Journal mcgrew's Journal: Good Bye, Google. 6
For the last several years I've noticed Google's search results getting worse and worse as time went by. Ten years ago, typing the title of a work returned that work usually in the first spot. They now seem to completely ignore the "title" meta tags.
They've gradually reduced the number of things you could do to get to the document you're searching for. It used to be that if you searched for "no dog is a cat", all the search results would have that phrase in it, with documents having that as a title listed first. Now, searching for that phrase returns any page with any of those words. What damned good is that, if that exact phrase is what you're looking for? Apparently, Google now ignores quote marks.
I discovered this morning that that's not all it ignores now. Google has deteriorated to the point that the old Infoseek that Google took the search crown from was better.
It ignores not only quotes, but all punctuation and spaces. I searched for "Mars, Ho!" (including the quotes) and the first ten pages had results about people and things named "marsho". WHAT THE GOD DAMNED FUCK??? Why in the hell do the idiots think I put that comma, space, and exclamation point in for?
NASA has a "Mars, Ho!" page. Guess what? Google doesn't return it. At all. Google gives me millions of pages, none of which match my search criteria. I can almost see it not finding my insignifigant site, but a NASA page doesn't show up?
That's just pathetic.
What's even more pathetic is that its quality has deteriorated so much that Bing and Yahoo are now better at returning what you're actually searching for. Both NASA's "Mars, Ho!" page and mine are on the first page of both Bing and Yahoo's sites.
It was wrong of Firefox to just change peoples' default search, but I now see why they did it. They figured out before I did that Google jumped the shark quite a while ago and now is next to worthless.
Not for me... (Score:2)
Interesting. I enter "Mars, Ho!" and the top 5 responses are:
1. Mr. Mars Ho, the CEO of the Austar Group...
2. Mars Ho Facebook
3. Donny Interviews 30 Seconds to Mars - Ho Ho Show 2013...
4. Mars, Ho! - NASA Science
And the images related to it -- of which your book cover is the 2nd.
The 10th entry on the page is "Mars, Ho! by mcgrew (Hardcover) - Lulu"
That was searching from the search box on Firefox -- after switching it back to Google a few days ago.
Not sure what you're getting or why.
Re: (Score:2)
Google's spider hadn't yet hit it that day according to site stats, while everyone else's had. Strange, since Google spiders more than anybody. After it was spidered I got the same results as you.
I see the same things Chill sees (Score:2)
FWIW I'm mostly running Firefox 34.0 in Linux. I did the "Mars, Ho!" query from Chrome (Version 39.0.2171.65 Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit)) and got the same results - including the NASA page and a page for your book - as well.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not as bad as you fear, my friend.
On the first page, you're now # 10.
So be of good cheer, progress you'll make
Though someone isn't happy their spot you now take.
We'll help you in your Google climb,
And bring to your day a little sunshine.
By clicking the link to give them a sign.
And "Mars, Ho!" in the ranks will climb.
Burma Shave
From the link:
Captain John Knolls thinks he's just been given the best assignment of his career -- ferrying two hundred prostitutes to Mars.
He doesn't know that they're all addicticed to a drug that causes them to commit extreme, deadly violence when they are experiencing withdrawal or that he'll face more pirates than anyone had ever seen before. Or that he'd fall in love.
A humorous science fiction space novel, a horror story, a love story, a pirate story, a tale of corporate bureaucracy and incompetence. Oh, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
BTW - You might want to fix "addicticed" - or claim it's a new word - a combo of addicted and enticed :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Page 4 for me.
Re: (Score:2)
It might also be the search terms you or McGrew have used in the past, your geolocation info, and all of the magic 'sauce' that Google uses.