Seriously, there was a time when Google seemed to know what I meant when I searched for something. It was kind of uncanny but damn was it useful.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms.
Maybe I got older and missed changes in how Google works... possible. It's just at this point Google is nothing more than
I have the same problem with searching something on Amazon. I'd say that 95% of the time, the words I'm searching for aren't even in the items descriptions. Annoying as fuck to be searching for something very specific and then be shown things that aren't even in the same category at all.
Gawd, I hate Amazon's search and it's even gotten worse recently. In the past couple of days I've noticed that they're throwing in items from my previous searches into my current search. It's bad enough that their search wasn't finding what I was asking for.
Usually I'm pretty specific in my searches and try to put a manufacturer name if I am able to. When I do I still get the products from a bunch of other manufacturers and any matches from any other categories. I then have to select a category from the side to be able to select the manufacturer even if I chose a top-level category in my search.
Browsing down the categories doesn't help much either. They all seem to be filled with unrelated junk. I have no idea if it's because the category IDs are being reused and picking up items that had been assigned to the old category or the person entering the information adds a bunch of categories without caring. I spend a lot of time looking in the hardware section and once you get a few levels deep you can start to see toys (not toy hardware), purses, and cell phone accessories for example. I really dislike browsing their site.
Google is close to useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, there was a time when Google seemed to know what I meant when I searched for something. It was kind of uncanny but damn was it useful.
These days when I specifically enter a set of search terms, it is not just not unheard of but quite common that Google will present me not just with search results that DON'T include one or more of my terms but actually the opposite of my terms.
Maybe I got older and missed changes in how Google works... possible. It's just at this point Google is nothing more than
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
I have the same problem with searching something on Amazon. I'd say that 95% of the time, the words I'm searching for aren't even in the items descriptions. Annoying as fuck to be searching for something very specific and then be shown things that aren't even in the same category at all.
Re:Google is close to useless (Score:2)
Gawd, I hate Amazon's search and it's even gotten worse recently. In the past couple of days I've noticed that they're throwing in items from my previous searches into my current search. It's bad enough that their search wasn't finding what I was asking for.
Usually I'm pretty specific in my searches and try to put a manufacturer name if I am able to. When I do I still get the products from a bunch of other manufacturers and any matches from any other categories. I then have to select a category from the side to be able to select the manufacturer even if I chose a top-level category in my search.
Browsing down the categories doesn't help much either. They all seem to be filled with unrelated junk. I have no idea if it's because the category IDs are being reused and picking up items that had been assigned to the old category or the person entering the information adds a bunch of categories without caring. I spend a lot of time looking in the hardware section and once you get a few levels deep you can start to see toys (not toy hardware), purses, and cell phone accessories for example. I really dislike browsing their site.
Re: (Score:1)
It seems we are backsliding to the bad old days when the web first started, and there were no search engines.
Google, Amazon is racing as fast as they can to the bottom, and when they do hit bottom, they will just start digging to get even lower. >:(
I guess it's back to downloading a big offline database of websites, and using local search tools to find what you are looking for. :\