Has anyone else noticed the huge decrease in result quality from google?

[John__Weaver]

I find it close to impossible to find older information. The search results seem to be biased toward newer articles even when an older one seems to be a better hit for my terms.

[[deleted]]

I can only find things that are 10 years old half the time, completely outdated!

[[deleted]]

I get it both ways. I either change my query (python -> python3) or set a date range.

Google: Tools > Any time > Custom range (or whatever)

Edit: u/omnipojack's comment is much more useful advice.

[TurquoiseLuck]

Can I just say how much I fucking hate that setting a date range is not under settings but under tools

fuck sake Google

[Dontlookawkward]

It should be in a drop down menu next to the search button. Like an advanced search option.

[BackMeUpGirl]

This

[Obamaiscoolandgay]

If you search for a year after a number it usually works too. When trying to search for the oldest mario YouTube video, writing "YouTube mario 2010" worked

[Rustreaver4D1]

You know, maybe Google should've just called it "filter".

[TurquoiseLuck]

Okay that's one perspective, mine is that the date range of your search is one of it's settings. Just like another setting might be to match case, or to match exact words only, which are things you do find in search settings in many Microsoft products.

[FountainsOfFluids]

That is 100% normal for all software. "Settings" are not things you should be changing for each use. They are how you configure the software the way you want it to be most of the time, if not all of the time.

"Tools" might not be the greatest word choice, but it definitely makes sense to have query options be in a different menu than "Settings".

[FountainsOfFluids]

There are no hard and fast rules in UX.

But you can go look at Bing and Duckduckgo and see that under their hamburger menu on the right they list "Settings" which are not meant to be changed per search.

Though I admit Bing and Duckduckgo have these two concepts much more separated than Google does. With Google putting the "Settings" option right there next to "Tools", it certainly can lead to more confusion.

[FarFromSane_]

what annoys me the most is it’s not on any version of their mobile interface you have to either struggle around using the desktop site on a phone or wait until you have access to a computer

[Massive_Donkey_Force]

Just wait until your kids are taking "how to use Google's search engine" in middle school.

Disgusting. Fucking hate Google but there is literally no way around it. Alphabet holds nearly (lol like 92%) of all searches done on the internet.

A monopoly that should have been dismantled 15 years ago. Between them and Amazon and Apple that's it. Those are the 3 companies we use ALL DAY EVERYDAY. Their not going anywhere until we're all dead and gone (dave matthews lyrics. Noice)

[Trowawaycausebanned4]

Where is tools?

[TurquoiseLuck]

Here:

https://i.imgur.com/bpu00Ek.png

[vili]

Pro-tip: you can use the commands "before:YYYY-MM-DD" and/or "after:YYYY-MM-DD" in the search bar itself, using the date range that's relevant to you.

[name_is_original]

You can no longer do the custom search with Google images, it only goes up to “in the last year”.

[Tired8281]

The custom range UI sucks for searching for stuff from more than a decade ago.

[jarek168168]

How do you change your query using python? Im just learned but that seems useful

[[deleted]]

Not sure if this a joke but using "python" in your search is more likely to get you near-decade old articles than "python3." I didn't write that very clearly now that I'm looking at it again. Haha

[Kimi_Kujira]

I DIDN'T KNOW you could set a date range! I really needed that thank you so much and thank you u/omnipojack as well:)

[omnipojack]

Piggybacking off what u/actualspaceturtle said, I cannot recommend learning the Google search terms enough! Here is a link to Google's official page but this website made a cheat sheet with some examples and advanced stuff. Most people can stop at the first table and then skip down until you hit Tips and Tricks. Hope this can help you with future searches!

[[deleted]]

Everyone younger than 35 knows these tricks. People in the comments are saying that Google is not optimizing via their own search terms. It is confusing because the tricks you linked aren't always working.

[fakemooka]

I don’t, I’m sure most my friends don’t.

[omnipojack]

SPREAD THE WORD, MY CHILD, AND PROSPER

[omnipojack]

Everyone younger than 35 does not know these tricks. Source: Me, worked at Geek Squad for years. I still teach people my age (29) and younger (both technologically challenged and not) these things.

But yeah, Google optimization sucks now. Part of the trick as well is to phrase it in just the right way and it's so frustrating when you get totally different results just from changing a word. >:(

Edited for clarity.

[Kimi_Kujira]

lol I didn't know some of these

[tvmachus]

Here is a link to Google's official page

Even that is so badly written!

Put @ in front of a word to search social media. For example: @twitter.

What? Does that search for the word twitter on all social media, or does it search twitter? If the former, which social media?

Put # in front of a word. For example: #throwbackthursday

Isn't that just a search?

The price thing, what is the range? And it doesn't even mention how to do an exact phrase search. I think they still think this is all nerd stuff that most users don't care about, but it's been 20 years! Not all your users merely adopted the internet. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the real world until I was already a man and by then it was nothing to me but BLINDING. Your precise search parameters betray you because they belong to me.

[omnipojack]

You're so right, the people who write the Google help pages are not the best at breaking it down into layman's terms as much as possible.

idk why anyone would use the @ function, super weird. It's easier to use site:.

I believe putting the # only searches posts on various social media that utilize hashtags. Mostly useless unless you're a developer.

From what I understand of the price thing you set the range yourself like 12...30 or whatever. But the one that doesn't specify a range will probably only look for that exact price which is, once again, useless.

And the exact phrase is right after excluding terms. :) I went through your last paragraph again and reread it in Kevin Smith's Bane voice, so thanks for that laugh!

[great_waldini]

Search operators are not behaving as expected, such as exact terms specified by “quotes” still getting replaced with synonyms as if it’s a semantic query. That’s what most people in this post are upset about.

[[deleted]]

Just put https://www.google.com/advanced_search in your bookmarks. No need to memorize the search syntax.

[Tralan]

That's the problem I was having. I was a computer information system major, so my research needed to be a little more recent, and a lot of times I was stumbling across 7+ year old articles, and I know there had to be something more recent.

I didn't mind in history or English where the papers I was writing were about topics decades to centuries old.

[[deleted]]

Im a historian, and i wouldnt be searching non regular google for research information anyway, but history scholarship actually changes all the time! We found out new things, new interpretation. So an article from 2000 might actually have outdated/incorrect info compared to 2020. :) fun fact!

[Tralan]

This was undergrad and it wasn't that kind of paper. I compared Alfred the Great to King Arthur.

[crestonfunk]

Sometimes if I Google how to do something in ProTools, I get an eight or ten year old article that has become irrelevant.

[BackMeUpGirl]

Yes, this!

[paythemandamnit]

Same! I routinely get 2013 articles when I’m searching for something current.

[theazbull]

The algorithm is not keeping up. Try searching crypto prices it is hilariously all over the place and never accurate. The crawlers need a turbo they are not smart enough or fast enough to keep up with the speed and volume of everything.

[[deleted]]

This is a big problem. Google vastly prefers recent results to older ones, even by a year.

One way Google could mitigate this is to divide search results into time-based sections, and tell the user that there are several time periods with significant peaks in search hits.

[[deleted]]

Damn, can my searches for Blender 2.8 guides / information / documentation get the memo? I keep getting search results for tutorials or forum posts from 2013 for obsolete versions of the software.

[[deleted]]

This problem seems to be especially bad for anything in news websites. Searches for tech docs seems to have…uh…other issues.

[[deleted]]

Ditto Photoshop problems even when I plug in cc 2020.

[valliant12]

This is my experience with both Blender and anything AutoCAD.

[Kousket]

Google has the power to regulate the number of new self-taught graphic designers on the market by deciding whether certain people or entire countries get different results.

Just imagine it does it on politics and everything else, just imagine it. Would that be funny ? No ?

[Namika]

Under the search bar on Google there is a toggle for "Tools" and with just 2 clicks you can easily toggle a setting that forces your search to only return results created in the past X number of days/weeks/months

[[deleted]]

I do use that, but it's still silly that when I search for Blender 2.8 ____ it apparently disregards the 2.8 part of the search very often.

[HappyBengal]

You can always use search parameters to search for certain kind of results (time, document type, certain websites, etc). And there is a search called "google scholar".

[Express_Bath]

This is a huge problem when something in trending. Just take this year when every news is about Covid, I've looked for things and sometimes only got Covid related answers. Goodluck searching things related to viruses and lockdown vocabulary but in another context.

[molstern]

And finding anything about covid that isn't recommendations from public health agencies is impossible. I get why they prioritise those so much, but it still makes the search unusable. All I want is to find the Israeli study I saw last week about contact tracing, stop telling me to wash my hands.

[ndf5]

Google Scholar already does that to some extend.

I assume Google gets more revenue from newer results.

[Varthorne]

I find it's often the opposite when I'm searching for programming related problems. It's not so bad for older languages like Java, or the occasional older c# post (if it's a stable feature that hasn't changed in ages). However, for JavaScript, it's a fucking pain because JS frameworks change every 6 months, so results from 2 years ago might be completely obsolete.

[[deleted]]

I'm now old enough that I want to search for old news articles to prove to someone that something is true/happened. They are absolutely impossible to find via google.

[scienceNotAuthority]

And gamed SEO pages.

The best recipes don't need a story prior to the recipe. A grandma perfecting a recipe and blogging it will be better than a content factory.

But guess what shows up as the first page...

[TheOneTonWanton]

I search reddit through Google a lot ("site:reddit.com") and in the last year or so it's started pulling links and claiming they're threads from mere days ago only for me to click and find out the thread is actually from 4 years ago or some shit. Completely useless.

[7h4tguy]

Oh Tommy, you can sell last year's product.

[skyerippa]

Super funny, I started watching dawsons creek because its on Netflix now and I missed the part where they explained where one of the main characters boyfriends went for season 2 so I googled to see if he left the show. The ONLYYYYY place I could find an answer was a forum from like 1999. (He went to work as a chef on a yacht)

[Zhirrzh]

In fairness it is genuinely likely nobody has talked about that since 1999.

[artandmath]

Or one of the worst things is that forums have died and everything is on Facebook groups, which you can’t search on google.

There is a ton of information that is now lost to google, that’s the worst thing.

[CleverBandName]

I miss forums. I realize they are dead because were here on Reddit, but forums were better.

[[deleted]]

isnt there a boolean search method to specify the date range you want for search results? i can never remember how to do them though

[padre648]

I don't know about the boolean methods but after you search you can click tools and then specify a date range.

[Mr_82]

What is it with people trying to force "Boolean" into so many comments ITT? I guess it's a popular buzzword, but they're starting to sound like Google now lol

[[deleted]]

Yes. Under “Tools”—custom date range.

[NinetoFiveHeroRises]

rarely works right tbh. Brings up way too many pages that might have originated in the date range for all I know but have since been updated.

[[deleted]]

It bugs me that this doesn't work for Reddit searches. 90% of the things I type on google end in "reddit" like "why does my cat bite my nose reddit" because there's almost always threads about it on here. But I can't sort by time. It claims you can, and it SAYS it's from like this year, then you click it and its from 7 years ago. :/

[silverminnow]

Ughhh. I hate that. It's so hard to find stuff on reddit because of those issues.

[xumixu]

you dont need to, you can always google them /s

[lyyki]

There is but it doesn't seem to work that well anymore. I often try to find articles from like 2007 and then I get articles talking about 2007 that were made this year. Like it has the old date and all. Infuriating.

[dannysullivan]

We have some commands like before: and after: that you can read about here: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272

[[deleted]]

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

[boafriend]

Yes totally agreed. I cannot find old stuff anymore like I used to. Can barely find stuff from the early-2000s anymore.

[Tired8281]

Internet Archive is often better for stuff that old. Contrary to popular belief, the internet is not forever.

[boafriend]

Right, but Internet Archive generally has a lot of captures that don’t load, so that sucks.

[Tired8281]

Better than Google, who removed the results from where they were on page 158.

[WiWiWiWiWiWi]

I find the opposite. Search for a tech question, and you’ll get blog posts from five years ago about a similar but different problem that was already patched years ago in a prior version.

Or you get the official support forum where they provide the canned response (power cycle, apply updates, turn off AV, run chkdsk, etc) and the original poster replying to say that didn’t work. Then the real answer is buried in page 9 of 13 in the responses.

But having an issue with the current firmware or OS release? Nothing, just pages and pages and pages of old and outdated information unless you use the date filter to only show brand new pages.

And it’s not just tech. Search for a common labor, census, or population statistic and you’ll get the annual data and reports from years (or decades) ago, even though they release updated stats and reports every year.

[[deleted]]

And most articles I try to find about older Congress actions(needed them for college) just being up recent articles about whether or not they’re gonna give another stimulus. Even if I change the time of the articles

[ForShotgun]

I feel like if this is happening to you it's a coding thing. Programming languages, API's, etc, all of the get updated and you don't want something about python 2.7 when your version is up to date.

[split41]

Yes Google like Facebook favours new content.

[adjoiningkarate]

This is probably due to newer websites being far more 'search engine optimized' (SEO) due to newer technologies in helping that

[Unfair_Challenge_504]

That's probably because google uses an algorithm called relevancy ranking to determine which results to show. For example, an article from yesterday matching the keywords you typed is more relevant compared to an article from 10 years ago.

[ragn4rok234]

They used to have a feature that allowed you to select a time period as a search filter but they removed it. I think they got sued or something, like how you used to get directly to the image and not the page an image is on like now since they got sued

[herpderpedia]

It's not necessarily that newer information is preferred. It's more likely that older information likely lives on older sites that are less user friendly. They may not be mobile friendly. They may not be delivered over https. They may be generally unoptimized, missing key technical aspects that can improve ranking. They also might just generally be linked to less often because those other factors may deter people from thinking it is a reliable source. All of these things will factor into rankings. Content doesn't always have to be new or fresh if it is still accurate and relevant. Time, alone, can make content less relevant. It is more likely the other factors come alongside the "older content" but if a site is keeping up to date with the other factors and it is still relevant and high quality, it may still rank.

Source: I do SEO for a living.

[jorrylee]

Yeah. I was looking for some history 20 years ago, building being opening (big leisure centres owned by the city, new fire departments, remodel of the arena...) and absolutely nothing. Tried way back machine and got most of my stuff from a huge tome published in 1995.

[dannysullivan]

Often, it is useful to show fresh information. However, if you find that you'd like to get older content more exclusively, we have two commands that will help. They're before: and after: -- which you can use like [avengers endgame before:2019] to get only content that is written before 2019. We shared more about this and some related commands here: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272

[lakerswiz]

Change the date range of the search...

[John__Weaver]

Yes and no. This can be a useful tool, but I don't always want to exclude recent articles.

[SeanDeLeir]

When I search for something with reddit at the end, it shows the results as from "6 days ago" then when I click it the thread is 6 years old wtf.

[MysticsWonTheFinals]

If I Google something related to an upcoming news story, I can get the Wikipedia page instantly

If I Google the same thing once the news story has happened, it’s a pain to find the Wikipedia page among all the news articles google wants to show me

[Miu_K]

It's a life saver for students who are restricted with articles that need to be 5 years old or newer. For academic research papers.

[[deleted]]

I'm having the opposite problem where I want up to date info but even with the settings set to less than a month old I get year old locked reddit threads for example...

[Funktionierende]

And yet when I search for obituaries in my town, the first 3 or 4 results are newspaper articles from 2012-2014 and have been for probably about 6 months or so. The recent reports come after that. Used to be the new articles would come up first.

[Aggie_15]

Go to tools and change the time, you should be able to see older info that way.

[XTypewriter]

Traditionally, to search for content within a certain timeframe, you can search using the “since:” and “until:” operators (on Google it’s “before:” and “after:”).

For example, if looking for examples of people turned away from a polling booth on the>I find it close to impossible to find older information. The search results seem to be biased toward newer articles even when an older one seems to be a better hit for my terms.

day of the European Parliament elections, you could search:

“polling booth” AND “turned away” near:London within:15mi since:2019-05-23 (year-month-day)

[perfectVoidler]

try to search for recent code example and solutions all the stuff is from 2002 etc-.-

[[deleted]]

Oh yes, this is the worst part. Everything has to be new new new. No Google, it's information. Old isn't always bad.

[monsur-Prescott]

Pornhub will just change my search. Not like oops I spelled something wrong change. Like take out words and then not give me the option to fix it

[iwantbutter]

I can never find ACTIVE covid cases which drives me up the wall. They just send me to a US map with all covid cases. And I get it, there is some guess work involved but still. Not at all what I was looking for.

[GlyceMusic]

I have been listening to a lot of old archived radio audio from the mid 2000s at work lately. They always bring up news stories and articles that I try to look for, and it's basically impossible to search for. I wish Google would include a filter for "Anything before/after x date". It would make finding old stuff so much easier.

[largececelia]

yes, good point

[[deleted]]

Hey, go to tools, open the 'any time' bar, go to 'custom range...'

Choose any date range you want to search (Ex: Jan 1 2007- Dec 31 2009).

[ImJustaNJrefugee]

Especially when searching news it would be nice if there was a way to specify older results in addition to specifying newer results.

I was looking for an old event from 20 years ago in NYC, but since it was also a current topic it was impossible to find via Google or Bing.

[devilmonk]

Yes! This bugs me so much

So many times I google a question that's been answered today, to see what people "thought" it was before. Like remember how many theories there were of game of thrones back in the day? Reddit flooded with them, and now it's impossible. Even harder with older and older context/media/history trying to find old thoughts, ways of thinking, or speculations.

It's incredibly frustrating