Over the past six months, Google search has been "dumbed down" considerably. For example, if you search for an unusual word which could be a misspelling of a common word, you used to get a hint that you might want to search for the common word. Now you get the search results for the common word, instead of what you asked for. Sometimes it's necessary to explicitly exclude a common word from the query to find a rare one.

More recently, the handling of quoted phrases now results in a search without quotes if Google doesn't find much with the quoted phrase.

This trend presumably reflects the realization that most Google searches are really dumb. (Any list of popular search terms makes this clear.) But it's also notable as an effort by Google to take control away from the user and return the search results Google wants to deliver, not what the user asked for.

I am becoming less and less enchanted with Google's attitude/performance/direction lately.

I have been using Google's advertising since inception as well as yahoo's when it was overture and before that when it was goto...so I have seen many changes from within the industry.

I am having increasing difficulty with goog-related initiatives as they are making changes without telling anyone on the paid side, presumably to coincide with the organic results. You see, we differentiate, but they are still one company and many people tend to think they are disparate systems.

Let me tell you what I mean. I inquired the other day why my ads were not showing up for certain keyword terms. Lets say my terms were entered as a broad match like: "Chevy Cavalier". They were not showing up for say "Blue Chevy Cavalier". I inquired as to why and I was told that since I may be performing searches for my terms and not clicking the ads, that my results were being "tailored" to meet my needs. I told them that I was on a new (vanilla) machine and receiving the same results, I was then told that they would investigate. After the investigation, I was told and here is the quote:

Thank you for calling in on Wednesday. I apologize that it has taken so long for me to get back to you regarding broad match.
To improve overall AdWords quality, we strive to show the most relevant ads for keyword variations of your broad- or phrase-matched keywords. We've found that if a keyword has both a low clickthrough rate (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC) bid, the ad is less likely to be relevant to users. Therefore, we consider both of these factors before showing your ad for a given variation. If your broad- or phrase-matched keyword has both a low CTR and CPC bid, your ad may appear less often for additional keyword variations.

Now considering that there is a 27% CTR for this keyword, you can pretty much eliminate one of the above stated factors, leaving the CPC bid amount.

Now, just to tie it all together.
The more generic and global the terms can be deferred to, the more competition and therefore, the more lucrative it becomes for them....

Don't you think it is in Google's best (immediate financial) interest to force more global results where there is more competition and higher bidding in the paid advertising area by directing the natural results to favor that side of the company?

Two great posts!

>Sometimes it's necessary to explicitly exclude a common word from the query to find a rare one.

And even then, it seems that boolean filters and other supported operators seem to be much less effective recently.

> an effort by Google to take control away from the user and return the search results Google wants to deliver, not what the user asked for.

As users get smarter over time with more specific querys, this provides less impressions, maybe this also translates into less adwords clicks. It's logical that up to a point, dumb users and/or dumb results are more profitable ;-)

I too have noticed a similar troubling trend regarding broad match.

I do some work in a pretty competitive space - web hosting and domain services.

I have noticed recently that broad matched terms including "hosting" are NOT being shown for other related terms that include the keyword phrase "hosting".

Isn't this the very definition of broad match?

For example, there are at least 50 firms that broad match on the word "hosting" but these terms which include "hosting" only have 1 or 0 advertisers.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&suggon=0&q=hosting+articles

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&suggon=0&q=hosting+troubleshooting&btnG=Search

So what gives? Is this part of the same observation mentioned here?

Do I need to go back and exact match every single hosting related term now?

I think the thing that frustrates me the most is that nobody ever seems to learn.

When we set up a computer for our moms and dads and the 20,000 other closely related friends of ours, we set their homepage to google, not because they are the best, but because they give you the ability to easily get to where you want to go. The clean homepage...

It's hard enough trying to talk dad through a simple search and explaining the difference between the address bar and the search box. I can explain this 1,000 times, but they always type the URL into the search box...

This is still ok, until some schmoe uses the keyword insertion tool to generate a number 1 or 2 advertisement that "looks" to my dad like an organic result. Do you think he really knows the difference? Or try helping a friend out with a spyware problem, tell them to type spybot into a search engine and point them to the right one....over the phone.... It's impossible.

Now on top of that, take an experienced searcher who knows what they want... and they are typing in operators to dwindle down the results but are met with the same junk they typed in the operators to avoid. You even end up with a bunch of pages that may even say something like the following:

These terms only appear in links pointing to this page

Great! <----Sarcasm

Has anyone *ever* found this feature useful?

Sorry, I got off on a tangent there a bit... Back to my original gripe.

Nobody ever seems to learn... remember that AOL company? They were unwilling to help the techies of the world, so everyone said "Don't get AOL!!!!" Why did Overture take such a dive (because they were unfriendly to the account managers) not from the actual results provided... their interface and support stank (in my humble opinion), same goes for network solutions...

It's like broken record... which I guess is good, because anyone who holds out for any length of time will get their turn at the wheel.

The really scary thing is how close they are to following their follower Yahoo. What do you do if they do allow paid placement integrated in to their serps like yahoo does?