Bad search results
Back in prehistoric times BG (Before Google), the content of the Internet was indexed by human editors. Thus, a listing in one of the search facilities back then was the result of some person or persons making a judgment on the quality and relevance of a link. However, as the content of the Internet exploded, the human editors could not keep up. Then Google came along.
The great contribution of Google was to devise superior ways for computers to do the work of searching and indexing the Internet. Google’s search algorithms gave better results than similar efforts by others and made Google the leading choice for searching. Most of the search facilities like AltaVista that were prominent BG faded into obscurity. Yahoo and Microsoft tried hard but remained behind Google in market share.
Considering the staggering amount of information that has to be found and sifted, computer search algorithms have done a pretty good job. In fact, it is quite a feat to scan your search query, sort through an enormous mountain of data, and return an ordered list of search results in a second or so. Still, it’s computers that are doing the searching and indexing, and computers lack the finesse of human editing. Search results are a long way from perfect.
An entire industry has developed that is devoted to finding ways to increase a site’s ranking in Google and other searches. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is big business. Basically, it’s a game of trying to get one up on the computer search algorithms used by Google and others. Malware writers and cybercriminals also try to game the algorithms. And, of course, advertisers try to get their products in the first rankings.
All of this means that search listings are a mix of relevant, useless, and sometimes even harmful links. It means that a lot of trash is given high ranking; it also means that a lot of good sites are buried way down the list and never see the light of day.
I haven’t made any quantitative study but my personal perception is that Google’s listings contain more trash than they used to. The amount of information that has to be searched is growing exponentially so I suppose the quality of search listings is fated to get worse. Whether Google, Yahoo, and Bing can do much about the deterioration, I don’t know. Is adding some human input to rankings practical? Yahoo recently got a patent for combining human and computer ranking. But the patent was applied for seven years ago and Yahoo has basically given up search in its deal with Microsoft.
I’m not the only one who sees search getting worse. Search authority Danny Sullivan has made several posts lately about the situation. Recently, he wrote, The Myth Of Great Search Engine Results, where he shows examples of poor search results for all three major services. He concludes:
To me, it feels like they’re getting worse, not better. But I can’t document that. What I can do is demonstrate without much difficulty, for areas where I have subject expertise, how bad they can be. They get by because along with the bad, there’s enough good. But they should be better than this.
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