Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google

[~ The 34 Year Buzz!!]

• Have you noticed a steady decline in the quality of your Google search results?

Most of what I search for is related to programming, development, and Linux, so I'm not noticing too much spam. :gl:

From Techcrunch:
...But it turns out that you can’t easily do such searches in Google any more. Google has become a jungle: a tropical paradise for spammers and marketers. Almost every search takes you to websites that want you to click on links that make them money, or to sponsored sites that make Google money. There’s no way to do a meaningful chronological search....

...The problem is that content on the internet is growing exponentially and the vast majority of this content is spam.

techcrunch.com/2011/01/01/why-we-desperately-need-a-new-and-better-google-2/ ~Source

Question:
Google is dominant now, will someone come up with a better search product which people actually start using?

 

[MeanerDomainer]

Question:
Google is dominant now, will someone come up with a better search product which people actually start using?

Someone will, but it will most likely be Google. Why? Because they are the leader with the resources to do the research and development.

The fact is that the best way to rank pages is by an impartial human subject matter expert. It is of course not possible, with the possible exception of a "wiki search engine" to use real humans, much less ones recognized to be experts to rank pages and keep updating the results due to the ever growing number of pages. That is why you will probably not see a "great" search engine until after further advances in artificial intelligence. A search engine that successfully uses aftificial intelligence to understand and rank pages will probably come from Google or it could come from an innovative start-up that gets acquired by Google.

Most domainers and domainer/developers will hate improvements to google (or some other search engine) because their affiliate/link pages that simply duplicate the info in amazon.com or present adsense ads and add zero value will sink in results. (If this does not apply to you, then you have no reason to get angry. If you do get angry, well, we do know why...:hehe

 

[vc]

Try the exact same searches on bing or yahoo then you'll see crap results :D

 

[enlytend]

A new search engine would have the same spam issues to deal with, but less experience and almost surely fewer resouces.

FWIW, Matt Cutts mentioned late last year that part of the spam team had been allocated to other projects in 2010 ... but they're ba-ack for 2011.

Most domainers and domainer/developers will hate improvements to google (or some other search engine) because their affiliate/link pages that simply duplicate the info in amazon.com or present adsense ads and add zero value will sink in results.

Google has publicly stated that they're going to be looking closely at sites which rank only because of an exact match keyword domain. That would get rid of a lot of the MFA and thin affiliate spam. I'm really surprised it hasn't come up for discussion in any of the domain forums - depending on how harsh a stand they take on keyword domains, it could be a game-changer.

 

[richrf]

While searching for a potential search engine partnership, I came across DuckDuckGo. It is actually a pretty decent search engine but it is a one man operation so I don't know how far he will be able to take it.

 

[MeanerDomainer]

Here's a recent example I came accross that demonstrates why not just humans, but human subject matter experts are currently the only ones qualified to rank pages.

The current number 1 google result for "driveline loss" is a forum post that states a severe misconception resulting from a lack of understanding of physics.

Only someone knowledgeable about the subject matter would have the ability to know to not rank this page high. Which leads to a few questions, one of whih is should search engines, after they advance to the point where they can, take the factual correctness of the information into account in rankings?

 

[cantstop]

a good business model

would be to have 10-20 independent search engines with 5-10&% market share each competing and innovating sort of like the oil business. where exxon ,chevron, conoco, bp and royal dutch shell control 48% of us oil production 50.3% of refinery production and 61.8% of gasoline retail.contrast this with gmans 70-80% search monopoly.The oil companies had only 33.7,33.4,and 27% of the above stats in 1993 before mergers.So we can conclude factually that oil companies have a greater hold on the energy business than in the past but nothing aproaching the gman market share.fact check stats source citizen.org

 

[john orton]

Well i don't think so. Google is performing his duties very responsibly. It is much better than any other search engine in so many ways. So i would like to give my vote to Google.
Thanks

 

[DU]

Here's a recent example I came accross that demonstrates why not just humans, but human subject matter experts are currently the only ones qualified to rank pages.

The current number 1 google result for "driveline loss" is a forum post that states a severe misconception resulting from a lack of understanding of physics.

Only someone knowledgeable about the subject matter would have the ability to know to not rank this page high. Which leads to a few questions, one of whih is should search engines, after they advance to the point where they can, take the factual correctness of the information into account in rankings?

Have you ever looked into Mahalo? It was launched with a lot of hype by Calacanis. I even started saying that I was going to "Mahalo something" but in the end I hated the fact that it didn't have a clean interface like google.

Google searching just comes down to be able to think like a machine when building query strings. I find my ability to search and find things is far above average when compared to those I work/hang out with because I am able to use a lot of positive AND negative constructs.

But Mahalo might be of interest to you to see how that is going. I used to contribute sites to topics that I knew about and it was rather personal at the time - I got thankyou notes and so forth

Check it out. Who knows. Jason Calacanis didn't get rich by being born lucky - he made it himself and I'm sure he has healthy backing.

Also Wolfram Alpha is supposed to be targeting more factual scientific correctness... maybe look into that too.

There are many Google alternatives - but few with the muscle. The main issue with the situation as it stands is that, for obvious reasons, the Google Search business is totally distinct from the Google Ad business... I'm sure that lunch in the common cafeteria might be fun (in a seriously geeky way)

 

[HostMantis]

Google search results have become a little spammy, but compared to others, the results are still far better.

 

[wishbone]

I'm sure Google been trying too and they don't just have the perfect algorithm at the moment. Too bad that while they are fighting for those sites that do shortcuts and manipulation, some site who are deserving just suffered too.