To ridicule Google

Did I search for a guy playing a saxophone
or for a sexy woman who might like jazz?

Sometimes search results drive me crazy.

altSearchEngines is running a series asking “What is a Search Engine?’ and posted Part II “What is Not a Search Engine?” by Kaila Colbin, blogmeister at VortexDna. There’s food for thought.

Keeping up with advances in search is important, but I also think it’s healthy to discredit search and to pressure for improvements.

Lately everyone is too busy with Facebook or who’s being funded to notice weakness in search. For instance, when Google is loved, it’s for ethics or peripheral services. When it’s criticized, it’s for ethics or peripheral services, but not for the functionality of its search. Are pundits forgetting their necessary role to topple the top?

I’ve enjoyed Google’s good days while search was a novelty. Thanks Google, for the good years, but whatever Personalization is supposed to deliver, it fails to deliver the bargain discounts I’ve wanted and forgets that I hate plaid summer shorts. Page Rank fails to eliminate repetition, treachery and utter junk. Too many advertisements are errors or foolish. And Search seems to bury me in more tangential hits than I can filter in any lifetime.

I can’t wait for the promise of semantic relevance.

I’m longing for a new type of aggregation. I don’t want to search infinity nor just my zipcode, but I yearn for a new interface based on the wisdom we’ve gathered after a few years on the Internet – a combination of ideals such as my town’s librarian, my college professor, my small town paper and overhearing what’s being said over morning coffee before the doors open for business. Perhaps never the best or the latest, this kind of information is humanly manageable.

Blogs have been a salvation. My friends and blog lists filter information, astutely choosing what’s worthy, what’s fun and they help me enormously.

Maybe newspapers will stop losing their esteem and take responsibility by helping us with huge bins of information and not merely feeding newsroom copy and events coverage.

Googl-Off might be a new front page over Google’s engine. If it’s junk, Goggl-Off. If it’s redundant, Googl-Off. We’ll eliminate links to 50 government brochures posted in 50 Agencies plus re-posted 50 times in 50 States plus 500 results from non-profits making a buck distributing government brochures plus 5,000 links to snippets stolen to peddle bogus cures for cancer.

Anything that gets rid of excessive and redundant links is a step forward. Pruning search is still necessary.

While staying aware of the little problems of Washington graft and the record bounty of Afghani opium, our future nation doesn’t need 131,000 outlets duplicating Dow Jones averages over broadcast media. And it doesn’t need trite duplication in a search engine.

Oh, but perhaps an adequately filtered page that helps find a good cheap cup of coffee and knows I like it intravenously.