Forum Moderators: open
This isn't anything new really, it's just a level of frustration setting and waiting for Google to come up with an easier way to search than they have at current. It feels like they have stopped dead in the water on search and settled for what they have.
I really didn't even know there could be a faster, more accurate way to search until using that 'other engine' with it's nifty suggestions. They cut search time by multiples and make the actual process much less of an intellectual brain teaser. Instead of figuring out the right keyword combos to get Google to generate the result I want, I could be putting that effort into viewing information I want, or getting back to work.
In alot of ways, Google today is feeling more an engine from the pre-Google days. I sure hope they have something up their sleeve.
For example we are now beginning to expect that the answer for every possible question is out there on Google or any search engine. Almost to the ridiculous.
This I see as one problem Google and other engines have, when the searches become more complicated, when we are looking for an answer that just may not be out there.
Also maybe listing of related categories in the directory at the bottom of search results. Where they are now below each listing seems cluttered to me.
I would definitally like to see searches of other media like audio and video. FTP search would be nice too but not used as much.
My biggest wish is for look customization. The way ATW does it is great, but if we could at least pick font color and size that would be great to. For some reason teoma and ATW are just eisier on my eyes. Im not sure if it's color or font selection or the result layout.
A sort by option (page changed last / freshness / last indexed) date would be nice.
Just some ideas. I have no complaints about google overall and I love the results. It's mainly about usability. Not lack there of, but there is always room for improvement.
The idea of the plural and singular being combined, I disagree. I like the chance to get rankings in one if I can't get it in the other. The more chances to get ranked on different search phrases the better if you ask me.
1) Give significant weight to the relevance of entire web sites rather than just the relevance of individual pages. If I do a search on “hand-made widgets”, I would like to see listed on the top those sites that focus exclusively on hand-made widgets. In all likelihood, larger, higher PR sites with a single page on widgets, and zillions of other pages on irrelevant topics, are not what I am looking for.
2) Ignore reciprocal links when calculating PageRank. There is no significant difference in my mind between link exchange programs and linkfarms. Why should a site be more important because it links to a lot of other sites (most often totally irrelevant) that link back to it?
I don't participate in reciprocal linking, but almost all my links are reciprocal links, precisly because they are on topic.
What you are suggesting is that any site that happens to link to DMOZ should not have the link from DMOZ count.
Naturally reciprocal links (non traded) would naturally be more on topic than non reciprocal links. Think themeing.
Do you really think that widget-selling stores would spontaneously link to other widget stores if it was not to increase their PR? If the reciprocal links are there for the benefit of the visitors, that’s fine. But why should a site get higher PR because the webmaster spend hours and hours contacting other webmasters about exchanging links? Does that make the site any better?
I don’t think that the topic of DMOZ is relevant. They do not insist on a reciprocal link before listing you.
If you can figure out a way for Google to figure out the difference, then I'm sure they would love to know about it.
"I think Google is still number one and will be for a very long time, but I think it is the users who are becoming more demanding."
I would agree, but I think more demanding users are a good thing. :) There's got to be more features that you've wished for as you searched--what else do you wish you could see?
I too would like something to help me narrow down a search. It is a pain in the rear to scratch one's head trying to decide what combination of words will find me what I am looking for. Usually I can go right to it, but when I can't, it sure is frustrating.
On the other hand, I can't stand the paid listings on the top of most of the other SE's. I have learned to block adwords out (unless I feel moved to charge one of my competitors a few bucks).
"I think Google is still number one and will be for a very long time, but I think it is the users who are becoming more demanding."I would agree, but I think more demanding users are a good thing. :) There's got to be more features that you've wished for as you searched--what else do you wish you could see?
Not really, perhaps one thing which may be fun and get me to spend longer on Google would be an Amazon style, People who searched for this also searched for XXXX etc.
That could also help you with relevancy and also give people suggestions for other search terms.
"widgets" search (w/quotes) = widgets only...
widgets search (w/o quotes) = widgets + widget
Most of us SEO people know searches for "widgets" is usually much higher than "widget", so we tend to optimize for "widgets" more, and probably search for "widgets" more too. But I feel sorry for the 30% (or whatever it is), of searchers that always search for "widget" instead of "widgets", they are missing out on all the good SERP's, or at least the most optimized ones.
Overture has managed to build a database of popular search terms with proper plural-forms, I can't see why Google can't do this too. It's a once off thing, that's not going to change (vocabulary doesn't change very much over time). And they have lots of data from the tool bar, I'm sure regarding searching behavior.
I could also see this helping with spam, or avoidence there of. Although I don't see it that often on google, everyone in awhile you will click on a link and it's nothing but a keyword stuffed page without and real content. While not that easy to see from the thumbnail, if it helps me avoid just one pece of junk page I'm happy.
I think the idea of combining singular and plural instances of words into one result might be a good idea, but I 'd have to see what it does to my SERP before I can say for sure. (grin)
As for "other engines" as far as I can see from my logs they aren't generally in great use. When I calculate my search-driven visitors the only other engine (aside from Google) drawing any traffic is MSN at about 15% of search-driven traffic. Google (Yahoo/AOL/etc) traffic combined is over 80%.
This means fewer than 5% of my visitors are using anything other than Google and MSN. Google responds quickly to the changes I make at my page, rewarding me in a matter of weeks. With MSN (for example) it has taken a year to slowly move incrementally up the SERPs. What I do to my site -- or add to it -- seems not to matter to the other engines, at least not in the short term.
JeremyL I like that idea but they would have to radically improve their caching techniques to ensure the image is the most up to date (i.e that day or as close as).
That would be a good thing :)
Jeremy, thats'a good idea, but I think that would slow the searching significantly.... having 10 images load on every page, if you know what i mean.
Thats why i suggested it be a preference setting and not something on by default. I'm on dsl so i won't see much wait for 10 thumbs but it would suck for dial up users.
Suppose someone is searching something on a disease.
He wants to know the latest information on it from an authoritative source.
I know of no ways of finding really "new" content on this subject in Google. Show me how to search for the totally new pdf document that was indexed in the last two weeks by Google on xyz disease from a high PR site?
As far as I understand it, Google puts high PR pages, pages with a lot of recent new links towards it, and really new pages, all in the same "Fresh" category. Let users find the Fresh pages that are really new, or of which 60% of text body content is new.
Goofresh helps in some occasions, but not thoroughly, and does the regular searcher know Goofresh?
Googlegroups could help, but it is difficult to weed through panic, gossip and real authority there.
...common types of searches that don't seem to work as well...
I would give specific examples but I think I'd run afoul of the TOS. (If you would like them Sticky me)
There are several 2-3 word searches in a particular industry I was looking for earlier this week that just gave me crap for 8/9 of the first 10 listings.
The kicker is, that of the crap entries are all 'affiliate' domains owned by the same company.
The fact that a couple of these sites are in DMOZ probibly attribute to the PR5+ they have, but they only show up in this list (1 keyword, 1 word city (not the capital), 2 word state) because they have semi-visible text spamming keywords everywhere.
The problem is two fold:
1. PR is good, PR is nice, but PR!= Everything. There _has_ to be some other method to 'assist' in determining relivance of a page. (And if I get a real good one, you can all read about it after a small trip to the USPTO. :)
2. Google _must_ start to really crack down on sits that cloak or spam to drive up a SERP or to decieve the SE. (Note: That a site that disables flash detection and/or disables session IDs is 'technically' cloaking, but with entirely different intentions - and IMHO should not be peanalized)
The problem is actually simpler then it looks -- improve relivance and remove crap and you get a better SE. Some of the wizbang stuff Goole does is _great_ but most users go to Google to hit a few keywords and find something.
When I choose Danish I would like to have three possibilities offered below the search field:
1. Search the Web
2. Search Scandinavian pages
3. Search Danish pages
A lot of words are spelled slightly different in Scandinavian languages. You would have to build a database with those words, but I am sure that the users would happily help you.
Troels (Truls in Norwegian)
common types of searches that don't seem to work as well as you'd like.
OK, it is difficult to get information about hotels in any major city, without coming up against a large number of what are (probably) affiliate sites with the same data base that one has to wade through.
The same applies for similar searches on, say, car rental, or airport parking in a major city.
Yah, I'm more interested in things regular users would want rather than webmasters/seos
We have about 10 young trainees a year coming fresh from school/university.
For some reason they think that searching for word1 will yield word1word2 results as well.
I guess this has to do with them getting used to Microsoft's search option with "search all or part of.." and also that dutch/scandanavian/german languages tend to stick together words into words.
There have been initial movements from Google into this matter:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Maybe an old fashioned wildcard asterix search could help? [webmasterworld.com]
I think regular users would be happier with an advanced search option fill in box containing: containing part of the word:
oh and never see spam again to!
