s0ssos

Do any real search engines still exist? Google is horrible if you actually are trying to find something. I like how it notifies you that it ignores one of your search terms (try "sjc limebike"). And sometimes ignore sit without notifying you ("Fairbanks fat bike rental" pops up a shop in Anchorage, which is very helpful).

Bing doesn't seem to be any better. Are there any more choices?

ajGoes

When I Googled sjc limebike just now, the very first result was for a blog post about something called LimeBike coming to San Jose, California. Google didn't find anything when I surrounded that string with quotation marks, so it helpfully guessed that I was not actually looking for the literal string but rather for instances of the two keywords within it. This is a feature, not a bug, and Google informs you of its action and why it took it. [I originally wrote that they didn't find any results from the quoted string, but the second time I tried it, the engine found your post containing the quoted string.]

I get similar results for Fairbanks fat bike rental, except that Google does return one result for the quoted string: your post #1.

Google goes to a lot of trouble to try to return useful results from any search. You can greatly improve your results if you adopt a few useful habits. Google's Help is not a bad place to start learning them.

s0ssos

Google isn't helpful to me when they guess what I want, because they are wrong most of the time. When I want to find "sjc" it is because the airport code is SJC and I wanted to see if you can get a Limebike there, or return there (anyways, you can. I returned it there).

I feel google just gives you the most popular results, regardless of whether or not they match up with what you are looking for. Sort of like if you go to a restaurant and order a meal, and you get a completely different meal, but the waiter tells you it is a popular dish.

ajGoes

I disagree. I find Google immensely powerful and useful. If you want to know the answer to "can I get a Limebike at SJC?", try Googling that phrase, omitting the quotation marks. You can type a question mark if you care to, but Google ignores it.

Google can't answer the question completely, but the very first result of the search takes you to a page where you can find the answer, which is apparently "no" - they don't list a location at SJC. You're asking a lot if you expect Google to tell you they have a location there if it isn't listed on the LimeBike website.

s0ssos

Location? Limebike does not have locations. And fyi, Limebike does have bikes in San Jose, which happens to be where SJC is located .

ajGoes

Google can only index what it finds on the web. Since LimeBike has a page called "locations", that's what Google takes you to if you ask.

s0ssos

There are plenty of newspaper articles stating Limebike has come to San Jose. It isn't hard to find.

Google has plenty to work with, it just doesn't do a good job. And the problem is now it is basically a monopoly so there is nobody else.

ProleOnParole

Your observations are spot on. The quality of Google search has deteriorated, and it's now common to get irrelevant but "popular" results, which then makes these results even more "popular" as more people click on them, regardless if they discover them to be useless later, effectively creating a feedback loop. Conversely, it has become more difficult to find something rare, even if you have the exact keywords, as Google will either show no matches or return millions of unrelated results, although it used to be able to deal with this kind of search quite well in the past.

Part of the problem is because content farms have got better at positioning themselves at the top of search results but ultimately it's about Google stopping to improve their searches other than by personalizing them using all the information they have on file about you, which is often not what you want, especially as a frequent traveler (Google assumes you are looking for information based on your current location or one from your history, it doesn't expect you to travel somewhere new).

In fact, some of Google search features were removed, presumably to reduce server load. The index depth and quality also appears to have been reduced. A more sinister interpretation would be that Google realized they don't stand to benefit from helping you to find what you're after quickly but rather want to make you spend time on their results pages as you keep looking endlessly. This is what Facebook's paradigm has been right from its inception, and not only did they get away with it but have done very well for themselves by putting their content in a walled garden only accessible through a cumbersome interface.

More to the point, i.e. what can you do about it. Some ways I can think of:

• Make sure the results you get are not polluted by personalization: stay logged out of your Google Account, use an extensions such as Cookie AutoDelete to clean up all the tracking information every time you close all Google tabs, or use the private browsing mode, or a separate browser installation that is set to clean everything on exit.
• Set your browser not to share your location with Google.
• Enclose every keyword in quotes, otherwise Google will drop one of them randomly when it decides it knows better than you what you are looking for. Even better if you can think of a whole phrase that the result page will have.
• Use intitle: and inurl: while they still work.
• If you know the answer is going to be within a particular domain, use site: to narrow it down

Unfortunately I don't think there is any alternative to Google search now. There's DuckDuckGo but it's not a different index as such, just a privacy wrapper essentially. For some searches Yandex works better, as it has, paradoxically perhaps, less filtering, although I don't think it would help with the kind of search in your example.

gfunkdave

This is all a lot of whining for very little purpose. If Google isn't returning a keyword you entered, it's because it's not there, or it's not in results Google thinks is the most relevant. You can put a plus sign in front of a keyword to force it to appear in search results. In OP's case, why not just look at the Locations page on Limebike's website?

CPRich

"Fairbanks fat bike rental" returns
- Rented a Fatbike - Review of Beaver Sports, Fairbanks, AK
- "Rent a Bicycle and Explore Fairbanks"

Are you complaining that the subsequent hits are elsewhere? Perhaps it's because there are no others?

I tried "sjc limebike" and got nothing about ignoring terms. What I got was
-The San Jose Blog: LimeBike coming

And "Limebike in San Jose" returned many. many results

If you're looking for a search engine that will perfectly read you mind, rather then statistically guessing at what you want, I'm going to venture a guess that you won't find one.

HDQDD

This. If you can't find what you're looking for using Google, you either aren't searching for it correctly, or it doesn't exist. I would highly encourage everyone to google how to do advanced searches. Making use of the advanced search syntax will save you lots of time. Short article here: https://support.google.com/websearch.../2466433?hl=en

What makes Google so powerful is their ranking algorithms. "Page Rank" is what put Google on the map and is why it's still the top search engine by far. Anyone who remembers searching in the 90's* (pre-google) recalls that it took clicking through many pages of results to find what you're looking for. Nowadays, it's rare to not see what you're searching for on the first page of results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

*Ah, memories of Altavista

CPRich

But feel free to try:

Duck Duck Go
Quora
Dogpile
Yippy
Webopedia
Qwant
ixQuick/Startpage
Yahoo!
Ask
AOL
Baidu
WolframAlpha
Yandex
Giphy

etc., etc.

gfunkdave

What about Bing?

KRSW

I've noticed Google's utility going downhill as well. It seems like it implicitly ignores boolean queries now, which I used to use extensively with AltaVista, then Google.

s0ssos

It feels like if they have some money in the game (as we all know Google still makes the vast majority of its money from advertising, those silly ads that some people click on and others don't see) I can understand why they would return biased results. But in general?

I also find it hilarious when you compare searching in different languages, how vastly different the results are. It almost seems personalized too much (as you say, if you travel google doesn't know if you are looking for something where you are or for your next destination). I recall in Taiwan looking for a map of the cycling route around the island. In English it is very hard to find. The man at the bike shop said it is easy. Typed in Chinese, and there it was, first result for "around island route 1". But in English it is impossible to find.