Google not as good as it used to be

H0wdo

Has anyone else noticed that recently, over the last couple of months at least, Google results seem a lot less useful than they used to be, for instance quite often when you do a search it will return quite a few .co.uk websites or links to youtube/facebook postings rather than relevant irish websites or websites which relate to what you are actually looking for

I have been trying out yahoo.ie as a result, for the first time in about 10 years and it now seems to be the more accurate of the two search engines, I am just a normal web surfer, I have no affiliation to any search provider this is just my own opinion, I wondered if anyone else had also noticed this

Squeaky the Squirrel

I don't think it defaults to google.ie anymore since it got hacked few months back.

Either set your homepage to google.ie or after you search for something, click on "search tools" in the results page and set your location to Dublin.

partyatmygaff

H0wdo wrote: »

Has anyone else noticed that recently, over the last couple of months at least, Google results seem a lot less useful than they used to be, for instance quite often when you do a search it will return quite a few .co.uk websites or links to youtube/facebook postings rather than relevant irish websites or websites which relate to what you are actually looking for

I have been trying out yahoo.ie as a result, for the first time in about 10 years and it now seems to be the more accurate of the two search engines, I am just a normal web surfer, I have no affiliation to any search provider this is just my own opinion, I wondered if anyone else had also noticed this

Seems as good as it's ever been. Yahoo's lack of relevant results isn't why I don't use it. The layout is just way too "busy" and cluttered.

Squeaky the Squirrel wrote: »

I don't think it defaults to google.ie anymore since it got hacked few months back.

Google got hacked? First i've heard of it. Even if they did, it doesn't seem likely they'd leave something like that a few seconds let alone a few months.

Squeaky the Squirrel

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Google got hacked? First i've heard of it. Even if they did, it doesn't seem likely they'd leave something like that a few seconds let alone a few months.

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/google-ie-offline-domain-records-hijacked-628699-Oct2012/

Redirected/hacked whatever, to use Currys as an example, since the redirect you were more likely to get .co.uk than .ie, for awhile their anyway.

GreenWolfe

Squeaky the Squirrel wrote: »

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/google-ie-offline-domain-records-hijacked-628699-Oct2012/

Redirected/hacked whatever, to use Currys as an example, since the redirect you were more likely to get .co.uk than .ie, for awhile their anyway.

That wasn't Google's fault. Blame the IEDR for that mess.

H0wdo

I dont think it is related to the google.ie domain being hacked as this wouldnt have any effect on the algorithms that google uses to compile its listings, call me cynical but some people might say that Google are returning more discussion related results or less relevant results so that commercial websites have to use the google pay per click option rather than the organic listings