Google's Search Engine Sucks

[BenchBrawl]

I'm not knowledgeable about any of this, but I've noticed a huge difference in the quality of the results in my google searches compared to the results of 5 years ago.It seems you cannot get the precise content you're looking for, and end up with pages after pages of stupid ''Top 7 ways to hammer a nail'' and ''4 ways to make money online'' type of articles.

What search engine are you using? I'm looking for the best one which will bring me the most revelant results, even if my search is one long sentence with technical words and the most relevant result turn out to be a forum post made in 2002 in some obscure forum or in a comment made on an obscure blog.

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[FLYLine27*]

Google is easily the best.

 

[Morozov]

No it doesn't.

 

[PALE PWNR]

I use Netscape 100% accurate results. Every time. And no spam!

 

[Vikke]

altavista baby.

 

[Osprey]

It's as good as ever for me. No offense, but perhaps it's you who isn't very good at using search engines to get the results that you want. Try telling us what information you're searching for and what your exact search string is and maybe we can give you some tips on making it better.

 

[Loopy0ne]

This is what you want: https://duckduckgo.com/

It is built in to Firefox quick search bar (if you're in to that sort of a thing )

 

[Devourers]

lolwut? It's still the best by far.

 

[SniperHF]

lolwut? It's still the best by far.

It's pretty remarkable when you think about it, what tech company, even more so in the website business, has been the best at something for this long?

I can think of a few examples on the hardware side but on software/web? Google is the only name that comes to mind.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Google is not the best "by far". There's almost no difference between most of the good search engines.

Google was the best by far about 10 years ago, in fact they were so much better it was ridiculous, but the other search engines have caught up

 

[aleshemsky83]

The reason Google gives you those clickbait results is because they score articles based on the number of times they're shared or linked elsewhere. Unfortunately Google underestimated the stupidity of people and the popularity of these horrible lists.

Other search engines do that now too but it was what gave them the edge in the early days.

I'm sure you'll get those similar results on other search engines.

 

[karnige]

yahoo and google have been great for a decade plus

 

[Quarter]

Just Bing it!

 

[FLYLine27*]

Just Bing it!

Bing is the worst right next to AOL.

 

[Quarter]

Bing is the worst right next to AOL.

But they bring such quality to shows such as Hawaii Five-0. It can't be that bad!

 

[Kestrel]

It's as good as ever for me. No offense, but perhaps it's you who isn't very good at using search engines to get the results that you want. Try telling us what information you're searching for and what your exact search string is and maybe we can give you some tips on making it better.

That's what I was thinking. Knowing HOW to phrase what you're looking for can make a huge difference in what you find. Throwing in a "-" or "+" can help out too.

 

[Osprey]

That's what I was thinking. Knowing HOW to phrase what you're looking for can make a huge difference in what you find. Throwing in a "-" or "+" can help out too.

The single biggest thing that you can do, IMO, is use quotation marks to group words that should only be searched together. For example, if you're searching for results on penalty kills, you'd want to put quotation marks around "penalty kill" (like so) to keep them together and exclude non-hockey-related results like pages on the death penalty for killers. It's rare that I ever search for anything without using at least one pair of quotation marks, and I usually have little trouble finding what I want.

That said, thinking back on the OP's issue, if the problem is "results" like "7 ways to hammer a nail," then that sounds like a problem with ads (you're getting "scroogled," as Microsoft's Bing campaign went), not a problem with the search results, themselves. I don't see any ads like that when I use Google, which is probably because I have an ad blocker extension installed and also use a 3rd-party HOSTS file.

 

[Kestrel]

The single biggest thing that you can do, IMO, is use quotation marks to group words that should only be searched together. For example, if you're searching for results on penalty kills, you'd want to put quotation marks around "penalty kill" (like so) to keep them together and exclude non-hockey-related results like pages on the death penalty for killers. It's rare that I ever search for anything without using at least one pair of quotation marks, and I usually have little trouble finding what I want.

That said, thinking back on the OP's issue, if the problem is "results" like "7 ways to hammer a nail," then that sounds like a problem with ads (you're getting "scroogled," as Microsoft's Bing campaign went), not a problem with the search results, themselves. I don't see any ads like that when I use Google, which is probably because I have an ad blocker extension installed and also use a 3rd-party HOSTS file.

Yeah, I use quotation marks quite a bit too. I also find that if the first search isn't productive, changing the wording up slightly can get you exactly what you want. You could be right about it being an advertising problem, although I usually only get 2 or 3 ads at the top myself, and half the time one of the ads will actually get me what I want.