I have no idea why they changed this, I noticed it recently and I can't figure it why.
User testing must have somehow played a role, I hate to blame non-technical users but... still I can't believe anyone gets better results when the keywords are optional.
The odd thing is I remember switching from AltaVista to google, before google you always had to discount the first bunch of results, but google was just so amazingly accurate. And yet now I find myself skipping the top results in a google search.
I remember when google bombing first started, it didn't bother me much, but then google tried to counter it and I could swear searches got a bit worse. And recently they've gotten even worse.
It's a shame this seems to be destiny of all truly great things.
User testing must have somehow played a role, I hate to blame non-technical users but... still I can't believe anyone gets better results when the keywords are optional.
The odd thing is I remember switching from AltaVista to google, before google you always had to discount the first bunch of results, but google was just so amazingly accurate. And yet now I find myself skipping the top results in a google search.
I remember when google bombing first started, it didn't bother me much, but then google tried to counter it and I could swear searches got a bit worse. And recently they've gotten even worse.
It's a shame this seems to be destiny of all truly great things.