Google is getting cluttered up in a way that is now starting to impact its usefulness as a search engine -- and we users need a better solution. There has been a tirade from a number of writers over the last few months driven both by Google getting significantly worse and by the pending IPO of the kings of the new content wave, Demand Media.
The answer to the spam problem is that the search engine you use for a task needs to have some understanding of what type of answer you are looking for. Once you, as a user, can tell the engine what you care about, a good search system can present results to you that are relevant and useful. And many of the new generation of tools don't look and feel like a search engine. They feel like a specialized app but, like Google, they use a mix of search results and databases. For example Kayak runs a federated search across travel sites for you to find you travel options. Yelp helps you find reviews. CitySearch finds you things to do and places to go in a new city. FirstRain finds you the latest updates impacting your business. Hoovers finds you information on companies.
This new generation of tools also understands time. There is nothing more annoying than trying to research something and every search you run you see old results. Whether you are a consumer hunting for product reviews (as blogger Paul Kedrosky was a few months ago) or a salesperson wanting to understand his or her prospects or a patient searching for help with medication interactions -- in all cases you want the latest updates, not spammy results or old results.
We, as users, have to get smarter at finding the services that will help us save time. Lazily relying on one tool -- Google -- sets us up to be manipulated. The WSJ reported there is increasing evidence that Google is changing its algorithms to rank its own content higher and so subjecting us to their monoculture -- and "increasing uselessness". As Alan Patrick says: "Google's problem is [] that it is trying to navigate a line between income (systemically the more spam there is, the more Ad money it makes) and usefulness (how much spam can you run before the user walks away) and has veered too far to the spamside."
If we don't want to tolerate the gibberish of the spam sites then we need to be smarter and use the search apps designed for our individual interests, not the search app that assumes we are all the same. It's time.
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Anyone who has pages like those should add to their source.
Content farms like Demand Media also present a challenge, because some of their content is useful even if many of their articles are junk. For example, if I want to know how to replace a faucet washer, a 200-word eHow article may all I need.
Fortunately, Google's Personalized Search is a big step toward controlling spam. If Google can tell, by studying my past searches, that I think pages from Site X are a waste of time, I won't see many pages from that site at the top of my search results.
One last thought: The best way to avoid spam results is to search more intelligently. Don't search for "widgetco camera." Instead, search on "widgetco wc-1 camera reviews" or "widgetco wc-1 camera specifications." Chances are, you'll find what you need, and you won't have to dig through 500 dealer or affiliate pages to get the information you're looking for.
For example, every now and again I want to convert some sort of measurement - usually metric to, an, non-metric inch-foot-yard It used to be \a search for -convert inch- (or whatever) got me an online conversion site.
Now, it mainly gets me sites that want to sell me a conversion application or otherwise install something on my machine.
We used to call the internet the "information superhighway." With Google, it has become the "impenetrable forest of bill boards with a information path buried in the underbrush."
There is a line between a serious bit of technology critique and bashing the primary competition. This article crosses it.
And that still leaves all the commercial stuff with plain old information
If you search political issues, the top links are usually paid spots by some right wing front group sponsored by david koch...and ditto for the regular results...all leaeding to fake studies by the heritage foundadion...also funded by david koch.
We live in a world of propaganda.
I have been contemplating a different approach to the entire thing all together.