Just me or Google search engine is going downhill?

Forums › Desktop computing › Just me or Google search engine is going downhill?

qwerty7

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#115074 13-Mar-2013 09:22

What makes me think this..

Before when you typed a phrase such as 'I have a dog' it use to show those words highlighted and the surrounding parts of the sentence underneath the blue hyperlink title

You use to be able to just click 'pages from New Zealand'. Now you have to click Search Tools > The Web > Pages from New Zealand

Before when you did an image search it showed the words relating to each picture which were relevant to your search underneath the picture. Now you just get the web address, what use is that? This may be more simple for basic searches such as 'dog' but not for more complicated searches which return some unrelated results. For example 'Panel beating hammer' If you scroll down you get pictures of things which are not panel beating hammers such as chisels and other tools related to panel beating. Previously it would say under the image for example '1976 stanley No. 52 chisel' now it just give the website address the image is from

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#780919 13-Mar-2013 09:28

Yeah, it's getting worse. The other day I was looking for a specific page that I'd seen before, which I knew had the word "wow" in the title. When I added "wow" to my search terms, it started finding pages with "Warcraft". Google used to respect the keywords that you entered, but now it tries to be "clever".

Unfortunately there don't seem to be any other viable options. I tried changing my default search engine to Bing a couple of weeks ago but changed it back to Google within a day.

surfisup1000

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#780922 13-Mar-2013 09:41

I agree -- it was best around 2 years ago, has been deteriorating since.

In fact, I even occasionally use the hated (by me) BING!!!!

That is just how bad google search is getting.

khull

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#780936 13-Mar-2013 10:04

I have moved to Bing for a few months now and found the results to be better (shockingly)

I also did not like the amount of tracking that goes on with the search results from google

timmmay

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#780952 13-Mar-2013 10:19

It's gotten so bad I've resorted to downloading the internet and using grep. Now there's a man's search tool.

Batman

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#780970 13-Mar-2013 10:33

hmm interesting! let's all vote with our feet!

CYaBro

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#780988 13-Mar-2013 10:56

Duck Duck Go!

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

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gzt

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#781066 13-Mar-2013 12:43

In general I agree with the topic. The new fancy ui is just a pita for technical types, and everyone else cannot see the options it provides anyway.

Behodar: Yeah, it's getting worse. The other day I was looking for a specific page that I'd seen before, which I knew had the word "wow" in the title. When I added "wow" to my search terms, it started finding pages with "Warcraft". Google used to respect the keywords that you entered, but now it tries to be "clever".

In the new UI change 'All results' to 'verbatim'. That should do it.

Try using the old UI and selecting 'verbatim' from the options list. [edit: that might be search tools > verbatim in the old ui]

Behodar

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#781075 13-Mar-2013 13:08

gzt: In the new UI change 'All results' to 'verbatim'. That should do it.

Try using the old UI and selecting 'verbatim' from the options list. [edit: that might be search tools > verbatim in the old ui]

Changing to Verbatim works, although only for one search then it resets back to All. How do you change to the old UI? I can't find the option and somewhat amusingly I can't get any helpful search results out of Google...

gzt

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#781094 13-Mar-2013 14:08

Putting the word in quotes and adding minus verbatim might work as well. e.g.; "wow" -verbatim.

Getting the old UI back? Well I hate to be abstruse as in mysterious - but if I tell you how to do that someone might get really really annoyed with me. End of comment.

1080p

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#781120 13-Mar-2013 15:23

CYaBro: Duck Duck Go!

You're kidding, I hope. They just use the top few Google search results or you use a !bang to go to Google/elsewhere directly.

alexx

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#781154 13-Mar-2013 16:40

qwerty7:
Now you have to click Search Tools > The Web > Pages from New Zealand

Use stylish with chrome or firefox plus one of the google user styles.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/
http://userstyles.org/styles/78857/google

You could also do it with a userscript from userscripts.org but I haven't tried that option.

#include <standard.disclaimer>

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CYaBro

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#781157 13-Mar-2013 16:58

1080p:
CYaBro: Duck Duck Go!

You're kidding, I hope. They just use the top few Google search results or you use a !bang to go to Google/elsewhere directly.

It was a joke. :)

I thought it had died as I hadn't heard anything about for a few years then saw it mentioned again somewhere.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

bener

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#781167 13-Mar-2013 17:14

This looks like a question that we should ask Jeeves...

mm1352000

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#781290 13-Mar-2013 20:47

I generally agree. My current pet peave is their result link modification. I use(d) right_click+copy_link_location very often. Now we're supposed to use sslllloooowwwww select+copy+paste [when the link isn't truncated], visit the result page, or use addons like -->this<--???

bfginger

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#781386 14-Mar-2013 08:21

Turn javascript off and they give you the old image search.

Add site:.nz to only show search results from NZ.

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