Couldn't agree more. The quality of results has dropped significantly, to where often the best results are 2 or 3 pages deep in results. I don't blame it on the ads, but something is definitely amiss in their algorithm that is allowing low quality results, outdated, or unrelated results to rank high. To me the results seem to take a drastic turn about the same time that Matt left the spam team in 2014/2015. I don't know if there is a relation or not, but just seems odd.

I wonder if the Internet is getting worse. As in the magazine/news content one used to get for free that search helped index has gotten much worse as standards have been eroded in the quest for click bait.

it does feel to me as if the pollution/clickbait is crowding out the results I want.

google also seemed to be using my previous searches as a factor which made results much worse, because I google a lot.

"this is another reason I dont use google anymore"

What are the alternatives? I am trying that too but can't find s...t using duckduckgo and the gang.

I would be curios to that as well, I currently use duckduckgo the most. I have been getting more and more used to how it searches so I have become better with it. I still don't find it as good as the old google, but I honestly cant find what im looking for easily on google anymore.

I usually am researching obscure rare things that only a few websites in the world are talking about and before I could easily find it just by using the combo of key words in google. Now in my experience forget that, it will focus on one key word and give you every huge website that has used it in some article etc.

I lack the knowledge about the algorithms etc that they use, but as far as someone who searched a lot of things and used to enjoy googles actual search engine I just personally find its moving backwards.

Sorry I couldn't be more help :) If you have any good suggestions let me know!

Oddly, the google seems to be working much better for me if I use whole sentences (How to..., Where can I...). This is really annoying.

I am using DucDuckGo as there is currently no better alternative. It is not great, but it serves its purpose. Also, you can add "!g" before any query. This will search on google instead :)

This matches my experience, keyword based searches no longer provide anything of value, but natural language sentences lead to far better results.

isn't duckduckgo just bing anonymized?

DuckDuckGo (Bing) and Startpage (Google) work fine for me 90% of the time. To keep things mixed up, my new browser tabs use Startpage, while DDG is the homepage. The !bang syntax at DDG can be especially handy, and Startpage provides a proxy for every link. Both search engines allow you to set up a personal URL, or cookie, with your custom settings (appearance/features/privacy/etc.). Simple and handy, not a giant Orwellian beast that's tracking my every move.

Like others have said, Google doesn't seem all that great these days (better flush that browser cache before searching!). The 10% of the time that the others don't provide adequate results, Google doesn't either. I've gone from instantly hopping over to Google when the alts don't provide good results, to adjusting my terms a few times before finally trying Google.

Google still works best when I want to buy something, which isn't surprising.

Thanks for the information, as a non "tech" person I always appreciate someone taking the time to spread a little knowledge about these topics around.

DuckDuckGo seems to do just fine for me.

What can't you find?

A recent example was an obscure laser etched item, I used to just be able to put the 3 words together and bam I could find website containing it. Like very few people talked about it etc and no one was doing the same thing so it should be an easy find. Now when I search it I get tons of laser etched this or that yadda yadda but its as if its only keying on that word and ignoring the fact that not one of these top/all posts even contains the other words.

Yeah, I'm seeing that too.

Google doesn't seem able to find anything any more.

Just seems to pick from a few bigger sites with word hits, then order those results by the other words.

Used to be you could put a + in front of the word you are actually interested in and have a better chance.

But now that only searches google plus pages it always turns up nothing.

did you try verbatim mode?

I did not, but I just looked into it now and found some information I was unaware of, so thank you.

I tend to open obvious scam ads to new browser tab. Site owner gets a few cents, scammer looses some money.

Google uses CTR to rank the quality of ads. You might be helping them actually.

#1 and #2 results for pretty much all my searches these days is Wikipedia or Amazon.

Yes this too!! I forgot about that but that's a huge issue for me as well.

That's exactly while I use an adblocker, so I don't ever have to see those google ads which are rarely relevant but rather just results from people with money to spend. Where is the organic results which are on top when you have an adblocker enabled are still high quality in general, except of course certain topics like searching for skin care products or such where the results are all junk because those industries have so much money to create fake websites.

I still use Google, I just block the ads.

It is still there: http://i.imgur.com/UwacpLS.png.

Removing it after it has been on the front page of HN is straightforward. We can't say how long it was there or how many users have been duped by this already. The case might be similar for other search terms.

And when I went to view your screenshot on imgur I got an ad pretending to be an Android warning message about my storage being full in order to trick me into insuring an app. Presumably that apps true purpose is to show me even more scammy ads.

http://m.imgur.com/pePHo0E

Hmm I wasn't trying to make a circular argument, as just a user I see no need for that paid ad with a virus to be there in the first place, even if they take it down now why wreck your users experience from the start at all ? If you cant do business right, don't do it at all, but that's just me.

Imo if you cant serve me up non virus ridden ads GTFO, and I really enjoyed google search before so I am not bashing it because of some personal agenda, I used to find it the best search engine by far and would continued to use it if I found it worked like it used to, prolly despite virus ridden ads that I have encountered personally on the google.

Human intervention doesn't make it a circular argument, because "what Google is" has to do with algorithm and automation. You can give them the benefit of "all's well that ends well," but that consequentialism hides a chain of causality. There were a lot of steps needed to get to this point of human intervention, steps engineered and implemented by "the best of the best."