I’ve been watching Google’s search results decline in quality and relevance for several years now. Not a day goes by where I’m not completely disgusted by the garbage I find in Google’s SERPs. Sometimes the search results are so mind-blowingly-shitty that I feel obligated to document my findings and publish them for others to see.
2/15/2011 UPDATE: For a better understanding of why Google sucks so bad at determining synonyms, check out this Google patent: Document-based synonym generation
And on that note, I’d like to submit the People’s “Exhibit A” into evidence:
Google’s Charges
Based on the evidence presented above, the People are charging the defendant, Google, with the following crimes:
- Producing and Distributing Counterfeit Goods: the evidence clearly shows Google returning at least one search result that intentionally mislead the victim by representing the word
theseas a synonym forthesis. - Aiding and Abetting: the evidence shows Google returning at least one search result that it knew or should have known to be the result of spamming, hacking, or other related crimes against relevance.
- Breach of Contract: the Defendant had previously made statements claiming that it would NOT ignore the underscore character[1], but “Exhibit A” clearly shows Google returning search results that contain the fragments
ieandclear…without any regard for the missing underscore.
1. “The underscore symbol _ is not ignored when it connects two words, e.g. [ quick_sort ].”
-Google, Punctuation that is not ignored
Need a Better
Search Engine?
In the comments section, one of my valued readers pointed out that DuckDuckGo also returns the hacked page–implying that it’s not a better search engine than Google. Therefore, I’ve updated this post with the image below, which shows that yes, both search engines return nearly-identical SERP snippets. However, the image also shows that Google has bolded the word these as if it’s a synonym for thesis–which is not the kind of stupid error you’d expect from a multi-billion dollar company who’s been dominating the search market for years. Not to mention…the word these is a stop word anyway, so it shouldn’t even be bolded to begin with.
Bottom line: DuckDuckGo is better than Google.
{ comment Leave a comment }
What? You act like Anexil isn’t directly related to ANY of the words in your search query. Don’t you know Google knows what you need even when you don’t?
You think you needed information about code, but what you REALLY needed was to know how to buy Anexil cheap…and without a prescription. What I hope you don’t need is much information about what Anexil is, what it does, what its side effects are, etc. Sadly, Google apparently only cares about facilitating the sale of Anexil and not so much with actually providing information about it.
Why are Bing’s “Search Overload” commercials running in a loop in my head all of a sudden. Huh…that’s odd. ;)
You think that’s bad, look at the SERPs for Anexil!
LOL…I have been looking at those SERPs all day, actually. I don’t even think Anexil exists–it’s like a spammer made a typo and didn’t realize it until after he hacked 100 blogs.
Hate to break it to you brother: http://timstaines.posterous.com/duck-duck-thesis
:O
Updated.
Smartass.
Google has been receiving a lot of criticism lately for their results. I’ve been reading on some blogs that people are questioning if that’s why they decided to publicly accuse Bing of copying their results recently. However, their plan might backfire since Bing is getting a lot of press over the ordeal.
This post is sad. Google search results suck because I was led to this page. SEO people seem like a bunch of idiot scammer business majors.
You can add double quotes or + in front of ie_clear to make it work properly. I am very surprised that you don’t know this. Please remove yourself from the internet, your info sucks.
Nice. Too bad he’s right. SEOs seem to me to be the unforunate result of business/marketing majors that somehow found the spare time to learn not only how to use the web but to game “the system” as well. Google’s algorithm may be flawed as of late, but SEO has always distorted SERPs even when algorithms are at their best. SEO degrades the overall quality and usability of the web by making real, useful information – not marketing bullshit – harder to find.
Glad to hear I’m not going insane !! It’s a pity – I type in a programming related question and get documents from 5 years ago with nothing on the first page within the last year, drives me bananas.
ditto here. apparently google results hVe been on the decline for some time. i didnt start noticing it for the content i search for until about 6 months ago. all the top results are frquently old. that wasnt alaways the case so i never really looked at the dates anymore. then i started reading the content on the result pages i had clicked to and started feeling like i was in the twighlight zone. never realized how dependent on google i became because when i tried to think of alternate search methods i felt were reliable i was stumped. i guess ill try duck duck
…you DO realize that the first result in DuckDuckGo, there, was for earrings? Whereas the first result in google actually had something to do with ie_clear?
I’ll admit that that IS surprisingly shitty, for it to mistake thesis for these, though.
Who the hell do you think you are Britney Spears? No wonder nobody follows you on twitter dummy. You see it is social. mr seo expert, when you don’t follow people and or follow them back they hate your guts.
Hmm…
I honestly can’t tell if that’s a real comment or not. A quick search in Google shows that it’s unique, and there was no attempt to link the author’s name to anything. But on the other hand, nothing it contains makes any sense or relates to the content of the post in any way.
Weird.
I just hate when you are moving to a new town or planning a trip and the first 50 results are what I call NON-SITES. They are simply useless skeleton websites with no real information, but they excell at getting hits and advertisers. If I look up the name of a restaurant in a particular town I WANT THE F’N restaurant’s website, not a ton of business listings websites with next to zero information. Ridiculous that after I spend 5 seconds there that is enough to have the same friggin’ result pop up when I try to search other towns.
@SEO Mofo. You’re absolutely correct with your Google assessment…and as a writer I’m thinking about heading back to the library if this keeps up. Nothing worse then trying to write something well-researched when there’s nothing but crap with Google’s illustrious monopoly on information-gathering.
And to the doubters/haters posting their negative spew…easier to critique then create — isn’t it a*s clowns!