[zxer]

"search was totally and completely useless"

Often I feel that in recent years the quality of the results are declining again. Now if you search for X, you get a lot of webshops, which tell you the price, but not any other useful information. Or if X is not a product, more and more of the results are pointing to all kind of aggregator sites which are again linking to each other instead of useful content or links. Or the similar case is when all the results on the first page are the same content on different pages.

So perhaps there is a market opportunity again. Anyone? :)

[ericb]

True. I have subconsciously raised my google game over the years to cope.

I use more terms "in quotes" now, include more negative terms, use more site-specific searches, and use inurl as well. I still get what I want, but I wouldn't if I wasn't tech savvy.

[anigbrowl]

Exactly right - though Google's innovation was not just in search, but in clarity of presentation and clean visual style. The web used to be so ugly. Now it is mostly ugly again, but like a sulky fashion model.

[fragmede]

"Hey, what was the name of that site that let you download one windows installer, and it would install a bunch of really useful apps?"

"Hey, what was the name of the site for buying plane tickets but they organized the flights in a useful way so the one you most likely want to buy is on top?"

Now; find Ninite & Hipmunk on the internet; via Google, unless you have something better (if so, I'd like to hear about it), but pretend you've never heard of them. Ninite's findable via an Ask Reddit, which actually spells out there is a problem. Hipmunk eventually shows up in the right-side ad-word gutter if you use the right Google query comination of flight, plane, airplane, online, and ticket - but in the gutter why would you pick them over any of the other sites.

Telling other people where to buy things from can be lucrative if you've got pull, but how do you displace Google as a nexus for "I'm searching for a site that..."

[gruseom]

Fully agree. It's been getting worse. It's a lot worse in certain verticals, too, like health and travel. Finding useful information is becoming a needle-in-haystack thing again.

[Eliezer]

Seems to me like the quality of search results is declining too; the SEOs are winning.

[samtp]

It seems that with Google owning Adwords, it may put them in a situation where their most profitable option would be to link to these aggregator sites to collect more ad impressions and clicks.

[mkramlich]

I'm guessing Gabriel Weinberg, among others, sensed there was a looming market opportunity here as well. :)