Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search

Re:Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search by bambax on Thursday January 06, 2011 @03:38AM (#2074622)

Please don't dumb down Google. It happens all the time. It happened with stemming. It happened with "Instant". It happened, stealthily, quite a long time ago, when Google started to return results that contained most of the search terms, but not all, or when it returned results that contained words that appeared "in the pages linking to this page".

It happens when one tries to use allintext: and is identified as a robot (why??!?)

People should understand how to use a search engine instead of have machines (second-)guess what they're thinking.

People learn to drive; if people can't drive a car we don't give them a car that drives itself!

-- Oh, wait.

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Re:Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search by ghshephard on Thursday January 06, 2011 @05:32AM (#2074815)

Great example - 35,000+ people a year die in the United States alone because of people's inability to drive safely.

Perhaps there is a better way.

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Re:Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search by bambax on Thursday January 06, 2011 @05:40AM (#2074831)

Yes, the end of my comment was a (weak) attempt at humor, since there has been quite some talk lately about Google building cars that will drive themselves:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html

Edit: actually, all I really wish for, is for allintext: to work all the time. Why would I be a robot if I'm logged in, on an account of a normally active Gmail box?

Also, why is it such a secret? Why not make it more visible? A checkbox on the home page...

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Re:Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search by Matt_Cutts on Thursday January 06, 2011 @10:51AM (#2075719)

Lots of bot queries do allintext: searches, while fewer humans do that query. Bots can hijack human accounts/cookies too. Email spam botnets often use the valid cookie of their owner's host computer.

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Re:Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search by bambax on Thursday January 06, 2011 @11:23AM (#2075875)

Fewer humans do that query because it is kept almost secret (why do bots like allintext?)

I wouldn't mind answering a captcha from time to time, but instead Google just bans the use of allintext for several dozen minutes (or more). Really frustrating.

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Re:Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search by chronomex on Thursday January 06, 2011 @08:24PM (#2078143)

And number-range searches. I can't count how many times I've wound up with a number-range search query that wouldn't work for me from any IP.

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Re:Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search by Tichy on Thursday January 06, 2011 @12:37PM (#2076253)

So allintext is essentially a honeypot for bots? Otherwise it seems weird to offer the option at all, if all it does is get you banned for being a robot.

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