Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.
>search
>search with search term in quotes
>search with search term in quotes with “Verbatim” mode enabled
>“search” “with” “each” “individual” “word” “of” “search” “term” “in” “quotes”
>double-check that “Verbatim” mode is still enabled (it is)
>click first link out of frustration, do a manual text search of the page for some keywords from your search term
>keywords from search term are not in top search result
>try to find a cached version of the page that that search engine appears to be referencing (waste 20 mins)
>cached version also doesn’t contain any keywords from your search term
iT’s ThE aLgOrItHm
DDG gives me better search results now. I was arguing with someone a few years back about how Google gives better results when searching for programming answers. Not anymore. I pretty much only use Google out of desperation when other searches failed.
DDG also ignores “sentences marked by quotes” and sometimes -negative search terms.