What sucks is that Andrew nailed all of my search grudges here, so I’ve got nothing to add, except perhaps that you can expand “*good* lawyers” out to “*good* service provider of any sort” and it still holds true.
I do wonder whether that case (lawyer, contractor, doctor, etc.) isn’t slightly different from the others, though that may just be my bias towards network recommendations and some other sort of bias showing through: I would give more weight to a search engine result for a butcher than I would for a lawyer…that feels entirely valid to me, but is it? Should it be?
In light of Google Squared launching today and all the buzz over M$FT’s Bing, I was delighted by @marcoarment’s tweet today where he said: “Want to see where real innovation needs to be made in web search? Pick a product you need to buy. Search Google for ‘[product name] review’.”
Product reviews are totally broken on Google. I’d love to compile a list of other broken searches on Google. Here’s my start, and please add in either comments or ReBlogs or dashboard answers or emails to me. I’ll aggregate the results and repost later.
- Purchasing tickets for anything
- Finding old concerts
- Finding *good* lawyers
- Finding currently-hiring job openings
- Finding an apartment for rent
- Finding flights (optimal route and optimal price)
- Finding a niche B&B
- Anything regarding SEOMaybe of these have become dominant vertical search categories, but I feel like Google is copping out by not trying to address these in their main search offering.
Got some others to add?
