Google's disservice

casual internet surfer

[typein]

Google is not giving the casual internet user / surfer the correct information, or more to the point google is not giving the searcher any options other than to use the address bar on their browser and "type-in" any number of website URLs that they might be searching for. Why? because google does not give the user the option to "click here" (URL) if you think that such a site exists. Altavista does do this.
Ok maybe i haven't made my point in the proper context, but here is an example of what i am trying to say.(long story)
I had a conversation with a casual internet user who because he doesn't know any better has Google installed as his home page, so when he is looking for a site relevent to his search he will use 2 or 3 search terms and be confronted with thousands of results ok we all know that.
So to make his search easier he searches for 1 or 2 phrases with no spaces what does he find, Your search "so&so" did not match any documents. No page found containg so&so.
Then he might try the same combination and add the .com, result. Sorry no information is available for the URL so&so.com.
If he is lucky this result may appear below, find pages that "contain the term" so&so.
Now i asked him why dont you use the address bar and type-in the URL www.so&so.com, he said whats the address bar!.
How many other newbies or casual surfers are out there doing this? if Google had the facility "click here to see if this site exists" (it use to) life would much easier.
In my book thats a disservice to the internet surfer, the get they impession that if a site is not on Google it doesn't exist.

[Chris_R]

Google has changes they way they do this:

If a site routinely uses the www - so does google (you are right in thinking it didn't use to be this way).

It has no problems finding major sites either way:

[google.com...]

[google.com...]

and so on, but some sites that apparently only have www links need to have that for the site info to come up.

I think they should do it the way you have suggested, but I don't see this as a real problem for any site that has at least one link from a non www source (at least that is the way it appears to me - can't say for sure that is the rule).

Sites do exist without being in google and people should be typing addresses in the address bar.

[jomaxx]

I'm pretty sure Google did work that way until recently.

While I don't think it's necessary to attack this as a "disservice", I'm surprised that Google would change this feature, because it's clear that there are quite a few users out there who don't know how to find the URL bar on their browsers.

[grifter]

In my book thats a disservice to the internet surfer, the get they impession that if a site is not on Google it doesn't exist.

I think it's a disservice to keep people thinking the Google bar is the address bar. Giving them a fish vs. teaching them to fish, etc.

[Chris_R]

They should fix it - this is a concrete example of something they can and should fix.

I can't imagine they would want it this way - I think it used to even change it to the correct type. It seems to in some cases.

Google is usually known as www.google.com - the way people link to it. And it will change google.com to www.google.com in the mouseover.

The opposite is true with dmoz. Most people link to it with dmoz.org and if you type in www.dmoz.org - it changes it in the mouseover to dmoz.org.