Why I Think Google Is Slowly But Surely Loosing On Quality

I have been observing Google results from almost 7 years from SEO angle.

Of late Google has lost its way in giving good search results is my opinion. I will be highlighting this with some examples here.

1. Most of the city related searches return yellow page websites

A search on "new york hotels" results in

only 1 hotel website showing up rest all are hotel listing websites/review websites.

So, Google thinks that it is better go and search in these websites rather than to use its search results for local searches.

2. Google is not able to identify if you point multiple domains to the same website.

A search on "sites in mysore" shows 2 different domains but pointing to same website. (sitesinmysore.com)

This means that you can have one website, point 9 different domains and achieve all many results in 1st page from same website.

Coupled with this, the aggressive ad placements which is almost making ads look like search results is sure to reduce the Google share in search by a big margin.

Google is worried more about making follow its rules rather than giving better results to the user.

 

I think it is too difficult to say that Google is losing quality due to our observations on search alone.

For instance, search results are influenced by previous searches we have performed. Changes to the various algorithms can be made that will affect the results at any time. If it doesn't work, they will fine-tune it to make it better. This isn't a sheep mentality, this is just the pure logic that they are a company that wants to continue bringing in revenue: and that they know they need a good product to do that.


I also think that basing a whole company on their original product is tricky. For instance, Android is one of the most popular operating systems for mobile phones and tablets. They seem to be increasing their quality by leaps and bounds when 4.2 is compared to 2.3 and 3.2. The driver-less car is a very interesting leap of faith for them, as well. I also have heard that they are testing the waters with fibre internet.

As a company, I would say Google is improving. For an individual product, I would say Search is no longer their main priority, but is still important as many people use it as their homepage.

 

I am purely talking about search as a product here.

Right now they are not facing competition there as bing/yahoo is no better in providing search results.

 

Then if we are talking about search only, I think you have a point.

I find that perhaps 1/3 of my results for Google search are actually something of interest or use.
Bing is not anywhere near that, even still. So I do not see them as much competition.
For images, though, I find that Bing gives better results more often than Google. However Bing's interface is terrible, and I would rather put up with not as concise results than putting up with a bad user experience.

I truly think there is a hole for better search to come along. People try to reinvent search, make it modern (aiming for tablets, phones). But you can not make something better without making something good.

If somebody was able to create a good search engine that is able to filter out the junk, and present the best results, then I think it would have much success. I had high hopes for Duck Duck Go and appreciate their !bang searches, but the actual results are rarely better than Google.

In the end, Google may return millions of results for topics, but nobody is going to check a million pages. I think it's better to find concise, useful search results that are as closely related to my questions/topic of interest as can be. So far, nobody is currently doing that very well.

 

I feel the same thing. Google is not after quality search. Now it's after their market share.
I have tested and manipulated some results.
Google is saved, because no one is there to take the place.

 

car dealers in london in Google returns 27 million results.

The very fact that Google thinks there are 27 million web pages related to car dealers in London shows that it is failing miserably.

Even Google places shows 6000+ results. Are there so many car dealers in London? I am not sure.

Anyway let us see what is going to unfold in next 2 years.

 

I guess now Google is fighting for the money and influence and not for the search quality. So many sites of company got filter and left SERP and instead of them youtube, wiki, facebook and other trusty sites. But you can't order goods and services at these sites.

I heard soon Google will be a search engine which performs search at 10-15 trusted sites which survived through Google ZOO.

 

Google is improving because some how it feels the expansion is the best way to suceed.

 

I understand this post is from the SEO perspective, but I use Google purely for research and technical reasons. In that sense Google is great and I seem to always be able to find what I am looking for. Bing on the other hand seems to miss the target most times.

 

Not really from SEO angle but from an user using Google search's view point.

Why should I use Google to search "hotels in new york" when I am sure that Google also believes that it is better to visit hotels.com portal or similar portals.

Ideally Google should have presented hotel websites and not websites that list hotels unless user had searched something like hotel reviews or similar

 

Have you heard of "local search"? So, your statement is wrong, a lot of hotels are listed.

• Seven in local results.
• Two in the main results.

Now compare this to Bing's results. The fact is, Google's are better.

Take a look at any type of search engine and there is ad placement. For some it's more obvious than others. For some it's heavier than others. Let's take your search above - on Google, the top two ads are clearly labelled. And yes, just two. On Bing, there are four ads at the top, the background is lighter, the border is at one side. The labelling on Google is much more prominent than on Bing. So, over all, Google isn't that bad for its ads.

What a shock, search engines have ads. After all, it's a free service, they are allowed to make some money, just like any business.

This statement just re-affirms the fact you're a bitter webmaster who lost ranking and is now sulking.

 

I am not at all bitter.

I am easily able to achieve good rankings for my clients and making money out of it.

I just observing recently that Google is giving out more and more yellow page results than actual business websites which means that Google is accepting that many other websites are better than Google in Giving these results.

Anyway I and you have diff views & I just expressed my views.

 

I understand what you are telling, but the thing is it is changeing its search algorithm.may be because of these.

 

Yes, some "yellow page" type sites are rubbish, but these are the ones which typically don't rank well in Google.

Just taking your example again - TripAdvisor, Hotels and Expedia in search results isn't that bad from two view points: 1) user reviews (it's all great finding a listing for a hotel, but is it crap? three or more review sites helps to give a more real picture); 2) someone else doing marketing for your hotel.

Just think back a couple of years when trash like experts-exchange.com and other similar sites were dominating search results for tech. Or crappy comparison sites were ranking for almost every product term. There's a big difference now.

I'm not saying Google is perfect, but objectively speaking it has improved.

I just did a search for plumbers in my local area. Google found seven for me due to local results. Bing found zero. Google's ads had two local plumbers, Bing had no ads. That's not always a Good Thing (tm)! They have a few "yellow pages" results in common, but four of those for Google are trustworthy, reputable businesses. Bing gave several questionable results (pages with no results and one for Australia - please, I'm in the UK!!), although for all of Google's "directory listings" they at least were for 1) the right country and 2) had actual local businesses listed in them. I know which I would rather use.

 

My point was simple.

If tripadvisor.com / hotels.com / a local trusted yellow pages gives better results than Google, slowly people will start using those websites than using Google.

In India, people have already started using JustDial.com instead of Google if you need to find a plumber.

 

With Google (or whatever search engine) the result type is more choice. With something like JustDial you get a more specific result, less choice (just the people who put their service on JustDial). It's a different kind of "search" system. A directory, essentially. People already "kind of"* do what you're suggesting (use specific sites/"search engines"/business directories for specific actions, choice is good and very much embraced). It doesn't mean the death of search engines (just look at the usage stats for the past few years). This isn't something new.

*"Kind of" because Google, Bing, et al, are still very much in existence and popular.

 

You all are making good points, but my advice to the posters that can't find what they are looking for is to try learning how to actually use a search engine. Not all engines are the same so you'll have to visit each of their sites. Here are some example:

using minus can omit words in a search
using quotes around a sentence looks for an exact match
Using an asterisk is a wild card

Google also has an advanced search page...

So if you do a general search for local car dealers in London and don't get the results you want then try to be more specific because anyone outside of London dealing with local dealers in London would show up.

 

google is more about money than relevant search results...

 

I could never find problems on Google,only when they started to update, and re-invent their algorithms. I think this is something meant to kill others business, and its a negative point for G.

 

Maybe there is a difference between the commercial world and the open source world because either I'm ignorant or what your referring to only impacts a certain people.

Usually at least 80% of the top 10 results I get are relevant to what I'm looking for. Of course sometimes it's less, but then I improve my search string to get better results.

I challenge you to give me an example of what you are talking about and I'll teach you how to improve your search results.