Anyone noticed Google getting weird lately?

[mr_push_pull]

what I noticed (compared to before):
way too many (not so relevant) results from the same domain
more non relevant results shown first
lots of YouTube results shown first

anyone else noticed it or I'm being paranoid?

[Frank Berry]

I've noticed lots of results from the same domain.
Since Google owns YouTube, that would explain why YouTube appears first.
Still, Google is my preferred Search Engine. I'm testing Bing too.

[Speedskater]

I still miss AltaVista. I could do search stings with parameters that I never figured out how to do using Google.

[Frank Berry]

I'd forgotten about AltaVista. That was my favorite way back when.

[tvrgeek]

Even though they own YouTube, I do not believe that is the way their search works. They have always had an occasional problem with multiple of results for the same location. Your results are based on everyone's click history, your click history, where you are in the world, which of their centers is doing the search, what page you were last on and all kinds of secret sauce. One of those secrets, I'll let it out, is PEOPLE. People all over the world watching the news and tweets to see what is hot. At the same time, they are updating your click history and generating the right side paid links, charges for those links, and all in 1.4 seconds.

Bing tends to provide better shopping results. The Web was a lot smaller when Alta Vista was there. It was about the first engine that was not just keyword index based.

[Ron E]

I used to use Lycos, then Hotbot back in the day.
Some sidelines into Ask Jeeves, Dogpile and Altavista.
Yahoo always sucked IMO.
Google has started giving a lot more sponsored links, it is not imagination.

[tvrgeek]

A sponsored link will be on the left only if it meets their other measures. If a sponsored link is successful in topic and traffic, it will get posted higher. That means they are doing a better job of helping their clients. If the position is set only by the payment, it is identified by the background highlight. "add related to.." If they did not do this, and clearly put it in their contract, then they could not make any money off their paid adds.

I am not on their pay. I deal with big data for a living so I study these technologies. This week, they are still on top of the game. What is very important to me is that their use case only has to be close enough, where my customers must have absolute correct results but can wait a few more seconds.

[kevinkr]

Originally Posted by Frank Berry

I'd forgotten about AltaVista. That was my favorite way back when.

Mine too..