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Ask HN: Has Google search becomes particularly poor in past few months?

85 points by pranay01 ↗ HN
Has Google search become particularly bad in last few months? Nowadays, if I want to do deep research on any topic I filter it with site:news.ycombinator.com or site:medium.com. Top results without any filters mostly return content marketing articles with no value. Is it because of high SEO optimization by content marketing sites?

84 comments

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uncoder0
Anecdotally I've been noticing a steady decline in the quality of google search results for the last ~6 years. The decline has seemed to be accelerating rather than slowing.
Jtsummers
I started having trouble about 10 years back. It was like a switch flipped from one day to the next, literally. Searches that worked one day failed the next. I was digging through 10 pages of results, having to select `verbatim` and other options before I found literally the same thing I'd read a week before. It improved again after that as I relearned how to use this new, failing, Google. But it's certainly gotten worse again. For instance, searching for a tv show title will now give you a frontpage mostly showing current, topical articles on it. This isn't wrong, but sometimes the IMDB link or even the show's own homepage will be on the second page of links.

If I want news I'll go to the news tab. This also means that my results will shift from day to day very rapidly as new content gets created because it gets precedence in the display.

Of course, news searching is also horribly broken. I tried to find an article (previously found through google news search). I knew when it was published but couldn't recall the site, selecting those date ranges returned 0 results. Selecting all time returned results that included dates within that range, but not the desired article. I eventually found it, by going home and looking in my browser history.

dazc
Things have changed since the days of Matt Cutts & Co. People complain about search quality but Google now appear not to care?
[dead] hotdog97
There must be a benchmark somewhere?
herhor
It might not only be the search engine's fault. Another reason might just be that the amount of shitty content is growing exponentially...
dazc
Or the incentive to create quality content has diminished since it's become much harder to monetize?
herhor
Was it ever easier to monetize? AFAIR good content was always free. If content is created only out of monetary incentive it's rarely good.
dazc
Yeah, fair point.
yayana
That's an excellent point for searches on new things. But for things that had a lot of existing content, I also find them more and more drowned out.

I think the reason is that Google rewards following it's instructions for mobile, security, etc, and existing quality content is often kept online merely as a donation to the public. Having the incentives of a spammer and following through on every rumored 2% rank improvement is almost a requirement to get near the top results.

ballenf
I really hope someone working on Google's search algs thinks about this. So, so many incredible sources of information are found on un-optimized pages.

I'd go so far as to say that an optimized page is often an indicia of low quality / unoriginal content.

nomel
But this is the point of the algs, to sift through the crap and give you relevant search results.

I don't think the internet has changed that much in the last year or so. If that's true, then it must be alg changes or that content creators have figured out how to beat the algs.

I'm guessing it's the algs, since quoting every single word I want to search for is usually the only way to get reasonable results.

notheguyouthink
Exactly. Even if the internet is to blame, this is a moving window. Good yesterday doesn't mean good today, and keeping up with that is needed to be considered "good".
21
I think I have the same problem.

I used to be very good at google-fu, but now I can't find anything any more. The neural networks just reinterpret my carefully designed keywords and return back the popular results that I try to filter out.

sudouser
yes, hard to explain but I noticed their filter bubble keeps showing me my latest preferences, so there’s the need to make it “unlearn “...
strict9
This is the worst thing about google products! One egregious example is Maps always showing you some random place you looked up a year ago. I don't want it to learn from me.
sudouser
there’s a way to erase history but you also lose personal info, or it has to relearn your places
arthev
I don’t know why, but I’ve noticed a decline in relevancy from google search results. Particularly annoying when google returns results that are basically the opposite of what I searched for. I’ve started using other search engines simply because google doesn’t return what I’m looking for. I haven’t kept a log, but I’m fairly sure this includes searches related to technology.
oldcynic
It's been dodgy and worsening towards dire ever since they did the brand and recency updates.

Mind I'm finding I need Google less at all lately. When I first switched to DDG maybe 20% of my searches were pushed to !g. Now it's very rare, maybe a few percent, and when I do Google almost never gives better results.

bleke
I agree, started to notice in google search last year about this time (maybe i getting older) or maybe DDG started to serve better results. Nowadays, I use google rarely in this year i can't remember when get better results than DDG, but maybe it just my bias
jolesf
Google search is getting worse, certainly. I'm noticing many google products are slow and clunky too- Keep, Inbox, Voice, and even Gmail. Most of these services are the slowest tabs in my browser.
AlexandrB
It's the perpetual curse of popular, profitable software - bloat. New features keep getting piled on until the software is slow and complex. See also: iTunes, Microsoft Office.
neoncontrails
I too have noticed this and have also gotten in the habit of prefixing technical queries with site:news.ycombinator.com. I’m glad it’s not just me. It’s an imperfect solution and I hope Google is invested in offering a better one.
DarkCrusader2
They definitely have. Removing the main keywords from my query is the most frustating thing ever. I just want them to do kind of "dumb" search, without any machine learning magic about 95% of the time.

I swithed to DDG sometime ago and it is way better atleast for me. I still switch to google for localised information(local restaurants etc.) though.

cglouch
I've found that I often get better results on google if I click "Tools" under the search bar and change "All results" to "Verbatim". It seems to force it to just do the query without as much of the magic.
dingaling
They still haven't enabled Verbatim for Image searches though. The difference in results when switching from verbatim-text to images is shocking.
BLanen
Even in verbatim it often results in it taking semantically similar words instead.

I'd much rather have it return no results.

DarkCrusader2
Yeah I have tried verbatim and it does seem to help a little in some cases. In others, it either shows totally irrelevant results or does not turn up any search results.

I wish I could do a grep style search on the web after removing all the social media and popular brands.

kjrose
I've noticed this as well. So much so that I'm starting to use some of my alternatives to get decent results.
pranay01
What are the alternatives you have tried? Curious, what are other strategies to get better results.
zackmorris
Yes I think that exact matches have suffered but perhaps semantic matches have remained the same. Qualifiers (is that the word) like + and "" are completely broken compared to how they used to work, so https://duckduckgo.com almost always gives better results now for programming-related queries. Question searches no longer work as well as they once did maybe 10 years ago.

But hey, Google's search is still infinitely better than Facebook's and GitHub's (the only other two that I use with any frequency). The StackOverflow search that kicks in when you're writing a new issue is generally superb and I really wonder how they did it (sometimes I begin writing a new issue to get it to really dig deep and find similar issues).

kjrose
Yeah, I use DDG and then switch over to Google when DDG doesn't give me good results. Got used to using !g a lot.

However, lately, I've been finding that I'll do a !g first, and then switch back to plain DDG since the Google results were terrible.

tafycent
Facebook's search function actually just doesn't work for me. I'll search for someone by name and it just returns me a list of friend suggestions that's the same no matter what name I search for. It may as well not have a search function at all.
pranay01
This reminds me a blog by PG where he proposed that Google can be disrupted by building search engine for techies (for e.g.) At that time it sounded preposterous to me, as Google worked perfectly fine for me - but now I really see this as a possibility. I think DuckDuckGo is following this strategy.
kjrose
I've noticed this as well, I've started to use other search engines to get better results when Google's results were a total wash.
Deimorz
I've found that Google tries too hard to "fix" all my search queries for me now. The top results often don't include one or more of the words that I entered, even if they were crucial for what I was trying to find.

I can switch it to "Verbatim" and that helps sometimes, but they really can't expect anyone except very technical users to even realize that's an option (or what it does).

flak48
How do you do that?

I've noticed Google no longer even fully respects keywords/phrases in quotes which used to force exact matches.

EDIT: NVM, found it by uhm.. googling : https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2126346/google-introd...

Had no idea this existed though..

Deimorz
After you search, you have to click the "Tools" button and then change the "All results" dropdown to "Verbatim".

It's bad UX, there's no indication at all for why I'd want to click on a dropdown that says "All results".

gxx
You can append !gvb to a DDG search to directly perform a Google verbatim search. It's the fastest way to do a Google verbatim search - faster than Google's own UI.

Not only does appending !gvb to a DDG search perform a Google verbatim search, it also directly reveals the Google UI for searching a date range.

The combination of normal DDG plus easy access to Google verbatim and date range seaches gives a pretty nice search experience.

sli
I find it particularly frustrating when the top results literally contain none of the words I entered, and Google makes sure to show me that by listing my entire query with all the words crossed out. If it's not all of them, it's all but one.

This happens to me regularly. More often than not, it seems like.

AznHisoka
I've noticed that as well, but then I just realized there just aren't many places where people are talking about the specific thing I'm querying about... which is a lonely feeling :(
sebazzz
I have found that if you prepend phrases or words with a plus sign ("+"), at least on Bing, but Google uses the same syntax, those words are forced to be included.
amelius
One thing to consider: it may be getting worse for us, but better for 99% of the population.

I can't imagine Google releasing a new version if it wasn't better for most people.

matte_black
How do you measure if it actually is better for people though?
moab
Well, I imagine they use metrics like how many pages you sift through before selecting a link (presumably the page you were looking for), or whether you had to modify the search. As some other posters have said, observing a lift in 1% for these kinds of metrics can hide a massive loss of quality for niche queries or user groups. I imagine folks internally don't just look at aggregate stats before pushing changes, but refine metrics based on the type of query or the type of user.
oasisbob
Yes. I first noticed about six months ago, and it's been frustrating.

The most annoying habit I've seen is google disregarding the most relevant part of the query, and returning low-quality news results that aren't at all relevant.

The "refine-your-search" techniques I was taught in school (the days of Alta Vista) are coming in handy again.

hyperdimension
Careful, though. Refine your query enough times and Google will extract free labor from you...oops, I mean they'll give you a captcha.
rtfs
I fully agree and do basically the same. As an expert in some domains, seeing high-content websites pushed back by some marketing driven shitty websites lets me really doubt the quality of google's index, this applies especially fir niche tipics.
notheguyouthink
No idea, DDG is my search. I only use google for vague searches where my search terms are very poor but I don't know the subject enough to refine my search more clearly. Sadly, this is somewhat frequent.

Regardless, DDG represents easily 70% of my searches.

hateful
Yes, for me it's been getting worse and worse over the past few months. I don't see as many quick answer boxes up-top and the results are almost never relevant.

It's hard for me to explain, but it's almost like Google forgot how to ascertain context for certain terms and now gives a more general result.

wizardforhire
I’ve noticed this as well! I now use bing and duck duck go exclusively. I’m surprised that I’m saying this but Bing reminds me of where google wishes it was now 10 years ago. It’s as if all the good killer little features google had have matured at bing and google has fallen into some dystopian version of itself and has gone back to the stone ages.
timbit42
Have you tried qwant.com or startpage.com ?
pranay01
Are you based out of US? I have heard that Bing works well for the US, but is not as good for other countries.
hateful
I just thought of something. With all the privacy issues going on lately, how many of us that are complaining about poor search results have also installed some sort of add on to block Google from tracking us? Can that have something to do with it?

For example, my search results tend (or used to tend) to be skewed towards results dealing with programming or computers in general. If I search for "exception" I generally get results for "Programming Exceptions" rather than any other type of Exception that can exist.

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WiseWeasel
From most complaints I've seen, it would seem to be Google's attempts to decrease the priority of pagerank and exact keyword prominence in trying to offer more "helpful" results that make it less helpful in many situations. There should be a 'dumb search' mode for that.

For cases where you don't want a dumb search, maybe analytics blocking could have an impact, as you suggest.

Personally, I'd like a mode where they interleave dumb/popular and personalized/relevant results.

allthenews
I think search has worsened for the layman, but improved for the average, non technical user.

My theory is that the ML powering search functionality is, predictably, learning to match the largest body of data, at the coat of niche and/or technical results. It is an emergent form of consolidation.

Personally, I feel this slow march began when google removed special search characters.

rajacombinator
Not sure if this is a google problem or an internet problem. But it’s not only over past few months. Their search results have been in decline for years.
mwcmitchell
thought i was the only one!! most of what i get back for specific queries (especially if they use search operators) is total garbage compared to before ~6mo ago
tumblen
Something I have felt for a couple years (that I continually feel more strongly) is that over time all the independent content, high-quality bloggers and forum discussions have gotten pushed out of the top results.

They're replaced with nothing but top, recognizable brands like yelp, pinterest, thewirecutter, forbes, usatoday, etc.

I miss when I'd google something and find a bunch of actual, normal human beings' experiences.

I think that they probably got bumped out as they triggered some blog-spam filters, but the alternative of just having results full of brand after brand isn't really any better.

QasimK
I've been having the same thoughts recently, to the extent where I've wanted to post "Ask HN: How do you search for independent bloggers and forum discussions?".

I may as well throw that out here now, how do I find individuals and their thoughts/comments/articles/websites rather than the typical results which are full of big companies?

bcoughlan
They got bumped out as part of a deliberate strategy by Google to promote the results of trusted brands like newspaper and magazine websites, which have become low quality content farms.

Eric Schmidt said in 2008 "Brands are the solution, not the problem… Brands are how you sort out the cesspool"

Rjevski
Maybe this was true back in 2008.

Nowadays brands are the cesspool itself.

pranay01
Yes, this is my primary pain point also. I want to see independent bloggers, forum discussions, people's views, detailed articles. As you pointed correctly, the top results are brands or heavily optimised sites - which you can figure out by looking has been optimised for SEO. They hardly have any useful insights.