My Wife Asked: Is something wrong with Google?

[freelistfool]

My wife is a person who I would characterize as a good representative of the average search engine user. She has Google search as her homepage, types everything (including domain names and business brands) into Google to go anywhere on the internet, doesn't differentiate between advertisements and search engine results, and only bookmarks things that are really important to her or big sites like Amazon. In short, Google is her main portal to the internet.

Today she asked me, "Is something wrong with Google? It seems like the first 6 or 7 results don't have anything to do with what I'm looking for."

I am curious if others are hearing anecdotal stories of average search users not happy with the Google results. Let's not make this a Panda/Google bashing thread. Instead, I'd rather learn what you think Panda's impact will be on the general public.

[kidekat]

I am really struggling to find decent results on Google anymore.

Words in my search queries are altered as Google tries (and fails) to tell me what I really mean.

Searching for local (London, UK) businesses gives me options for US businesses.

First page full of spam sites. I did a search for a style of Ugg boot and was given the biggest load of junk ever.

[diberry]

I've told this story elsewhere - those who read it, please ignore. :)

A couple of months after Panda hit, a 60+ year old woman I know announced to me - appropos of nothing, not knowing my own feelings about Google - that Google results were terrible lately, and she'd started using Bing. This is someone much like the OP's wife.

Why she knew Bing existed, I'm not sure. I think a lot of people STILL don't realize they have alternatives to Google.

Various other people have complained to me recently that they can't find what they want in Google, and I advise them to use Bing. But its results are not better on every search, so they usually retain Google as their go-to engine, keeping Bing in reserve. But at least now they know Bing exists.

[freelistfool]

aristotle, sorry I wasn't clear. A year ago Steve Ballmer would have been wrong stating that Bing's results were as good as Google's. Google used to have enough unique elements in their secret sauce to produce superior results. Today, Google has moved away from what made them better towards the same types of signals that Bing and Yahoo use. Unfortunately, Google doesn't do it as well as Yahoo and Bing. Maybe with some experience they'll catch up.

[diberry]

Forgot to mention, I've completely switched to Bing (but then I'm avoiding all Google services completely now), and Bing Maps is one service that's far superior to Google Maps, because it gives you landmarks, i.e., where it tells you to turn right onto Whatever Street, it mentions there's an Arco Station on the corner there.

[asusplay]

Something is definitely wrong with Google. Today I tried to search for the government website of a particular country to download some forms...so i typed in - [country] government. it was nowhere to be seen. I tried "[country]" "government" and still nothing...you'd figure a top level government website would show at least in top positions for an explicit search using it's name.

[Matthias Marconi]

Guys, I totally agree there is something wrong. Although I am a web designer and have a website, and rank in the first 10 for web design [city], there are usually 2 websites on each page (1st, 2nd and so on) that have absolutely no working subpages (all links are "#") or have 3-4 lines of generic text , but utterly generic, like "professional web design [city], for very affordable rates." on 3 pages. They were not there before Panda, that's for sure.

[freelistfool]

something about the "user intention" area seems to be getting a bit flaky.

tedster, that's exactly what it appears. The sites returned with any given search result seem to be decent sites...they just don't relate well to the search term.

[Bewenched]

@kidekat
Here in the US our website is getting TONS of international traffic and phone calls. Pretty messed up.

Searching for local (London, UK) businesses gives me options for US businesses

[engine]

I've long been frustrated by the serving of data that the search service 'thinks' I ought to have.

Tedster sums it up nicely, it has become an 'intention engine'

[viggen]

Something is definitely wrong with Google. Today I tried to search for the government website of a particular country to download some forms...

Yup, similar experience, I am from Austria but needed some information on south african legal documents. So i even made it easier for Google and went to google.co.za. typed in the document name and even south africa and got the full first page with results from canada lol, its getting absurd...

[pontifex]

I am not sure about the whole "advanced algo" theories that Tedster and Robert are both promoted last year on Pubcon already.

They sound very strong and tempting, but from where I stand and the keys that I monitor: it started to make no sense at all around Panda 2.

I have a bunch of long tail keys I am using to understand what I see and the results are horrible. As a computer geek I would not send people to these sites when they would use me as a human search engine: dangerous sources of subscription trash sites came up and similar problematic results for Joe Average.

It is hard to believe they are not aware of these problems and think of the algo as an advanced solution in intention based searching.

Looking forward to discuss just these things in detail in Vegas over a few beer!

P!

[tedster]

I'd agree with you - the way I saw Google at last Pubcon and the way it looks now, post-Panda, are two different creatures. Panda may have improved things for the average user on high volume searches. But in the longer tail it seems to have buried the kind of useful resources we were accustomed to finding easily.

It is hard to believe they are not aware of these problems

I agree. Google is a public company and keeps up a "public face" - but I'm sure internally they see the negative repercussions that Panda unleashed. The most reason bits of Panda flux seem to say as much, IMO.

[arikgub]

but something about the "user intention" area seems to be getting a bit flaky.

These days, the "user intention" is often intentionally overridden with "Google's intention". More and more I see words form the long phrase query are omitted resulting in completely irrelevant search results. Sometimes you look for "very specific kind widgets in location", and the word "location", or the word "very specific" are intentionally dropped from the query by Google. That's ridiculous.

[Quadrille]

I get a few bad searches with Google; but then, there's a lot of crap sites about these days.

The one that annoys me is when I search for some spammer's profile, they insist on trying to correct his idiot name to some intelligent name.

I'm all for Google making searches more 'intuitive' - provided they let me turn it off when I don't want it.

But if you want a really bad search, try ebay or Amazon - both guaranteed (probably in writing) not to find what you want.

[diberry]

Hmm, I always find what I want on Amazon, but I do agree with you about eBay.

As for Google, though, it feels like they're trying to make people search for certain things rather than help them search for what they want. And the only reason I can think of for that would be to drive people to certain Adsense ads in the SERPs in hope they'll click them.

If that's what they're doing, it's pretty vile.

[Leosghost]

I wonder how many of the people here who are or have been saying that they are experiencing "bad or unusual search results", rather than merely dismiss them as "Google is broken"..stop to think ..why would they do that ..why would they return this ..and then think it makes no sense unless....and then try to find what the unless factor is..it is not always the first reason that comes to mind..

I know of one member here who has been "lost" in serps for their own domain name for the major part of the lest 6 months..because ( to my way of thinking ) Google ..and the rest of the world ( myself included ) take the "word" as having primarily one of four possible meanings..followed by the second meaning, then the third ( which is relatively new ..but used a great deal )..and finally " his" meaning..

The serps are "aware" ( if one can speak of a serp being aware ) of the potential other meanings as the results for the "word"..the first page always has in the top 5 results a link to a wikipedia page on the "word's" "stem" with.. "disambiguation"..IMO that inclusion of that result by wikipedia is crucial to understanding what is going on ..not just for that word and that search ..but for many other searches..

I would have always ( due to personal experience ) given the word the second meaning associated with it by Google..the third is a new association..but one which is repeated and echoed daily by all the major media both on and offline ..put simply the meaning has been super-ceded by others..

It does not take much "influencing" by others and other factors to make words and search terms mean other than what we personally might expect..even a subtle shift in what a search engine perceives as searcher satisfaction in relation to search term result ..can cause effects that make no immediate sense to us..

Language and meaning is evolving ..and I suspect that sometimes search engines are realising and reacting to the changes faster than marketeers and even their spouses and acquaintances..the under 40's don't seem to find the results of searches anywhere near as unusual or problematic as do those over 40..

Which is not to say that I too do not find the "showing results for" "click for" whatever it was I actually put in the search box the first time ) and "did you mean" extremely irritating..

[CMidd]

old MFA Webmaster once said this: "when people land on a page you don't really want to give them the answer, you want them to click to find it, hopefully an Adwords Advertisers' ad has the answer and they can leave by clicking a ad and you get paid"

If the Organic Results are so good, targeted and command all the clicks, Adword wouldn't get any, ie less money.

Better search results are in competition with ad clicks "unless user are searching for ads LMAO"

[tedster]

There also seems to be a Google Suggestions factor at work, I think, but I haven't quite pinned it down. Basically it seems to me (and this is just a gut feel right now) that if you choose one of the Suggestions then you usually get good results. But if you blaze your own trail typing something other query completion in the search box, then all bets are off.

[mhansen]

There also seems to be a Google Suggestions factor at work, I think, but I haven't quite pinned it down.

Not sure if its been around for awhile or not (I know suggest HAS been, not sure about branded suggest), but when the Google Suggest was populating today, I noticed a few key search terms in our market... showing branded suggestions.

When you typed "red" in the past, it:

Used to suggest: "widgets"
Now suggests: "widgets from consumer reports"

And the long tail suggestions are the top line of the suggestions.

Tin-foil - How long before the suggest factor includes adwords? Bid for suggest! I know that the natural serp ranks and adwords don't mingle, but would that exclude the suggest feature also?

[lucy24]

###. I remembered this thread as being in Foo. Well, can't be helped.

My wife is a person who I would characterize as a good representative of the average search engine user. She has Google search as her homepage, types everything (including domain names and business brands) into Google to go anywhere on the internet...

I never knew people did this until last month when I gave a librarian a www address. (For people who like to know details: it was a picture related to Talk Like A Pirate Day, a holiday she celebrates with devotion.) A bit later I swung by to see if the picture had amused her-- and found her still wrestling with g### search, where she'd entered the address. I had to take over and type the address in the address bar, where it belonged.

I got curious and put up a poll on another forum. It's not wholly representative because everyone there has to know at least a little bit about computers, but great for getting information on a wide range of platforms. Currently about 75% of respondents claim to put the address directly into the address bar. And then it turned out that in some browsers you can select an address anywhere in the page text and it will be recognized as an address (right-click or equivalent) even if it isn't coded as a link.

Most recently someone said that they "treat the address bar in Chrome like a search bar", which sent me scurrying to investigate.

Well, ### and ###. Is this another of those things everyone in the world but me has always known? Google Chrome has taken that final step, beyond having address bar and search bar side by side (in Safari you can't remove the search bar): they're functionally the same thing. Forget the traditional dropdown listing only sites you've personally been to within your current History. Now you've got search options, suggestions, you name it, all listed together.

Then again, I always assumed that the Suggest aspect of g### search was determined by actual past searches, going by frequency. Silly me.

[diberry]

@Lucy24, IE9 is the same way, only with Bing as the engine. It makes sense as a way to conserve space, but the real impact will be to force people who don't know better to search with the engine the browser maker supports.

[dstiles]

I had a client a few years ago who put his Control Panel URL into google and complained it didn't come up. What did come up was #*$! spam in obsolete blogs/forums: for some reason his CP URL had been added as one of the URLs. I assume this was from entering it in a compromised internet cafe or hotel service.

I explained to google about this and suggested, since that URL would never legally be anywhere on the web, that they use it to reduce their spam listings. Nothing! Still there a year or so later (haven't checked recently 'cause I no longer use google search).

I now block ALL google toolbars, browsers etc from my Control Panels. Any suggestion of such in the UA and access is blocked.