The Pandia Post Newsletter No. 20, January 2004, part 2

A Couple of Comments About Google

Google is a great search engine, but it is not perfect.

By Guest Writer Gary Price

I'll admit it, I'm tough on Google. However, as market leader Google the tool that's equal to research for many people, it needs to be watched closely by those of us in the info profession. Google is a fine product and has done good things for web search. However, it's not the solution.

1) Google needs to fix several advanced search problems. Many of them have been known for several months. These are things that should work. For example, having the Boolean operator OR work properly. Greg Notess points out many of them on his site. A feature that would be nice to have is the ability to turn Google's new autostemming feature on or off.

2) Google's page estimates haven't been close to accurate for many months. I've been told that they're, "just estimates." However, can't estimates be more accurate?

3) Advanced search documentation should state that longer html web pages (over 101kb) and pdf files (over 120kb) are indexed only up to those points. If what you need to find is past that arbitrary limit, you will not find it. Why won't Google state that they have size restrictions?

4) The company should clearly state that they don't show all backlinks when running a link: search.

5) Google needs to work harder to remove spam and many duplicates and near duplicates from the database. If that doesn't work, how about clustering them underneath one representative page?

6) I've been a Blogger customer for a couple of years. I'm also supposed to have better access to customer service since I'm a former Blogger Pro customer. I had a problem about a month ago (it's been solved) but I've yet to hear back from Blogger's customer service. I've also heard from a few people that customer service for Google Appliance customers might also leave a bit to be desired.

7) I agree with Danny Sullivan, Google Bombing/manipulation is an issue that needs to be addressed.

8) When the company announces a new service it should work properly. Three weeks ago they announced a shortcut allowing you to enter an airline name and flight number. However, it doesn't work for many airlines (including two major airlines in Google's home state California and for some flights if it has a four digit flight number.)

9) In late August IEEE announced that Google was crawling abstracts of their publication database. According to the news release, the project was to be completed by September. That was five months ago and a very small percentage of IEEE material appears in Google. What happened?

10) In 2001 Google spokesperson David Krane told News.Com, "...we've firmly established ourselves as the No. 1 search service on the Internet, and this can be attributed to our laser-like focus on a search-only business model." It's obvious that this business model is gone.

They company now has many constituencies to please and will have even more once they go public. Is Google doing what AltaVista, Excite, and so many others did by trying to become all things to all people?

Gary Price is a librarian, information research consultant, and writer based in suburban Washington D.C. He is the editor of the excellent Resource Shelf web log.

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