Google: Crappy Results

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The debate about what should — and shouldn’t — show in a Google search result for “santorum” has been well-documented, at this point. But I’d like to use this now famous search to illustrate something else: how it appears Google is taking its eye off the ball of being a search engine.

Searching For Santorum: A New Surprise

See the YouTube link showing up there? It helps illustrate all that I think many people are feeling is wrong with Google right now. It’s a pretty bad result, and it’s also something getting there probably because Google’s not catching some potential old-school search engine spamming.

Universal Search Picked This?
The video result is showing up as part of Google Universal Search. That’s a system that blends content from Google’s various “vertical” or specialized search engines into its regular search results. It’s only supposed to inject this type of specialized content if it’s deemed especially relevant to the search topic.

Certainly, you can imagine that there’s video content relevant to a search on “santorum” from across the web. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report alone have over ten different Santorum comedy clips that might all be relevant.

Beyond comedy, there are news reports from across the entire web. The same search at Bing gives some examples of this, of how video content from Bing Video, as well as Fox News and CNN is inserted into its own search results for “santorum,”

Dear Google: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You Care About Search - Search Engine Land

[vasa1]

Using this particular example may not encourage too much participation in this thread.

Quite an unfortunate choice.

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Originally Posted by vasa1

Using this particular example may not encourage too much participation in this thread.

Quite an unfortunate choice.

Do you mean political perspectives?
The focus is search results not politics.

I made this posting to provide support for my point about what I mentioned in the other thread about Google's clouding up of results with non relevant materials. You replied to my statement in that thread that it wasn't an issue.

[Daveski17]

He's got you there vasa ...

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As I've written in the past, Google well knows that its search results suck, and over the past few years, it has started to short-circuit those results by putting more and more direct "answers" at the top search pages. That, of course, makes the search results themselves less and less important.

Why Google is ditching search - CNET

[vasa1]

Originally Posted by Daveski17

He's got you there vasa ...

How's your Google Reader coming along?

[Daveski17]

Originally Posted by vasa1

How's your Google Reader coming along?

It's fine thanks (most of the time).

[J_L]

Doesn't mean I'll radically change unless the results become truly crappy overall.