Sometimes when I’m searching for a particular product or service, the most frustrating thing is the way Google brings up mostly things to purchase. For example, recently I knew that a direct flight between Sydney and New York used to exist, and wanted to find out some information about it.
These are the top results:
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Cheap Flights to New York , USA from Sydney
Compare cheap flights to New York , USA from Sydney , Australia with Airfares Flights.
www.airfaresflights.com.au/flights/Sydney/New–York-NYC/ – 154k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this -
Cheap Flights to New York JFK , USA from Sydney
Search Sydney to New York JFK Flights. Search More Options Below (searches may not include deals above). Sydney to New York JFK Air Travel …
www.airfaresflights.com.au/flights/Sydney/New_York-JFK/ – 50k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this -
Flights New+york Sydney
Flight from New+york to Sydney from 453 euros. Search every airline including low cost. … Return One way Direct flights only Main airports only …
www.edreams.com/flights/new+york–sydney/ – 21k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this -
Flights Sydney: Cheap flights to Sydney, eDreams
Flights New York – Sydney, 1 November 2008, 453€, United Airlines, John F Kennedy Intl Airport, ….. Direct flights only Main airports only. About eDreams …
www.edreams.com/flights/flights-to-sydney/ – 68k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
To cut through this I like to use Google Blog Search, where I can usually find some helpful blogger who is talking about the concept I’m interested in. However sometimes, like this occasion where I’m essentially searching for old news, Google Blog Search fails to remove the cruft, as it tends to give an inordinate amount of weight to more recent posts:
European and Asian Stocks Fall Sharply
| 8 hours ago by Jack Kelly Total, the French oil company, slipped 4.5 percent on heavy volume, as oil futures for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell as much as $3.92 to $89.96 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. … CompliancEX – http://compliancex.typepad.com/compliancex/ [ More results from CompliancEX ] |
Stocks Fall Sharply on Credit Concerns
| 5 hours ago by chrisy58 New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/07markets.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin. October 6, 2008. The selling on Wall Street began at the opening bell on Monday and only intensified as the morning went on. … Chrisy58’s Weblog – http://chrisy58.wordpress.com/ |
Credit Crisis Drives Stocks Down Sharply2 hours ago by Ricardo Valenzuela
Crude oil was trading just over $89 a barrel in New York after 2 pm. President Bush made an unscheduled stop on Monday morning to speak about the crisis with owners of small businesses in San Antonio — and the television cameras that …
INTERMEX POWER – http://intermexfreemarket.blogspot.com/
As such, one of my most often used Google sites is Google Groups — its long-term archiving and generally high quality results combined with a more traditional Google search algorithm mean I can usually find very specific discussions I’m looking for. For example, in the past I’ve used it for finding out people’s experience with getting a green card, sourcing older tech support, or travel experiences. Lately though, Google Groups has been completely broken. Here are the results for my search:
Direct Flights Nassau To New York Group: obs27rruhuvtene
| auwwb…@dipnoi.az.pl obs27rruhuvtene *Direct Flights Nassau To New York* <http://sebj2o8a3l.airlinetickets24.info/?i=30091017&data=airline+ticket> Direct Flights Nassau To New York … Flights New York Dublin <http://groups.google. com/group/obs27rruhuvtene/web/flights–new–york-dublin>, Flights Sydney To New York … Sep 16 by auwwb…@dipnoi.az.pl |
Direct Flights New York Group: skfea3bmsss
| mvzdilis…@anosmia.az.pl skfea3bmsss *Direct Flights New York* <http://0vcz7v. airlinetickets24.info/?i=30091020&data=airline+ticket> Direct Flights New York … Larnaca cheap flights, Wholesale cheap airline tickets, Cheap flights from cardiff to majorca, Airline tickets bid, Cheap flights from brisbane to sydney, … Sep 19 by mvzdilis…@anosmia.az.pl |
Cheap Flights From Sydney To Aukland Group: Data Access rodeo1a
| Amsterdam 59.00 New York 179.00 Bangkok 389.00 Caribbean 299.00 Sydney 639.00 Flights Sydney Auckland Compare and book Cheap FlightFlights Sydney Auckland … Sydney.Cheap Flights to Sydney Australia from UK Airports TRAVELBAGTravelbag provides cheap flights to Sydney flights from London direct flights Sydney.to … Apr 24 by susannabatchelorb8b…@gmail.com |
It seems like Google has given access to creating groups to anyone with a Google account. This, combined with the long broken Google CAPTCHA means it is getting completely clogged up. I went 250 pages in (which in itself surprised me, as you can only go 100 pages using normal Google search) and there it was still.
So I tried a few other searches I’ve done lately.
Roomba battery? Broken.
Olympic games? Partly broken.
Travel to Ghent? Broken.
This one probably isn’t fair.
Anyway, there certainly is a lot of crap in there.
I’ve been noticing how useless Groups has been for several months now and assumed Google would do the usual thing and fix it up pretty fast. I just checked and the last mention of Groups on the official Google blog was in January 2007 when this feature was taken out of beta, meaning it’s a problem wasn’t fixed in the 18 months it was in beta.
I heard one of the reasons why PicasaWeb limits a user’s space (as opposed to Flickr’s unlimited paid service, a sore point I won’t discuss now) is to “prevent spam” — if they can choose to fundamentally cripple a product in their fight against spam, why not fix one that is broken by spam?
Update: Apparently even more spam issues at hand with Google Groups.