No, you aren't alone at all. I actually noted a change in results about a year ago. I wasn't getting good results like I used to. I still stick with Google primarily because of its cache feature. Nevertheless, I do go to dogpile.com for more relevant results. Besides, I figured I might be lucky enough to find a new search engine that gives good and relevant results, for it is through dogpile.com that I found google.com at its prime years ago.
P.S. You are right: Yahoo and other older search engines were once relevant and gave great results. Alta Vista and askjeeves used to be two of my favorites before they deteriorated for some reason. As the saying goes, don't fix it if ain't broke.
GTaudiophile
Lifer
- Oct 24, 2000
- 29,767
- 33
- 81
Yes, Google sucks. I quit using Google a year ago when they went through all of their algorithm changes. It's gotten a little better since then but IMO AltaVista has been providing better results and I've been using AltaVista again for the past year or so. I haven't tried the new MSN search.
What sucks about google (or my searching skills) is that it's very difficult to search for reviews of products without having to go through 10 pages of links to "dealtime" and "pricegrabber" and other piece of $#!& sites that don't have any useful info. I usually end up having to go back to advanced search and exclude the most frequently occurring ones so I can get the S/N ratio low enough to actually have a chance of finding what I want. :roll:
That, or you try to search for technical information and have to wade through a hundred generated pages that redirect you to long-expired ebay auctions.
I can't say that Google has gotten worse in the past several years. Results have always been polluted by pointless generated pages that have no useful information, but the kind of pointless generated pages doing the pollution has changed significantly over the years. I'm not sure whether this is a result of Google (and perhaps other seach engines) filtering out one type of generated page and then people go on to create a new type, of if the trend in "pointless generated pages" just keeps changing on its own.
AltaVista is actually Yahoo.
Yahoo own's AltaVista and primarily uses it as a place to beta test their latest stuff. Their primary results are usually pretty much the same thing except when doing a major algorithm test.I agree though, Yahooo/AltaVista's a great engine. I've found the results comprable to Google's and use them all the time. People are still so in awe of Google (and for good reason, it's a good search engine) that they fail to realize many other search engines have caught up and arguably even passed Google in terms or relevancy. If Teoma/AskJeeves or other new clustering engines like Clusty had as large an index as Google, their results would likely be noticeably better than Google's.
A lot of useless crap has been on every search engine, but Google does the best in having the least.
dullard
Elite Member
- May 21, 2001
- 26,066
- 4,712
- 126
1) I do a search. Find 1,000,000 pages.
2) I add 3 + and 3 -. Find 900,000 pages.
3) I add another 10 of each. Find 100,000 pages.
4) I add another 10 of each. Find 100,000 pages.
5) I put my phrase words in quotes to further narrow it down. Find 0 pages.
6) Give up.
You obviously have a problem with teh Capitalist machine. You will be eliminated soon. Please stand by...
Google is the best that I've used, but it isn't as perfect as it was. Started using this garbage 10 years ago so the improvement has been vast. You people act like critisizing Google is an insult to God. You REALLY need to get out more -- perhaps a girlfriend, wife, or a job. Maybe all three.
Hell, we used to have Altavista at work on another network (military system), and it was USELESS. You could not find anything, seriously. I didn't even bother searching with it because I could scroll through hundreds of hits with no results. I basically just had to bookmark sites for info or use a directory system for likely candidates.
They finally replaced it with Google (might still be beta at this point), and it's infinitely better. There's still a lot of junk, but I can actually find stuff these days.
It has been getting harder to find stuff on Google. It used to be almost magical how it would find exactly what you wanted with one simple query. Now that the internet is larger and Google is indexing forums and weblogs, the signal to noise ratio has gotten much worse.
Thank god they pulled the image samples from text queries. It was up for a while yesterday morning but they pulled it. Dumbest idea ever.
Thank god they pulled the image samples from text queries. It was up for a while yesterday morning but they pulled it. Dumbest idea ever.
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