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A couple years ago Google had an experiment where you could nuke either specific results or all results from a domain. Unfortunately, for whatever reason that experiment never took off. There's now the ability to nuke specific results, but that doesn't scale.

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The problem is that every site on the internet trying to sell something either has a "review" section for each item page that lets random buyers comment on the item, or they are one of those retailers that tries to sell things by cloaking them in one-page fake reviews. Either way, there's so much noise now, that it's impossible to find actual honest-to-goodness product reviews anymore.

The only way to combat it is try different or additional words in your search in hopes of filtering out the noise.

Try searches like this:

product -shipping
product shootout
product benchmarks
product review conclusion

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Indeed. I had an endearing conversation with a friend recently who was frustrated that all of her searches for "free porn" had never unearthed youporn.

But some things have improved! I discovered a new google-gives-you-exactly-what-you-want feature last night: Apparently knowing celebrity heights is essential as metric conversion.

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Damn, "Convert 1 mile into Johnny Depp heights" doesn't work.

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It knows Smoots, however. Johnny Depp and Oliver Smoot must be categorized differently.

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I've always wondered how that feature works. Or at least, smart it is. Is it really clever enough to distill facts from the internet with enough certainty to just tell you like that? When it comes to actual conversion units I'm sure it's programmed in, but for stuff like that... it opens up a whole new application for google-bombing. (ie have enough people put "Johnny Depp is 3'7"" in enough places and see what happens... what would be most hilarious is if it took an average, and Johnny Depp got increasingly shorter)

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Rememeber when you could search for "showname + episodes" and you'd find more than just torrents?

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product name + sucks

Works fairly well. Still have to sort the normal people from the loons.

Not sure you need the review, might hurt more than it helps.

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Try taking the space out after the plus sign; you want [productname +review] works for me.

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Way to completely miss the point, dude.

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yeah and tagging really fucking helps with searches too doesn't it? especially because idiots put all kinds of crap in there.

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Don't hate, there's some good stuff to be found in some tags.

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Google SearchWiki can do this and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Pl1H0dIXE

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Okay, let me clarify my absurdly broad and undetailed message before I get a typical jwz response:

Google SearchWiki can let you remove domains (as someone else mentioned above). I find it useful for blocking out the usual suspects.

Edited at 2008-12-02 05:11 pm (UTC)

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