Are smarter search engines better?

Question

The reason I ask this, is that Google through the years has become more "smart", resulting, more and more, in totally unwanted results.

In the old days (about a year ago?), if i searched for the exact phrase, I would only find the exact phrase. But now? When searching, for instance, for "3,5,7", I expect to find just that: 3,5,7

and not, as the results show:

3:5/7
3-5-7
3 5/7
3 5 7
3, 5-7
3-5, 7
3 (5/7
3:5 - 7

The same goes for letters. Just try a search for "SEC" (as in wine) and see what Google comes up with. The bold texts in the results are what is actual found as SEC
Heck! It won't even limit itself to 5 characters!!!! I've already TWICE contacted Google about this, but so far have not received any reply.

What is your opinion? Has this change made it easier to find what you search for? Or, as I have experienced, do the extra results take more time to find the right information?

Search for "3,5,7"
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%223%2C5%2C7%22&btnG=Search

Search for "SEC"
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%22SEC%22&btnG=Search

In response to some answers about the search:

Yes, I know some characters are used for other purposes, and the comma is one of them. But shouldn't the quotes overrule that???

Also, concerning the search for "SEC":

If a company's name in short is written as SEC, and they have SEC on their website, I do expect to find them. What surprises me is that is ALSO writes in bold the full names, which suggest it sees the full name as a valid result.

For instance, the following result:

State Examination Commission - SEC Home

Why is the full name bold, as well as SEC???

Looking at the search the other way around:

If I look for "State Examination Commission", SEC is not bold in the result. Then why is the full name bold when looking for SEC????

As for the commercial links coming first... well, that's only to be expected.

I just expect difference in results when looking either for 3,5,7 or "3,5,7"

Answer 1

I find this change ittitating. How can you now look for the exact sequence of figures/letters?

Answer 2

Hi Walter,

I think the problem with the numbers search, is Google is reading the comma's as separators rather than part of what you want.

As for SEC I would always expect the Securities and Exhange Commission to come up before wine, as I would imagine far more people are both looking for it, and also that thousands of sites link to the SEC's site which is a parameter Google uses to rank search results.

Using boolean tools often helps improve the accuracy of searches, using a minus sign before a word to disregard entries with that word i.e. -sex if useful to narrow results down to what you want.

Another example would be SEC +wine -security which gets better results, try it.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

I don't think results with SEC as an abbreviation to something is unreasonable. Afterall, somewhere in that particular website, Singapore Environmental Corporation would refer themselves as SEC so it is valid for that to show up in a search for those three letters.

But I'd be really annoyed if the same search returned with results like disSECtion, inSECt or SECular.

Answer 4

Hard to say if the results are better or not. The order of results has changed so that commercially viable locations make it to the top of th list.

This makes sense - we are trying to make money from being on the Internet - correct? It is a for profit business to offer a search engine. People have to eat.

Answer 5

Google has become smarter. I do agree your point to a certain extent. The web has become smarter too. It has grown considerably. And will continue growing. So frankly speaking it is becoming tougher even for GOOGLE too. More ever the performance hasn't dropped much. You are always welcome to give GOOGLE a feedback by searching something on GOOGLE and on bottom somewhere you see "Not satisfied, help us improve" In the meanwhile there are others available. Try live.com from Microsoft and let us know how is it.