Google It | Rant about Google search results

I'm just going to rant for a minute about Google search results. In 2012 I could find just about anything I wanted by search for it on Google. I could find a tutorial for a certain type of software by searching for the software version and what I was trying to accomplish. Now I can find basically nothing. The main problem with search engines is the have a huge index of older sites that are trusted and well established. Older sites have more backlinks and have better rankings on search engines. Link popularity is still a pretty big factor for search engine ranking algorithms. The main problem with this is when you are trying to look up something that is up to date like a software tutorials or even worse trying to look up code examples with valid syntax for the current version of a programming language on the off chance you actually have to code something yourself. I'm very annoyed when I look up some code examples on Google and I find forum posts from 2003-2007 because those posts are the posts with link popularity or whatever. There's nothing worse than following a tutorial to the letter and having a syntax error and then looking things up and not knowing how to fix it. Hours later I have a working program that does what I want. It's annoying. You know what's more annoying than that? When people say "Google it".

"Google it" is what every person who doesn't know the answer says instead of admitting they really don't know the answer. I'm asking questions on a forum because I've searched on Google and I can't find the answer to my question? Yeah, SORRY FOR NOT READING THE ENTIRE MYSQL MANUAL COVER TO COVER. IT'S OVER 5000 PAGES. I have better things to do. I just need to make this one little thing work. I don't need a database administrator certificate. I just need to know something simple like loading data into a table from a text file or converting a table to xml or converting excel files to xml or creating two tables from one.

Here's the other thing jerks my chain about search results. I'm finding a huge number of forum posts when I search for things on Google. The problem is that they are unanswered questions. You know what forum post should be the right there at the top of the search results? I'll give you a hint. THE POST WITH THE ANSWER TO MY QUESTION! You know what's even more annoying than finding an unanswered bulletin board question? Finding a bulletin board question that is answered with GOOGLE IT! YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME! If I could find what I was looking for on Google I wouldn't be asking about it on a forum. And by answering a forum post with Google it you are creating yet another page that will show up in the search results that has the answer Google it instead of an intelligent response. That's Great!

It's funny search engine results about the same quality they were in 2003. It's like every improvement made in search engine technology was just nullified in one shot with whatever update Google made in August of 2013. I can't find anything I look for on Google.

The more annoying thing is when I look up something in astromony like caput draconis I'm looking for an article about the nodal cycle of the moon. Not a YouTube video from some crappy band, a video game, Harry Potter, and certainly not forum posts from username: caput draconis.

I have no problem finding celebrities and movies. It's funny when a movie comes along that has the same name a something in physics. When I Google search something like event horizon I find 5 of the first ten results are about the movie even horizon and the other 5 are about black holes. OK I found what I'm looking for.

I've come full circle. Google used to an easy way to look up information I wanted. Now it's like searching the card catalog at the library. You know that feeling you get when the library book you want was checked out and never returned or somebody had stollen it? That's what Google search is becoming. So I'm back to reading 600-1200 page non-fiction books on a fairly regular basis. The days of easy searching are over. Unless you want funny picture of cats or something equally useless.

The open source community needs a search engine with human moderated results. Computer algorithms can't judge the information content of an article all they can do is check spelling and markup and measure keyword density and link popular. Sorry there's just to much spammy pages and otherwise useless content showing up on search engines these days. It needs quality control. And not the kind of technocrat elitists that run DMOZ and not the kind of fake popularity gauges you find on sites like Digg where the results are easily manipulated by hundreds of thousands of sock puppet accounts voting for whatever articles the account owners want to be on top.