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"Did you try searching on Google?"
"Yeah, but they suck now. They kept pulling up a bunch of sites that had those particular words in them, and only a few were actually about X."
"Yeah, I've noticed that too."
"Me too. They used to be good, but lately their results are just horrible and it takes forever to find what you're looking for."
"Then I tried searching on Yahoo and the results were almost exactly the same, which sucks because it's like 'what's the point of having Yahoo if it's identical to Google?'"
etc. etc. etc.
After they all seemed to agree that Google is much worse than it used to be, I couldn't help but jump in and ask them a few questions.
First, I asked if they ran web sites and none of them did.
Next, I asked if they ever clicked the link on the bottom of the Google search results to report that they weren't satisified. One of them said he did, but the others said never - they figured that if the results were consistently bad the people at Google would be smart enough to realize it without being told so.
Personally, I got a big kick out of all this. It was a nice little confirmation that regular people (non-SEOs) HAVE noticed a difference with Google and they don't seem to like it.
Maybe this is all indicative of Google falling out of favour with the "cool techs" who boosted them to where they are today. Google know, as well as anyone else, that things are only "cool" in this industry for a certain amount of time. Google have backed up their popularity with good technology and good results but they're making money- and that is never cool.... ;)
Personally, I'm using alltheweb more and more to dig for really deep stuff that I know is out there and Google can't seem to bring to the top 20 or so.
Defined as:
Surfer wants a commercial product or service and the SERPs give him/her JUST THAT - imho
As G will know exactly which search term produced the clickthrough, they will be aware that they missed the boat. So filling out the form is superfluous, I just hope it is fixed before the week is out.
I found the last update improved my site to first page on all my search terms, but again who did I miss?
spam is trash as in through the postbox and into the bin. I do not even open it
but I let 'em know I was one of the good guys.
very interesting to see the general population noticing this (though my friends are all computer... umm oriented people, who spend too much time online).
Leaving my work-related terms aside for fair judgement, Google still provide me with relevant SERP results for me. As a user, I am still pleased with Google.
My most recent two searches at Google:
halo reviews and halo 2 previews
I'd rate 'halo reviews' 8.5 out of 10 and 'halo 2 previews' 8 out of 10.
Personally, I prefer search with FAST/AllTheWeb, so anything above 7 out of 10 range at Google is acceptable for me.
But, as I tend to compare Google's and FAST's SERP results often, Google's quality holds its merit in my opinion.
Just a new member's two cents:)
One of the great things about the old Google algorithm was that it balanced an exact match of a pages Title and H1 tags with the PageRank and in the incoming link text.
This new algo seems to almost ignore what is in the Title and H1 tags. Hence searches are filled with more irrelevant stuff than ever before. Whatever the page author puts in the Title and H1 makes strong statement that that is what the page is about. Frankly it is easier to spam inbound link text to it is to "lie" to your reader by using Title and H1 tag keywords that are irrelevant.
I hope you are listening Google.
Google results have been a lot more off topic. Not only do I run sites, but I surf, genuinely. And presently Inktomi are returning more relevant results. Recently, I have been looking for French wine exporters and high gain antennas for my own needs. HotBot actually scored better and sooner with it's returns (actually, being honest, they were nearly neck and neack for the French wine search - but that is a bad enough statement in itself).
From looking at my own field / sites. High ranking sites have multiple internal spam text link, e.g. for blue widgets
blue widgets in wotsits
blue widgets in do-da's
blue widgets in thingamebobs
blue widgets in stuff
blue widgets in thingys
It is clear that Google is presently placing relevence on these links. Hopefully they recognize this problem and won't be during the next update. As the sites that presently rank high are not easily navicable, as the links do not really make sense to real people.
For one fairly popular adult term - the listings go like this:
bbc
news.com
usatoday
zdnet
businessweek
wired
apple
the telegraph
are all in the top 100 - and trust me - they are not relevant to the term. The white house (the .gov smarty pants :) ) was in here too, but I can't find it now. One of the words is non adult, but trust me - put the other word in front of it and no one wants anything from business week.
If you want the term (**** ****) sticky me.
The average web user does not use the web like the average webmaster. I haven't PERSONALLY heard any complaints, but it is not as though people would let me know.
I am sure google hears complaints all the time - before, during, and after any changes they make - and I am pretty sure they would notice and make changes if they noticed things getting worse.
Things can vary - especially when doing technical type searches.
IXQuick.com .. I have a friend that has his own body shop ..he is doing a van for me but the local paint distributer is a rip..way to expensive ..
IXquick.com gave me Auto Paint it's first listing search auto paint(btw notice gigablast is listed as a refering engine on the first page last listing ! Go Gigablast !..Google gives you Maaco , then a car wash, then auto wax and then earl sheib LOLOL..
disclaimer..I purchased a IXquick spot light ad.. and I love it.. my main traffic now comes from msn , lycos, IXquick, Google, yahoo.google in that order..
That being said, from a surfer's point of view, I find the new results weak as well; much in line with what you say you overheard.
Completely and totally apart from my business, I have a frequent need to use the Web for research for a totally unrelated topic area.
The "old" Google always provided right on the money results with the #1 ranked site; sometimes had to go to #2 for the info, but not often.
With the new algo, those same types of searches are generating a *majority* of PDF docs (big pet peeve of mine as a surfer) whereas there was rarely a PDF found in the first *page* previously.
Secondly, even though I'm searching .com, using English default, and searching for an english phrase, I'm also getting a ton of foreign sites that the only thing in English on the page is the search term.
Granted, this is coming from a limited perspective, but I find the search results much more off base with the new algo.
Just my $0.02...
Jenny
So far this thread has all of us chatting based on one case and making the big jump assuming that the world as a whole thinks Google results have degraded. Apart from jays post i dont see any other "evidence" in this thread, and none yet amongst non-web professionals in the mainstream media or such.
Frankly im not seeing at all in informational queries, even though ATW, Teoma and such have had good results also for a fairly long time. Even in some niche commercial queries I search for the relevance is very good on Google, and on a par if not better than ATW.
Does ixquick still return a majority of PPC listings in its default (not advanced) search? Before it did that, for sure, I though ixquick was very good, and so are a couple of other small metasearch engines too that return results from mainstream (not PPC) engines.
I occasionally get some irrelevant (to me) results, but that was happening before. I actually find the results are better.
My girlfriend travels the country doing computer training in public libraries, and she has not heard any complaints from the librarians about this update.
Even with travel searches (did I mention that she travels full time?) we have never had a problem that could not be fixed by narrowing the search.
Could someone please send me a couple of searches that produce some of the lousy results? Until I actually see some I will stick to my belief that people are just complaining because they got bumped.
Top three listing are "sponsored" and they offer the "spotlight" ad on the right...
[ixquick.com...]
then go to IXQuicks Star System link..
I am happy with my searchs and I am happy with my Spotlight ad..
doesnt mean I wont use Google ..just means I quit putting all my eggs in one basket..
I think the few good metasearch engines are underestimated, possibly because some of the biggeies and many smaller ones used PPC (dogpile and metasearch being two - (from memory) - and tainted the metatsearch area.
Your point on "votes" is a pretty good one. Apart from ixquick, which i may well use again, I also use 3 others which to me give excellent relevancy. Sticky mail me if you want the URL's. One takes a little bit longer to load and is a french engine (kartoo) that also displays graphically the relationships between the sites and the "importance" of each site to each query. (it has been discussed several times here at WebmasterWorld). another one is a quick displayer that for my queries has returned excellent results similar (or better in some cases) than Google
On the whole those engines that use the mainstream indexes like Fast, ATW, Yahoo, Teoma, Wisenut, MSN, and sometimes even Google (how such small operations got the permission - or the cash - for the latter is anybody's guess), rather than PPC's provide excellent results, and there are quite a few around. Some of these do use OV for example, but in most cases it is only one vote out of 8 or 10, or they are displayed separately as sponsored listings.
All however do not offer the fast returns and/or the quick-loading lean home page like Google. But sometimes for serious deep searches, it is worth the wait.
All in all, I think some metasearch engines are an excellent alternative to google for some cases, and are under-estimated in their power.
If anyone is interested in what I consider "degraded" results, sticky me and I'll be happy to send you the search.
Again, it's coming from a limited perspective, narrow search, so I doubt it's applicable to most users, but it is a lower quality SERP than with the previous algo, IMO.
And, you really shouldn't assume that people are complaining just because their sites got bumped...as I said, in my case, this is completely and totally different subject matter than my commercial site.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I'll show you what I'm referring to if you're interested.
Jenny
I didn't change any preferences?
That would explain the overabundance of foreign language sites. :) My mistake.
Jenny
My main site was high page rank rated some months ago and was not in Yahoo! directory. My site disappeared from the Google index and as a result I paid I recently to get into Yahoo!
Yahoo! put me in one particular affiliate sub-directory for no particular reason. My site (1500 pages) contains much general resource and information albeit with many different affiliate links.
Google has gone commercial and this is impacting on the search quality!
Just my humble opinion. Google a great "seach engine" have ecently got more into bed with Yahoo! the "best directory" and haven't got the balance right.
Just my twopennith...
Tony
WELL SAID !
I have been complaining about that for six months..too much emphasis on inbound links..I see way to much abuse..
Oh well, it's their engine they can do as they please..
No, I am not going to try and cheat better than the next guy as some seem to imply is what we need to do..I just move on to other sources for traffic to my web sites and for doing my web search's...
Normal people search for Brittney Spears.
PS. I'm already off topic so if anybody knows the period for the search numbers above you can make up some ratio between Overture's keyword suggestion number and Google searches (which would be nice).
