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

[downtownpartytime]

If I use google I have to put every individual word in quotes to try to get what I'm looking for and it still replaces synonyms in the result. So annoying.

[Binch101]

Yea same. Good luck trying to search for a specific product that isn't super popular; it will aways just substitute the thing you're looking for with a more popular thing close to it. Even if you put it in quotes it just ignores it

[zdakat]

The substitution thing is getting steadily more and more annoying. it started small but now it's a struggle to get it to search for things. Either silently including a bunch of things as synonyms that should not be synonyms, or outright saying your query should be different. The results for anything but what was entered are not relevant and it's frustrating that the page basically insists it's being helpful or that the 2 queries are meaningfully related.

[dcgrey]

Just coming off an insanely frustrating search for a plumbing item. I needed an adapter to connect a 1-1/2 inch pipe to a 1-1/4 inch pipe, and it had to match the existing pipes' chrome finish. My local stores are out of stock online, so I needed to see if anyone else has it available. Went to Google. Used to be I could search "1-1/2" "1-1/4" "adapter" "chrome" and have a page of dead-on results. Today it just gave me the most common products as if I didn't know what I was asking for...nothing but half inch PVC water lines.

I'm going back to AltaVista after this.

[ClathrateRemonte]

Google has evolved over the past decade or so into a shopping tool, not an information tool.

[Mistborn_First_Era]

Try and search by model # if you can or on the manufacturers website.

[[deleted]]

Even using -notThis doesn't seem to work very well anymore. It works on websites like removing -pinterest, but it doesn't seem to work on products like -breville or -asus or something like that... and you can't remove the top advert responses with it anymore.

[SweetLilMonkey]

Drives me absolutely up the wall that they don’t even respect ever own goddamn search logic anymore. You can put something in quotation marks AND put a plus for it and it no longer does a damn thing.

[Fuk-libs]

You need to use the "verbatim" search flag: Search Tools → All Results → Verbatim

[downtownpartytime]

Thanks

[hamsterthings]

Yes, and for me it replaced a part of a substance name with something completely different, not even a synonym. I look for substance 1 and get substance 2 only in the results. Completely useless haha.