[comex]

As annoying as the approximation can be, I'd like a citation for "to drive ad views". It seems much more likely that it was added for the obvious reason - to improve search results, on average, for most people, because relevant results don't always contain the exact search term you put in. In my case, as many times as it's burned me, there have also been a few where I remember it presenting exactly the results I wanted, and it's probably done so many more times without my noticing. YMMV, and it would certainly be nice if Google were better able to distinguish queries that should not be rewritten from ones that probably should, but that's no reason to assign nefarious motives.

As has been mentioned, you should probably set your default search to verbatim mode.

[threeseed]

Whatever the reason. It has changed recently and is annoying.

Search for "vertx play framework" and the last two search results don't have the term vertx despite pages and pages of results with the term. I don't understand how dropping search terms can make the results more relevant.

Also you can't set the default search to verbatim. You can only hack the query parameters in specific browsers.

[comex]

> Whatever the reason. It has changed recently and is annoying.

Fair enough. Like I said, it can certainly be improved, and perhaps recent changes have gone too far.

> Also you can't set the default search to verbatim. You can only hack the query parameters in specific browsers.

Don't the kind of people that frequent this site near universally use their browsers to search, rather than wasting keypresses navigating to google.com?

Ridiculously, Safari, which I use, requires an extension to use an arbitrary search engine, but I can't think of another browser that doesn't support it.

[ams6110]

It has probably been tuned to the "average" person who is looking for entertainment- or shopping-oriented results.

[foobarqux]

Add quotes around vertx.

[espeed]

This is where I miss the old + sign.

[OGinparadise]

>> As annoying as the approximation can be, I'd like a citation for "to drive ad views".

Not 100% proof but ad views and clicks seem to be increasing by 20% to 30% each quarter. Google tests everything to death and they please wall st with those ad click increases.

[magicalist]

If you look at the quarterly earnings reports, it's typically 20-30% year over year, not quarter over quarter. Keep in mind that the population of internet users is estimated to be growing about 10% year over year alone (though not always in places where Google is dominant), google's usage rate is still increasing in many places outside of the US, and then there's the fact that we all use the internet more every year, etc.

Besides, without any other data or even a clear mechanism of action, you could just as easily say they're just better achieving their stated goal of only showing ads that the people who see them are interested in seeing. That's supposed to be one of the benefits of the auction-based approach of adwords. 20-30% is a lot for that, but who knows?

Really, I think you're seeing a pattern there that you want to see, and I'll second comex's call for real evidence.

[OGinparadise]

A lot can be attributed to more ads on pages, true. But do people go there to see a page full of ads or "most relevant" and "unbiased results"? How many know ads from content?

But growth in places where Google makes its real money (US, EU, Canada etc) has plateaued for a while, IIRC. Growth in ad clicks mirrors growth in revenue and we know a click from Guatemala is not the same as one from NYC.

>>Besides, without any other data or even a clear mechanism of action, you could just as easily say they're just better achieving their stated goal of only showing ads that the people who see them are interested in seeing.

Maybe, but if you read the comments, people are accusing Google of making results worst to boost the ad click rate. That's wrong on so many levels.

[magicalist]

> But growth in places where Google makes its real money (US, EU, Canada etc) has plateaued for a while, IIRC. Growth in ad clicks mirrors growth in revenue and we know a click from Guatemala is not the same as one from NYC.

Actually, average cost per click has been going down for a while now. I don't see any breakdown by geography, and wall street had been all worried about what that means for an ever-more-mobile world, but, again, the data isn't there to back up your supposition. A large part of it could be growth in regions that bring in lower ad revenue.

> Maybe, but if you read the comments, people are accusing Google of making results worst to boost the ad click rate. That's wrong on so many levels.

Er, what is wrong on so many levels? I can't tell what you mean from that sentence construction. You say, "maybe", so you don't disagree with me, but you backed up the only other "accuser" in your post above, so I don't think you disagree with him...

In any case, the considerably more obvious and likely explanation is the one I think most people have tended to assume: google disambiguates terms automatically because it's what works in the 90% case. It's annoying for power users, yes (even back when it was less of an issue, at least we could +terms, so I miss +ing terms like crazy with today's google), but it makes no sense to attempt to optimize for ad revenue that way. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence...or in this case, any evidence.

[OGinparadise]

Let's go back to step one:

Google's revenue is rising by what % a year?

Google's user base or searches are increasing by what % a year?

Is there a difference and what makes that difference?

Google's recent stock growth and revenue also match Google's highly publicizes Panda and Penguin updates. Or supposedly fighting "spam" but in reality also ruined a lot of small businesses. My educated guess is that Google is sending a lot less "free clicks" to other sites.

Cost per click can be brought down by a supply gut or a poor ROI for the advertiser.

>> In any case, the considerably more obvious and likely explanation is the one I think most people have tended to assume: google disambiguates terms automatically because it's what works in the 90% case.

In any case, the considerably more obvious and likely explanation is the one I think most people have tended to assume: Google makes sure that any algorithm changes (at least) don't hurt their Adwords business. That's their bread, butter and dessert.