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 = 25 things I hate about Google from Search Engine Watch.

Originally, this was to be called “100 Things I Hate About Google.” I suppose it’s good news that by the time I reached the twenties, I started running out of steam. Then again, I’ve also got other things to do. I’m sure I’ve missed pet peeves that others have. Don’t worry. After you work through my list, you can contribute your own via a forum link at the end.

Remember, just because there’s much I hate doesn’t mean there’s not a lot I love. In fact, anyone in a relationship knows that often the people you can hate the most are the same people that you love the most. You know them intimately; you want perfection. So on the love side, see my 25 Things I Love About Google post.

1. Web search counts that make no sense. ” Why do search engines lie?” has Robert Scoble recently poking at this, on how the reported counts don’t always match reality. Heck, try class two contributions with “about” 59,800,000 matches. But then you find that only 879 are considered non-duplicates! Meanwhile, mars landing sites gives 1,050,000 matches while mars landing sites earthgives nearly double that amount, 1,840,000 listings. It shouldn’t. Adding that extra word should give you a subset of the original query. It should come back with less results, not more. I know, I know. It’s a bug, or search counts are hard to do, or they do say “about.” I know, they aren’t the only ones, nor have they been the first (see Questioning Google’s Counts, Danny & Tristan Talk About Link Counts, Site Counts & Index Auditing and Who’s The Biggest Of Them All?). Long experience in knowing the counts don’t add up has perhaps left me numb to the issue. And goodness knows, I don’t want a return to page counts on the home page. But then again, if you are going to put out a number, perhaps it should be accurate?
2. Despite results clustering, Google keeps serving up sites you’ve seen. You may not know the name results clustering, but you recognize Google doing it. That’s when it sees there’s more than one page from a web site that might match what you are looking for, so it “indents” the second best one below the first. Search for books, and you’ll see this happening with Amazon. But clustering only happens on a results page-by-results page basis. In other words, look at mars landing sites, and there’s a link to a page at the msss.com domain near the bottom. Say you reject this. Go to the next page, and msss.com is back again, as is the BBC. If I rejected content from these sites the first time, I want to see something new. Try whirlpool s20d, and you’ll see the same thing. Lycos.co.uk and householdappliances.kelkoo.co.uk both come back. Give me the best page from a domain once, then give me some variety, not these second chances.
3. Stop confusing people. Pick a user interface and go with it! Google keeps testing and testing various UIs. If I had the time and energy, I’d take all the screenshots people have posted and put them into a single “Google of the future” page. Then again, they probably wouldn’t commit. Enough with the testing! Decide on something and go with it, then change it later if you need to. This constant UI testing over the past year has had people wondering if they’ve been hit by adware/spyware and recently, whether you are questioning their sexual orientation! At least if you’re going to test, do what I suggested and tell the small number of people who care this, to save us from a billion people having to blog about the “discovery” of something new. But do commit, so that as I’ve written, your lack of consistency doesn’t put you down the path that killed AltaVista.

MikeZ – “25 love-hate things for Google – TGIF”

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