Google and Universal Search or Google Floudering with Search
There have been some experts who have noticed that Google has degraded blog search. In the good old days, it was possible to query Google’s index of Web logs. It was not comprehensive, and it was not updated with the zippiness of years past.
Search Engine Land and Web Pro News both pointed out that www.google.com/blogsearch redirects to Google’s main search page. The idea of universal search, as I understood it, was to provide a single search box for Google’s content. Well, that is not too useful when it is not possible to limit a query to a content type or a specific collection.
“Universal” to Google is similar to the telco’s use of the word “unlimited.”
According the to experts, it is possible to search blog content. Here’s the user friendly sequence that will be widely adopted by Google users:
- Navigate to the US version of Google News. Note that this can be tricky if one is accessing Google from another country
- Enter a query; for example, “universal search”
- Click on “search tools” and then click on “All news”
Then click on “Blogs”
Several observations:
First, finding information in Google is becoming more and more difficult.
Second, obvious functions such as providing an easy way to run queries against separate Google indexes is anything but obvious. Do you know how to zip to Google’s patent index or its book index? Not too many folks do.
Third, the “logic” of making search a puzzle is no longer of interest to me. Increasing latency in indexing, Web sites that are pushed deep in the index for a reason unrelated to the site’s content, and a penchant for hiding information points to some deep troubles in Google search.
Net net: Google has lost its way in search. Too bad. As the volume of information goes up, the findability goes down. Wild stuff like Loon and Glass go up. Let’s hope Google can keep its ad revenue flowing; otherwise, there would be little demand for individuals who can perform high value research.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2014
Phi Beta Iota: Google lacks integrity. Apart from its search engine having been stolen from Yahoo (with a billion dollars in investor cash finally paid for a quit claim), Google has never been about making sense but rather about optimizing advertising on tyop of search. Strike one. Strike two is Google's blatant lack of integrity in manipulating search so that you see what someone else has paid for you to see, not what you need to know. Strike three is the shallowness of Google — even with Enterprise Search allegedly capable of doing the deep web, the fact is that Google is the shallow web — 2% at best. In short, Google sucks. The way is open for Yandex (Russia) and China (Baidu) to put Google out of business — perhaps selling Google stock short while they do so…. [NOTE: There is a Google search language and there are a few experts such as Arno Reuser that can get more out of Google than most — generally by looking for PDFs from .orgs — but the bottom line is that Google is a massive failure in relation to its potential.
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