Search Engine Quality Decreasing - Is Anyone Else Seeing It?

[Cyrus]

Is it just me, or is it really hard to get good results when you google something lately?

It used to be that I would find what I wanted fast, now I search something and I get nothing but garbage.

Anyone else notice this change lately?

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

Not me, but I must say I don't search stuff too often.

 

[verty]

Not me, although I do also look elsewhere like dmoz.org.

 

[0rthodontist]

Getting good results out of a search engine is just a matter of choosing the right terms. I use google all the time and I'm often surprised by how accurate it is. If I have a couple pieces of information vaguely related to some random fact I need to know, google will frequently provide that random fact in the top 10 results.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

now I search something and I get nothing but garbage.

Aha, see, all that trash talk is catching up with you!

 

[turbo]

Choosing your keywords properly is important, but with Google, you can get much more accurate hits by enclosing key phrases or word combinations in quotes. If you're not doing this and you're searching on keywords that are common, you will get a lot of stuff that is unrelated to what you really want.

 

[Stevedye56]

I've really had no problem with Google lately. However, a few pages in the search hits are completely useless.

 

[robphy]

You can also use boolean operations. You can also use a minus sign "-" to exclude results.