Please teach me how to use search engines.

[Saga]

Alright. I've ultimately concluded that either I am absolutely retarded when it comes to using search engines, or Google simply no longer feeds me reliable results for my queries. Everytime I search for a technical document I have to wade through 2-3 pages of garbage mirror forum posts of the same microsoft KB or various pay-to-use websites that require logins and my credit card information. None of that is a reliable result for my search.

Please give me a crash course on how to use a search engine, since I have obviously been failing to do so since 1996.

For example. I was having a debate which needed to determine the ratio of profit that game companies make. The question was, how profitable are MMO's vs. FPS games in sales. Simple figures such as the ukpeep of a MMO vs. the lack of upkeep in a FPS once released.

My searches in google as follows:

"WoW Profit Figures" First page riddled with everything from speculatory WoW forum posts to Chinese gold selling websites. No dice.

"Video Game Company Profits" Shows stock market results for Square Enix, financial results for Nintendo, and for some reason a top 3 result is video game profits of online poker.

"PC Game Profits" Returns everything from how to MAKE money playing MMO's to torrents to download Bioshock.

In all seriousness, I know I'm obviously doing something extremely wrong - so please educate me on how the hell I can find accurate results for a question in Google without being fed useless garbage.

 

[Ns1]

expert exchange = scroll down

to find profit find parent company, then find financial statements?

 

[BeauJangles]

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com...t-financials-revealed/

It was revealed that Blizzard will report $1.1 billion in revenue this year, $517 million in operating income.

Terms: Blizzard World of Warcraft revenue

 

[BeauJangles]

http://www.kotaku.com.au/games...its_slightly_up-2.html

Square Enix has released its financial statement, showing that first quarter net sales for the 2009 financial year are down 9 percent compared to Q1 last year. Here's the number comparison: ¥29.77 billion ($US 276 million) for Q1 2009 vs. ¥33.74 billion ($US 313.4 million) for Q1 2008. Profits were up slightly though with a net income of ¥2.88 billion ($US 26.75 million) from last year's ¥2.73 billion ($US 25.25 million).

Terms: yearly revenue square enix

 

[Saga]

Originally posted by: Ns1
expert exchange = scroll down

to find profit find parent company, then find financial statements?

Seriously? I honestly stopped even reading once I saw the stupid masked out pages asking me to login. I suppose my attention span kicked me in the ass on this one.

 

[Ns1]

Originally posted by: Izusaga

Originally posted by: Ns1
expert exchange = scroll down

to find profit find parent company, then find financial statements?

Seriously? I honestly stopped even reading once I saw the stupid masked out pages asking me to login. I suppose my attention span kicked me in the ass on this one.

don't feel bad, I didn't know either until AT pointed it out to me.

 

[BeauJangles]

Originally posted by: Izusaga

Originally posted by: Ns1
expert exchange = scroll down

to find profit find parent company, then find financial statements?

Seriously? I honestly stopped even reading once I saw the stupid masked out pages asking me to login. I suppose my attention span kicked me in the ass on this one.

Just avoid general terms. When you're looking for something specific, like profit, use specific terms. It's much less likely that some noob WoW site is going to talk about Blizzard's annual revenue than mention "WoW" + "profit."

 

[CrazyLazy]

The problem is you are using the terms "profits" in your search. This is going to give you a bunch of crappy affiliate sites trying to sell you stuff. The other less solvable issue is you are looking for financial data within the video game niche. The average person searching for something related to video games doesn't give a crap about these things and there won't be a lot of links to them. Also google and search engines in general aren't perfect, sometimes it's best just to ask someone knowledgeable in the field for an answer.

 

[Saga]

Originally posted by: CrazyLazy
The problem is you are using the terms "profits" in your search. This is going to give you a bunch of crappy affiliate sites trying to sell you stuff. The other less solvable issue is you are looking for financial data within the video game niche. The average person searching for something related to video games doesn't give a crap about these things and there won't be a lot of links to them. Also google and search engines in general aren't perfect, sometimes it's best just to ask someone knowledgeable in the field for an answer.

Fully understandable, but this was just the first example that came to mind. I can remember various times I would be searching for model numbers or user manuals for things and spend WAY too long trying to locate anything relevant. You add Moldel#+Manual into a search and the first 2 damn pages are simply vendors selling me the product. None of them even have the fucking words manual in the damn text, so why was this returned as my top result?

I'm not expecting it to be perfect, just expecting it to act predictably.

Google is damn great for locating things by simply typing a name and area code, however, so while it has it's flaws it definitely has it's advantages as well.

 

[Juddog]

When searching google, I found it immensely helpful to use the + and - symbols.

+ Will mean that it has to have that term in the results. - Will mean any results with the word after minus will be omitted.

Say for example you're searching for a common name that has many other meanings (take for example a band called "download" for instance).

Obviously searching for the keyword "Download" will you get you 160 million results. Now try the same search with "download +band" (do the actual search without the quotes) and first result you get is their wikipedia page.

Now say you are searching for "WoW Profit Figures". Using the method I listed above, narrow down the search by adding in Blizzard and Vivendi.

"warcraft +blizzard +profit +figures +vivendi" (no quotes in actual search).

First link has profits, and immediately you see profit forecasting, etc..

Using the minus symbol is also immensely useful when you're searching for something that's common enough that your results get spammed out. Take for example you search for a video game and get tons of torrent results instead. Re-create the search with "-torrent", and voila' you will have any results with torrents in them stripped out. It allows you to quickly cut through the garbage and get to the point.

 

[Saga]

Originally posted by: Juddog
When searching google, I found it immensely helpful to use the + and - symbols.

+ Will mean that it has to have that term in the results. - Will mean any results with the word after minus will be omitted.

Say for example you're searching for a common name that has many other meanings (take for example a band called "download" for instance).

Obviously searching for the keyword "Download" will you get you 160 million results. Now try the same search with "download +band" (do the actual search without the quotes) and first result you get is their wikipedia page.

Now say you are searching for "WoW Profit Figures". Using the method I listed above, narrow down the search by adding in Blizzard and Vivendi.

"warcraft +blizzard +profit +figures +vivendi" (no quotes in actual search).

First link has profits, and immediately you see profit forecasting, etc..

Using the minus symbol is also immensely useful when you're searching for something that's common enough that your results get spammed out. Take for example you search for a video game and get tons of torrent results instead. Re-create the search with "-torrent", and voila' you will have any results with torrents in them stripped out. It allows you to quickly cut through the garbage and get to the point.

Thank you, this was immensely helpful.

 

[CrazyLazy]

Originally posted by: Izusaga

Originally posted by: CrazyLazy
The problem is you are using the terms "profits" in your search. This is going to give you a bunch of crappy affiliate sites trying to sell you stuff. The other less solvable issue is you are looking for financial data within the video game niche. The average person searching for something related to video games doesn't give a crap about these things and there won't be a lot of links to them. Also google and search engines in general aren't perfect, sometimes it's best just to ask someone knowledgeable in the field for an answer.

Fully understandable, but this was just the first example that came to mind. I can remember various times I would be searching for model numbers or user manuals for things and spend WAY too long trying to locate anything relevant. You add Moldel#+Manual into a search and the first 2 damn pages are simply vendors selling me the product. None of them even have the fucking words manual in the damn text, so why was this returned as my top result?

I'm not expecting it to be perfect, just expecting it to act predictably.

Google is damn great for locating things by simply typing a name and area code, however, so while it has it's flaws it definitely has it's advantages as well.

In general google is going to give you a lot of crap with people trying to sell you stuff. This is because the internet is driven by money, not information. People aren't going spend the time and money to rate well in google if they aren't going to get some kind of money for doing so. As a result the majority of popular search terms that top spot in Google is essentially paid for. This makes finding information via Google difficult for a lot of topics, but generally the further you search gets away from the $ the less spam and useless crap you will get.

 

[Billb2]

You have to understand how Google works.

When you type in a search term, Google returns the results in the order of how often the websites were visited when searched with the terms you used.
This indicates that the most people found their answer is the first web page Google served up, since less people went on to the second "hit" because they had already found their answer, and so on.

The problem you are having is the search terms you are using.