Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Info 1298: Web search issues

I still have issues searching with Google. I have much fewer search results than about a year before. Now I found the reason.
As usual, Google updated their code. Starting in Apr 2019, they had several bugs, and by trying to fix them it led to deindexing several websites.

Not sure if this is true or the full truth. It's also possible that they focus more on other sites than blogs (and the like) to earn more money. But blogspot are their own blogs.

I tried some other search engines. Usually, they are not better. But I could find some old/rare stuff, Google couldn't find at all. But by entering that result on Google, Google was then better again.

Google search also depends on someone's hardware, browser, country etc.
Deleted sites are for a short time on the cache but disappear then. Some are available on archive.org.
Some sites are also private and can't be found either.
Same thing with pics, vids and the like.
I think Google Books also has less (searchable) contents than it used to.

Some search results, especially image search, are often wrong or useless.
Obviously still not smart enough what text belongs to one pic.
At least someone then know the site and can search on that.
There are also special, huge databases like oneline libraries which are better to be used directly.

No comments: