Is google starting to suck?

Forum: water cooler
Topic: Is google starting to suck?
started by: monkymind

Posted by monkymind on Dec. 16 2005,05:21

Is it me on the fast track to senility or is it getting harder to get decent results from google?

During a recent project I searching was for specific apps and info but keep ending up at, huge shareware/freeware sites or, some sort of fake search/advertising sites that were just relisting my keywords as links to others sites :angry:

My impression is that for some time ..... people/companies have found ways to get their (barely related) pages into the top search results.

End of rant, and this is one time where I hope I'm just going crazy

...... I've been a big fan of google since it started.

Cheers
rob

Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 16 2005,05:57

Unless you're talking about locating apps for your win98 VM, I've always found that google.com/linux is very reliable in finding applications. Typically one of the first results is the Freshmeat page for that particular program, which has a link to its homepage.

Posted by monkymind on Dec. 16 2005,07:22

Thanks for the < http://google.com/linux > tip! For Linux apps I've tended to search the debian reposititories or go directly to Freshmeat.

Re: Frustating search results. Probably just me failing to cope with the growing complexity of the interweb

Cheers
rob

Posted by _pathos on Dec. 16 2005,08:37

I agree that google results are getting worse, companies are probably actively improving their google result position with bots, very easy to do.

Posted by DrRamble on Dec. 16 2005,09:37

Yup, Google sucks big style at the moment. Almost the first page of any search for a product name or a simple set of (non numeric) keywords is "buy this here" or "compare prices for thing at our shop".
Especially annoying is the increasing lack of localisation. Why do I, searching from google.co.uk, want to know special offers from the US? Very few of the budget resellers will ship to the UK anyway.

I have switched back to webcrawler and altavista, two of the great originals.
BUT did these two not used to allow regex search terms? Can't seem to make it work nowadays.

Maybe we could put a regex filter onto google to remove adverts...

TTFN

DrR

Posted by monkymind on Dec. 16 2005,10:06

Quote (DrRamble @ Dec. 16 2005,18:37)

That's interesting ........ I thought the localisation wasn't working due to the CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension ........

I'm always surprised by the tactics of the unethical rabidly sales obsessed people. Recently a guy knocked on my door and said "Sorry for the delay but due to a backlog of work the technicians havent had a chance to transfer your phone (to another company) so I'm working all weekend to catch up". Needless to say I hadn't made any request to transfer my phone and the only tool he was carrying was an unsigned contract.

Cheers
rob

Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 16 2005,19:45

This type of behavior has always been rampant in business, particularly in a capitalist society. Most of these people don't care whether something is unethical...as long as it's not illegal they feel they have every right to push their trash in your face. Too many people have no morals.

Posted by doobit on Dec. 16 2005,21:28

I hate localization. I want to see news from the whole world when I search and hate having Google restrict me to the US just because of my IP address. That's IP bigotry as far as I'm concerned.

Posted by clivesay on Dec. 16 2005,21:36

Searching can be a pain. I also use google.com/linux all the time. I will say I've become a big fan of gmail and the Google personalized home page. It's very easy to configure the way you want it.

Chris