Google sucks!. Review on Google

Google sucks!

Yes here is the proof! I know, for all you Google fans, I may sound like an imp. But I am afraid most of you, of late, must have stopped using any other search engine. I admit here that I too was a Google aficionado once. That is until a friend of mine requested me to help him optimize his website for search on the web. Although it was not in my domain of expertise, I accepted to try my hand at it. I thought, with Google at my fingers, it should not be as horrendous task as it is made out to be. My conclusion is – Don’t bother about it. Google prides in throwing up millions of pages in your face, in fractions of seconds. Pages which are irrelevant to your search pop up at the top. It is another matter that one such search brought me to Mouthshut.com. I call it pure serendipity.

Now to the main story: as a first step to optimize my friend’s site, I looked for help on Google. A plethora of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) companies stared at me. Each one of them assured me, in no uncertain terms, that it is impossible for any site to climb to the top – unless one uses their paid services of course. I went through the ones which claimed to offer free services. What followed was technical stuff, with which I don’t intend to bore the readers of this article. It is 6 months now since I am on this personal project and I don’t seems to have gone anywhere near the 10000th page of Google search. Just recently Google started to recognize the existence of my friend’s site – that is if you type the full name in its search window!

Meanwhile, I subscribed to the Adsense (a Google initiative to insert context specific third party advertisements into your site) and bingo! Every single ad that appears on each page appears to have bee specifically designed for the page. Google also provides a search window facility to search a site internally. I implemented this but it searched nothing in the site and instead kept showing relevant advertisers sites on searching any word through this window. It only meant that Google recognizes every single page in my friend’s site for the sake of inserting advertisements but not for searching for the site itself.

I have now removed the search window provided by Google and inserted a new one (found on http://www.javascriptkit.com) which allows users the option to choose one of the three search engines viz Google, Yahoo and MSN. I have shown here just 20 randomly chosen words to prove my point.

The website chosen: http://www.eatoutzone.com

The 20 word that were tried:

Tofu, Brass Monkey, Adrak, Shub Sagar, Detox Diet, Judaism, Palm Wine, Table Manners, British Cuisine, Andhra Cuisine, Body Fat Percentage, Nutritional Advice, Art of Talking, Kababs, Designated Decoy, Gourmet, William Shakespeare, Food Quotations, Glossary of Drinking, Drinking Wheel.

THE RESULT

Successfully Searched by Google: 7 out of 20 words (35%)

Successfully Searched by Yahoo: 10 out of 20 words (50%)

Successfully Searched by MSN: 19 out of 20 words (95%)

Further, MSN search was more accurately pointed to the page in which the word appeared than Google did. Yahoo invariably showed more pages where the same word appeared. Although this is not an exhaustive experiment, it still proves a point to the ordinary user of the Net who is given to believe that Google is the best. I am doing a little more research on the subject. What provoked me to indulge in Google bashing was a documentary on BBC World broadcast over radio last night. You can find it at https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/4794413.stm. The production team, probably over awed by Google’s popularity, bestowed unrestrained praise on its work culture and achievements. I believe Googleons are found swimming, water scootering, table tennising, basket balling etc etc on the campus during working hours. They are supposed to get brilliant ideas while doing these things. And when anyone does get an idea, it is worked up on by a team of people day and night. Imagine where we would be if Newton and Archimedes had such facility!

You can try it yourself. using the three Search Engines Google, Yahoo and MSN. Just type the selected the word in respective search boxes using the phrase: site: http://www.sitename.com selected word. Press Enter. You will know the result yourself. What you are doing by doing this is putting the chosen website into the mouth of the search engine and asking it to chew. If Google cannot do even this job properly, I wonder what search technology Google is talking about and why it has been rated above MSN. Next time you are googling on the net, remember to try other search engines as well if you are looking for 95% results.