Has anyone else noticed a strange thing about Google lately?
As you might imagine, I do a lot of searches on Google. Say what you will about Google’s politics, but I’ve long preferred it as a search engine. In the past, if you chose your search terms very carefully—and I tried to do that—you could really narrow things down and find what you wanted quite quickly.
But I’ve noticed in the past couple of months, although I’m not sure when it began, that no matter how specific I try to be in my searches, the results are very generic. That makes them a lot less helpful.
Is anyone else having a similar problem? Has anyone else noticed a change like that?
I use bing.com mainly because I don’t like Google politics. But I still find what I’m searching for easily. You might try Bing.
Google Scholar is difficult to use for that reason.
I don’t use Google at all anymore. Try this: Open two browsers and run the same identical searches, one through Google, and one through Bing. See what happens.
The other thing that supposedly matters, is your community or zip code. Different zip codes get differing search results. I don’t know an easy way to test that other than emailing a friend to do a search and email results back.
I went to DuckDuckGo when Google fired James Damore for having sensible ideas. It’s fine, but then, I seldom do intensive research.
I have noticed it. I will do a search using a phrase and get results. I often find that if I add additional keywords to the same search, I get the identical results.
I also prefer Google to Bing, because I like Microsoft’s policies a bit less than I like Google’s. But it’s close. Plus, they used to be a good search engine.
Waidmann
I also have been using DuckDuckGo for a couple of years
I downloaded Brave but it has been hard to get going,
DuckDuckGo has the right idea. The more we support them, the better they’ll get.
I’ve been using Brave since it came out and recently moved over to DuckDuckGo. I wouldn’t mind if Google was gone gone gone.
I tried to use DuckDuckGo for a while, but gave up because the results weren’t as good as Google’s. I have, indeed, noticed that Google searching isn’t working as well as it used to.
I use DuckDuckGo and it’s OK, but if I want a more thorough search I use Google.
However, I have noticed Google searches are less effective lately. It seems I get a shallow list and it’s hard to break through to the sort of items I know are out there, or at least used to be.
I haven’t tried Bing in years.
DuckDuckGo.com does not keep a record of your searches and it the only one we use. We enjoy your multifaceted blog!
I wouldn’t know because I switched to DuckDuckGo long ago. The only time I will search via Google is when I need to constrain the search on a time period. Former can only constrain the search up to the previous month whilst Google will let you constrain it to the previous year.
I’ve noticed the same thing, neo. It’s like Google ignores what I ask for and gives me what Google wants to give me. To illustrate, if I search using the terms “Washington state” I have to wade through a page and a half of links with the term “Washington” and they’ll be about D.C.
I use Bing.
I stopped using Google for anything years ago because their business model is poisonous to the tech industry (where I work), and because their insidious behavior of insinuating themselves into your personal life, which they data-mine. Their real business, advertising, seems immune to any kind of public or consumer pushback. Their politics is just more reason to avoid them entirely.
I use Bing. I trust Microsoft more than any of the other big tech companies, but that’s a pretty low bar.
A great post would be a comparison of Goolag, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, same search terms, plus what you finally think is the best thing you’re looking for.
I’m playing mostly with Bing this month. DuckDuckGo next.
I’m avoiding Goolag.
Tried Google image search for “white couple.” Results were all mixed couples. I tend to Duck Duck go.
I trust Microsoft more than any of the other big tech companies, but that’s a pretty low bar.
Tom Gray: Indeed. It’s a sad state of affairs when I feel slightly more comfortable with Microsoft than Google or Apple.
Goolag is a rather inauspicious name. First I’ve heard of it.
Google has tweaked their algorithm to make it dumber in reaction to various Doctor Class, anti conspiracy Leftists that have told the company to downgrade or counter such things as :
Anti Vaccination information
Flat Earth Theory
Moon landing religion theories
So on and so forth. Meaning, whereas Flat Earth occupied more hits than Taylor Swift at one time, they have now made their search engine refuse to produce as many hits and video tags. This has gotten to the point where they have successfully ensured that certain popular FE content doesn’t pop up but it also ensures that their search engine is borked in some fashions.
Different zip codes get differing search results. I don’t know an easy way to test that other than emailing a friend to do a search and email results back.
Free VPNs.
Google search results used to be uncannily relevant to my query. Now they are… not. Only inertia keeps me using it.
I use DuckDuck Go also. Google is a monster. I also shun Amazon, facebook, etc. Don’t feed the monsters.
Maybe the internet is degrading and you are noticing the coming dark age 🙂 I too find google less satisfying than it was, but I couldn’t be very specific about it. I’ve tried other search engines in the past, maybe will repeat the experiment.
I use startpage.com. Then duckduckgo. If I still don’t find what I’m looking for, I try Google.
Also: Startpage gives you more results per page (if you so set it: choices are 10 and 20 results per page) than googooeyes [sic]. And you can set it to open links in a new tab, which is a blessing. Also, it allows you to open results in Anonymous (Proxy) mode, although doing so makes for a v-e-rrry slow load time.
From the Privacy Policy page:
https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/25/questions-and-concerns
FAQs page. Says they do NOT share IP addresses with Google. See
https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/159/25/do-you-share-my-ip-address-with-google
I assume all this (and the rest of what they say) is true; and that, and the choices of settings, are why they’re my preferred search engine.
No, I have not. I search for pretty esoteric subjects occasionally but have seen no change.
I will tell you this, Either Google or one or more companies using Googles name repeatedly calls me wanting to verify my business listing. Maybe it is legit, maybe its a phishing scam. I am basically a handyman / housepainter and am registered with the state for sales tax purposes. No matter how many times I tell them I do not care or how many times I push the button to be taken off the call list, they call back. Sometimes multiple times per day. I have yelled at them and resorted to answering the phone but letting their guy say “Hello,…Hello” while I do not say anything. This has been going on for several years and it comes in waves and will wane for a while and then starts back up.
I switched to mainly duckduckgo several years ago. Their searches were never a in-depth and targeted as google’s used to be, but were usually adequate, and only required a bit more work.
Within the past few months I’ve noticed that duckduckgo seems to be blocking or downgrading certain results. For example, I was recently trying to find the full text of the New Zealand terrorist’s manifesto (I’ve an academic and professional interest in terrorism for the past few decades). Duckduckgo basically failed; google did succeed (but not readily).
I’ll be checking startpage.com now.
I too switched to DuckDuckGo at the time of the Damore incident. I only use Google if I need specific time limitation or if I want to do a site:sitename.com search. I haven’t been searching for much lately as I’ve been busy on other things.
CBI, I tried finding it, searching on string Tarrant manifesto, first on startpage and then on Google. Only got a couple of links to the manifesto, and both of those presented a page saying something like “unable to display due to issues with content.” By the way, same thing whether I used Firefox or Safari.
Mostly results were stories about the manifesto.
Then, using Startpage, I changed the search string to
“The Great Replacement” manifesto
with the quotes, and the very link on the results page was to
https://katana17.wordpress.com/2019/03/15/the-great-replacement-manifesto-of-new-zealand-mosque-shooter-mar-2019/
where the manifesto still appears. It’s also carried on at least one other site.
I just tried Google, and its first result is to the same URL; and it too has at least one other result.
So it seems to be highly dependent on the exact search string one uses.
PS. Having submitted the comment, I re-read yours, and I see that you too did finally find it.
“I assume all this (and the rest of what they say) is true;” – Julie
I assume everyone is lying on the internet.
However, Startpage does sound interesting, but I would want to know what they are getting out of my business before I give it to them.
Answering my own question – more than anyone needs to know, but here is the, ahem, money quote.
http://securityspread.com/2016/10/24/duckduckgo-startpage-2016-update/
“StartPage is owned by Surfboard Holding B.V., a privately held, independent Dutch company, run by Robert Beens, whose only activities are operating StartPage, Ixquick and StartMail. No 3rd party investors or venture capital behind it as far as I could find. StartPage (and Ixquick) generates income solely from advertising (Google Ads).
DuckDuckGo is owned by Gabriel Weinberg who is is the founder, current CEO and controlling shareholder. Investors (/shareholders?) include Union Square Ventures and several others. DuckDuckGo generates it’s income from advertising (Bing Ads) and collects affiliate revenue (Amazon, eBay).”
Lots more information on the features and capabilities of both, but warns:
“The point is, Google decides something is omitted from their results which automatically means it’s omitted on StartPage as well. This was not an intentional move from StartPage, it’s just a result of the way the service is set up. Now I do not keep track of which sites may or may not be omitted by Google (and are therefore missing from StartPage as well) but if you suspect search results are missing, try your search in https://ixquick.eu which uses results from non-Google sources.”
“StartPage and hosting – Physical hardware servers on multiple continents that are owned, controlled and administered by StartPage, hosted in colocation facilities. The host facilities can not log in to the servers and encryption is used in several ways. Servers are located in The Netherlands, California and the state of New York but who the colocation hosts are is unknown.”
“DuckDuckGo and Amazon – DuckDuckGo uses Amazon AWS for hosting, which explains the speed at which it’s able to crank out search results. One of the problems with using Amazon is the location the company is based in, more on that below. Privacy may be another concern. ”
“Both DDG and StartPage pay for the right to use the results from other engines and have agreements in place that allow them to do this without sacrificing user privacy.”
“Personally, from a security perspective, I feel whether you outsource to another country of have your own employees or contractors in another country.. it’s the same thing. Unless the staff that do server maintenance, for example, are in the same building where data traffic, access and assets can be closely managed, you don’t really know what goes on at all times, you just can’t. Both DDG and StartPage have remote workers, but say they keep a close eye on quality. StartPage backs up its quality with a 3rd party certification by EuroPriSe, and any outsourcing or remote work is closely scrutinized through the audit process. DuckDuckGo does not have this kind of audit to provide quality assurance.”
“You might wonder, why is location relevant? The biggest concern is government surveillance, something on a lot of people’s minds ever since Snowden.
DuckDuckGo is a U.S. based company and their hosting is done on Amazon servers. Amazon is a U.S. based company which means it’s subject to U.S. legal pressure. Being subject to surveillance mandates like PRISM and laws like the U.S. Patriot Act make it a less than desirable location for anything you want to keep private and secure.
StartPage is based in The Netherlands, where privacy is protected by law, so it is not subject to the same mandates and laws which is one (BIG) less thing to worry about. They own and operate their own servers in colocated facilities both in the U.S. and internationally.
Every search engine I’m aware of hosts servers in multiple countries, DuckDuckGo and StartPage are no different. Of course the facility/company hosting the StartPage servers in the U.S. can be compromised by the government and because of gag orders StartPage will likely not know if there is any tampering with their servers or any data being intercepted. However in this case it’s Amazon VS unknown company somewhere. Who do you feel is a better host/location for your search queries? Of course you can set StartPage to just use a server in the EU or Asia instead and not use the U.S. server at all.”
“StartPage has been audited by a 3rd party; EuroPriSe. They look at much of the same things that were covered in this article such as use of cookies (all kinds), logging, web hosting and content delivery networks, use of social plugins and much more. This certification is renewed every two years. Having a trusted and respected 3rd party verify your claims is a big plus.
…DuckDuckGo has no 3rd party certifications.”
“Going into this I expected DDG to come out on top but tally all of the above and it’s StartPage that takes home the prize. So what do I use now, what’s my go-to search engine? The answer; it depends on what I’m searching for. My browsers on the Mac are configured to use StartPage by default but if I have to spend a lot of time searching for stuff, have a bunch of tabs open and am on a time crunch, I use DuckDuckGo. Just for the speed and how easy the results page is on my eyes. Being able to scan a page full of results in just a few seconds is a big deal for me and just isn’t something I can do with StartPage. The ads displayed by StartPage are annoying too. They take up too much space, are not labeled as ads clearly enough and their positioning forces me to scroll down unless what I’m looking for is in the first 4 results. At least DDG lets you disable ads in the settings. Then again I am willing to deal with it if privacy is a concern.”
And that’s the news.
Thanks very much for the info and the link, Aesop. You do good work. :>)
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By the way, I’d never noticed an ad on Startpage, and I just figured out why. It’s because I have AdBlock Plus on the machine I’ve mostly been using lately.
This presents me with a bit of a moral dilemma. If a site is getting most of its funding, and of its profits, if any, from ads, then is it right to use an ad blocker?
On the other hand, if one pays for access to the Net via a service that charges based on the amount of data one sends and receives, then ads can add considerably to one’s cost, particularly when they are video ads. At home I connect via cable modem and that’s not an issue (just a massive annoyance), but when I need to leave home I connect via the cell system, which charges me $ 10/G, with a minimum charge of $ 50/mo whether I use it or not. Video and other ads chew up a bunch of $ at that rate.
So do the videos that an increasing number of sites show you whether you want to see them or not.
My very Liberal nephew who is a wiz in computers told me to use Duckduckgo and Firefox to best protect myself from tracking. so I do.
It is pretty obvious that DDG and bing use a variation of Google search crawl spy bot software. Even if they technically don’t track you, the FBI/NSA still have a backdoor to US companies. They are mirroring your data, even if the company isn’t allowed to.
“The point is, Google decides something is omitted from their results which automatically means it’s omitted on StartPage as well. This was not an intentional move from StartPage, it’s just a result of the way the service is set up. Now I do not keep track of which sites may or may not be omitted by Google (and are therefore missing from StartPage as well) but if you suspect search results are missing, try your search in https://ixquick.eu which uses results from non-Google sources.”
Important to take note of.
ymar, interesting tip, thanks. I’ll try it.
just went to Google and searched “American scientists”, then clicked on images.
amazing to me that white people are apparently no longer interested in science.
thank you Google!!!
Aesop, I used that StartPage thing and look what I found.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-strange-story-how-us-dive-bombers-arrived-pearl-harbor-24237
This series of incidents weren’t all that good for national propaganda so FDR, Hollywood, and the news didn’t like spreading the information. It took some effort on my part finding even this rare article on startpage, as Google search bots have nullified these types of search results.
The events of Pearl revolve around 3 crucial figures: Kimmel, FDR and what his administration knew, and what Halsey did and knew.
Kimmel didn’t know anything of FDR’s secrets. Halsey the Bull was acting differently, as if he had advance knowledge of certain events. This created a chaotic situation where American casualties increased, but that would be the logical result of FDR doing a gulf of Tonkin or Lusitania op.
I find it convenient that Google has downgraded these interesting independent sources. Their algorithm prioritized the AMA, Scientific Consensus Authority, and Wikipedia entries now as “authoritative sources”…. heh. Enjoy technocrats as your rulers, America. That Republic thing died a long time ago due to American actions.
ymar, tried it … but the url reverts to startpage.com, on both Firefox and Safari.
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Lurch, I tried “American scientists” on Google, and got a nicely mixed bag of Caucasian (“white”), Oriental, Negro, Male, Female. Not including Grace Hopper, unfortunately. Fermi and Einstein, yes.
From the search results I was getting–i.e. searching for something I have found before, and not being able to find it again, using the same search strategy I used before, or getting results that I know, from past results, are missing key items–I have suspected, for some time now, that Google has been manipulating search results to skew results leftward, and to filter out things from a conservative viewpoint that they don’t want me to find/to have access to.
Thus, I’ve switched to DDG.
The problem is, of course, that with a few companies having a virtual monopoly on the ability to search the Internet, what happens when all of those companies–from reports decidedly on the Left–slowly skew their search results leftward?
There have been several reports, now, of people within these companies talking, internally, about how they want to or do set things up so that people can’t find items that they regard as ideologically objectionable.
I presume the end game here is to make it impossible to find any content these companies find objectionable, that clash with the leftist “narrative’ they believe in i.e. anything from or supporting a different, conservative viewpoint or narrative.
Where are we to go then?
Is there any alternative browser that is really free from some form of Leftist censorship?
Moreover, my impression is that most people look at the first or maybe the second page of search results, but rarely go on to check page 3, or 4, or 5, or 7 where–I have found–there may be some valuable search results; perhaps exactly the piece of information that you were looking for.
It would also be quite easy for these companies to set things up so that the more conservative content ends up on page 5 or 7 or 10 so they could assert, “well, we did give you everything, it just happens that what you were seeking ended up on page 10 of your search results.”
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2019/03/google-learns-power-of-suppress.html?spref=tw
Don’t worry, if you invest in Alphabet stock, it will go up as the masses cry out for freedom. We have Veys to Deal with the Masses: Don’t be Evil. Why not be evil? Because it is better to be a Technocrat Globalist. We have more cookies.
A Technocrat Globalist, for example the Federal Reserve profiteers, are hailed and worshipped and obeyed. Totalitarian Evil blokes are assassinated, hanged, called “rocket boy”, and otherwise harassed. That’s no good, to be Evil. We must be better than Evil.
We must be Alphabet.
There have been several reports, now, of people within these companies talking, internally, about how they want to or do set things up so that people can’t find items that they regard as ideologically objectionable.
Not just talk. Reality. I’ll link the source soon.
https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-urges-tech-giants-combat-vaccine-misinformation
Recent news actually.
The news boys and girls already know that Alphabet and its competitors, have already downgraded various “topics” that you livestock aren’t supposed to read, see, or think about. It is called
BAD THINK
You need GOODTHINK. Double Plus, Good Think.
Imagine the public outcry once people realize that 5g, the new radiation technology wifi that will make Alphabet rich beyond belief but not as rich as the FedReserve, is going to kill humans with cancer? They don’t allow you to know about that stuff.
Do we tell livestock why we are killing them?
My default is duckduckgo. Google searches vary by user/computer, based on your browsing history. A few weeks ago I did a little (very unscientific) experiment. I searched for “Ruth Bader Ginsburg missing” on both YouTube and Google. Almost nothing. Then I searched for “Melanie missing” on both. The floodgates opened.
https://www.google.com/search?q=flat%20earth
There’s an ad at the top from space cams. That’s interesting.
Most of the things Alphabet is downgrading in search results are what is known as “conspiracy theories”. I prefer to call them alliances or secret combinations.
But wait, if such things exist, surely we would have heard about it from our lovely park rangers and neighborhood journalists, right?
Surely the public are told secrets such as the Gulf of Tonkin and the assassination of Diem. Surely Walter Cronkite would never lead us wrong as one of the most Trusted man of America. Surely, your parents wouldn’t have lied to you about Santa Clause…
I switched to Bing without clear intention in 2012, because it was the default in the Silk browser on my Kindle Fire. That Fire still works, though the touchscreen is starting to wear out. I used Google in the oughts because it was nearly universal. Before that (in the 20th century) I used Alta Vista and whatever came with Genie (I can’t remember). At some point, I decided I liked Bing better than the other commonplace engines, and switched to it on my other devices. I bought the Kindle originally to support my decision to put my backlist up on KDP, and it turned out to be a very nice tablet for the time.
I also shun Amazon,
Abebooks was a favorite, then it seemed to fade. Now it is back and I use it. One question is that I got a book that was not as described and it is harder to get the item corrected. I’ll have to see how it goes.
A columnist for Gizmodo tried to cut out the “Big 5” tech companies from her life last year (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) — 1 per week, then a final week where she cut out all 5 at the same time. You might find her articles instructive.
And in case you wonder, the title of the column for the week without Google was “It screwed up everything!”
Google Advanced Search is my first choice because of its flexibility (e.g., exact phrase plus other words, time period, region, website). Nevertheless, I have notice lately that searches return a higher proportion of irrelevant “hits” than they used to.