Let's face it: Google does not work any more and is THE WORST search engine

keith waddington seems to make a strong case at:

http://groups.google.com/group/goog...05d71e5378f/aa0944f79a3de6f0#aa0944f79a3de6f0

Wonder what the eperts here feel about it!

 

I don't think he makes a strong case at all. This kind of logic is flawed:

"I don't benefit from Google therefore Google is rubbish".

 

I'm with hooperman. This article really doesn't make any valid points.

 

Its a long thread there:

An example of one of the points he makes is:
---------
Recently using quotes for an exact search gets very bad results with
google. Here is a very interesting example. Do a google search for this
exact sentence including the quotes.


"William Smellie, in his 1768 preface to the Encyclopædia Britannica,
exhibits the distinctively eighteenth century penchant for didactic
literature."


Result: zero hits. Now remove the quotes and do the search. Now it
finds the EXACT sentence on a web page. Since it is exact the search
with the quotes should have found the same page!
---------
Please look through all his posts in that threads.

 

Yes that is weird.

 

as a search engine user I am yet to come across a search engine better than google.

Which do you prefer?

 

That is interesting! It still doesn not mean that google is the worst SE. How do you judge accurately which is best? Do you look at all searches that were performed this week and see which SE returned the highest percentage of satisfactory results? Has this been done? Simply looking at a few vocal people's posts isn't an accurate test of "which SE is the worst?"

The problem is you get a very biased view of what public opinion about google is if you hang out on seo forums. I'm quite happy with google but I don't start threads saying so. Disgruntled webmasters who don't get the results they want on the other hand soon let the whole world know.

Yes, those results do seem screwy, but you can't make a perfect search engine.

 

Well, I didn't go through the whole thread because I thought it was just the top post you were referring. If that's the best of his arguments then his case is pretty weak.

Also, how many searches are more than 100 characters and put in quotes?

 

From the message:

Keep the google sitemaps and get more inbound links (and deep links) to the website and add a rss feed. And it will come back into the index.

 

Then it's simple. We stop using it.

You guys go first.

 

Google is still the best IMHO.

 

I didn't read the article (I've got better things to do such as pick my nose) but what I'd like to know is how objective the 'tester' was. Were the exact same tests performed in the other SE's and if so, what were those results?

 

You need to read this:
http://www.pitch.com/Issues/2006-06-29/news/strip.html
(The real meat is in the second half)
Non-webmasters are noticing...

 

I was a bit daunted by that article, it's not very clear at all. Is there any chance you could condense it for me?

What I would say is, OK non-webmasters may be noticing but just what proportion of the searching public is dissatisfied with google? 50%? 20%? 87.5%? Who knows? Without any form of unbiased testing, you can't validly say that "google is the worst".

 

The article is about the difficulties signing up for the Army, but a more serious person would probably be more persistent...

 

This is not the way to test. You are being selective with the 'evidence' you present. It's quite easy to just home in on examples of how bad certain results are, present them and then say "therefore google is bad".

I could quite easily look for evidence that google is fantastic, present it and then my conclusion would be "therefore google is the best". That wouldn't be valid either.

You are supposed to shape your conclusion based on all the evidence, not form your conclusion first and then find evidence to support it.

 

As mentioned before, unless he has done extensive cross-testing of all search engines - he can hardly argue such a statement. Im sure Google wont miss one surfer and nothing he wrote in there was new. The majority of times I visit google I am looking for straight forward things, what I type in is usually what I get and if not I refine my search even more. He's probably just got his back up because his website isnt doing well or he's banned from adsense, etc.

 

Personally I feel that Google is the Best SE and I benifited a lot by it professionally and personally over the years. In fact, that is the only search engine I used in the last six years or so.

However, I was disturbed to see no Google Reps responding to Keith's allegations on that thread. I think there is one post from a user by name Amanda, who I think represents Google as I have seen posts in Google's official blogs with that name, but no clear answers and keith seems to be really frustrated over something. He even posted some images to support his line of thought.

Confused!

 

I use google still, mostly from habit.

Generally the results are ok, but if I don't find what I need, I use msn search next.

However, I have found myself using msn more and more lately.

I've started getting, on a fairly common basis, google results in which, when I go to the page, it's no longer active. Sometimes closed for a year or more. Isn't that goofy?

I think I am slowly changing my google habit. If I'm looking for a current subject, I sometimes use msn first now because I know that google tends to list old results.

And because I know how much google has screwed up serps for my site (I'm listed in the 50's for a search for my own unique business name, which has been used on my site for ten years - the site is easily listed number one in yahoo and msn), I tend not to trust google's results as the 'definitive' answer like I used to.

 

Arh im very happy to see all , other members thinking this quotes...

Google ok in one hand it is good its easy it gives us allot of opurtunities in research but you know what :

Its not good enought remember craggle ? It was the best and still the best i dont like google search engine reply for the answers given in the search , ok when i give the command to search about a meta keyword it gives allot of nonsense answers... "Spammers"

People ask me why i hate spammers , well the actuall reason is this.. Google now is trying to improve its search method by cleaning up domains with copywrights , spams mail spams. (Sandbox) this is why it was created.

Altavista
Yahoo
Msn

They are much more better giving replies then google gives. But by the way google is the best advert server nothing is to be challenged with no way..