> I am frustrated on daily basis by the results of many searches.
I have some speculation on this. Are you sure that your frustration comes from unusually poor results? Could it be that we're so used to things being perfect now, that a page of mediocre results looks like the end of the world?
Look at 2000. No Shazam. If you heard a song on the radio, that was the end of the story. There were some services you could call for $5 and a human would help you identify it. Now in 2011 you press a button and wait 5 seconds.
The web had a lot less information on it. A few hundred million people were connected. Now, in 2011, a few billion people can connect. Huge shift in quantity. Very tough to keep the S/N going strong.
2000: No Wikipedia. Now in 2011 if Wikipedia isn't in your top results you might be upset, but in 2000 you were happy even though Wikipedia didn't yet exist!
So I pose the question to you: Are you absolutely, positively sure that Google's quality has declined and what you are seeing isn't just a side-effect of everything else being so awesome?
I think there's also a problem that the quality of content that Google has to index is steadily declining. In the 90's, many people were keeping lists of links to good stuff they found on the internet. Google could crawl the links and make conclusions. Now, people hardly do that anymore because they can just google it.
So Google has to employ ever more powerful algorithms to maintain even the same level of search quality. I think here lies an existential threat to the search engines.
Yes you can probably whip out the Louis CK. I'll admit that part of it is acclimatization. I've come to expect good results all the time.
That doesn't detract from the fact that results are bad for many searches and that the google monoculture has thwarted it earlier success. I'm absolutely sure that my satisfaction with their product has declined. I know I look forward to a better search engine than google. In 2000 google was the better search engine.
I would say the noise ratio for the whole internet increased because people found out that they could make easy money with content-void or misleading websites.
I have some speculation on this. Are you sure that your frustration comes from unusually poor results? Could it be that we're so used to things being perfect now, that a page of mediocre results looks like the end of the world?
Look at 2000. No Shazam. If you heard a song on the radio, that was the end of the story. There were some services you could call for $5 and a human would help you identify it. Now in 2011 you press a button and wait 5 seconds.
The web had a lot less information on it. A few hundred million people were connected. Now, in 2011, a few billion people can connect. Huge shift in quantity. Very tough to keep the S/N going strong.
2000: No Wikipedia. Now in 2011 if Wikipedia isn't in your top results you might be upset, but in 2000 you were happy even though Wikipedia didn't yet exist!
So I pose the question to you: Are you absolutely, positively sure that Google's quality has declined and what you are seeing isn't just a side-effect of everything else being so awesome?