Google Previews New Search Infrastructure

Google has announced a "developer preview" of a new search infrastructure, though one wouldn't have to be a developer to try it out. Google is asking for feedback on how the search results in the new regime stack up against the old. Matt Cutts has posted a mini FAQ. Some early testing indicates that the new search may be faster in some cases, and return more relevant results, than the old one. Those who attempt to game Google search for a living will be scrambling henceforth. Has anyone identified the new crawler bot in log files?

Comments

Re:New algorithm = more relevant results

[CarpetShark]

Remember, in the beginning the old algorithm used to be very good in finding relevant results.

I'm not convinced that the degradation is entirely due to SEO. Google used to be a much more technical search -- when you used specific terms, you got specific matches. It seemed to be very much like Altavista with AND between each term. Now, you get a mix of things, as if it was OR between each term. Granted, *that* could be just SEO.

Secondly though, if you search for X, you're asked if you meant Y, and your search results already seem to be for the popular Y result they think you meant.

Likewise, you used to be able to search for hyphenated-terms (I hyphenated all time because it's usually a character less, and requires less editing after the fact than putting quotes around words), but now, it seems to split them into two terms.

I think google have dumbed down their search for people who don't know how to use search engines.

Re:Major Disapppointment

[koolfy]

two words :
Exalead
Yauba

Exalead is more powerful, and Yauba is a little less effective for specific search like "gentoo bug kernel 2.6.30 fglrx", but guarantees 100% anon, and is pretty powerful and useful in some cases.

Google is not the better search engine on the web, their new engine is very good, but google itself hasn't envolve since... I don't know, it's always the same, and we barely see new features added. (take a look at exdalead labs).

After testing several search engines, it appears that google is not the one with the best ideas, and that pertinence and engines of others like exalead aren't bad enough to consider them inferior to google. Google is the most known, and others well known like bing are not as powerful as those two less-known search engines.