google experimented with ways to offer a control between transactional results and informational results.

I liked the idea, but must confess that I never really used it. Apparently I was not alone, because this idea has vanished instead of coming into more prominence. The only way I know of to "force" more informational results these days is to make the query phrase rather long tail.

[Planet13]

I don't want to buy one. I want information about them. Sometimes very deep, technical information.

Interestingly, Matt Cutts said in a video not too long ago (about a year back) that this was the major complaint that google got - that there were TOO MANY ecommerce sites in the top positions of the SERPs.

I kind of get the feeling that maybe google is planning on having personalized search determine the balance between ecommerce, video, instructional, historical and other types of classifications in the future. I look at the suggestions I get when I am logged into youtube and think it might be something of a "proving ground" for personalized search in the future.

[lucy24]

As a user I would love to see this. And I would love to not see the paid links offering to sell me {search term which is not a noun and cannot be bought}. But I keep thinking that somehow it would end up with the "buy" side subsidizing the "info" side.

[HuskyPup]

I get SERPs full of sites that sell widgets.

And this seems to be the biggest problem for my widget sector since Panda was introduced, many of the sites that were both informational and widget sellers have mostly been discarded for widget seller directories. This is fine if one is a bulk trade purchaser however useless for Joe Public retail buyer.

I appreciate that it's a difficult balancing act however the Panda's gone too far for my widgets, the good news is that my new site is doing extremely well with B2B coverage and loads of information for both trade and public...that's until I get scraped!

[supercyberbob]

superclown2

You can't find what you're looking for on the bestest search engine in the world?

Is it 2012 yet? Scrapers, Panda bears, instant amazon.com, ads that appear when you speak into a microphone.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."

[netmeg]

And yet in other posts in this forum, there are members upset because informational pages come up before their ecommerce sites.

Just goes to show, you can't keep everyone happy.

(There ARE two Googles - there are actually more than two; the trick is to get enough normal people (i.e. not us) to use Google Shopping, Google Images, etc. People weren't, so Google kept tossing more and more of that stuff into "universal search")

[graeme_p]

So they should add "Google information" as well those doing informational searches can get away from the shopping, images, etc.

And yet in other posts in this forum, there are members upset because informational pages come up before their ecommerce sites.

Is that Google's problem? Google's job is to deliver what searchers want, not what webmasters want. The question is, did the information pages come up first for what are usually informational searches or shopping searches?

[piatkow]

many of the sites that were both informational and widget sellers have mostly been discarded for widget seller directories

Some sectors have always been dominated by directories, if this is expanding then it is definitely a retrograde step.

[superclown2]

Is that Google's problem? Google's job is to deliver what searchers want, not what webmasters want. The question is, did the information pages come up first for what are usually informational searches or shopping searches?

Information pages were nowhere to be seen in the niche I was searching in. All the top results are dominated by 'brands'. This would be OK if they actually sold the product I was searching on, so could offer information, but they don't. The majority merely offer the product as affiliates and have a single page about it, with the scrappiest information.

Panda, in my humble opinion, was based on the erroneous supposition that the bigger brands will offer the searcher a better experience. They don't necessarily do this. I have seen instances of bigger sites moving into niches that they have no experience in, just because they can dominate the results without having to offer the level of expertise provided by some of the sites that they are displacing.

It was an interesting theory but it doesn't work in practice. Back to the drawing board, Google.