Google Tweaks Algorithm As Concern Over Bing Grows 397
SharkLaser writes "As Bing gets closer to capturing almost 33% of the market share in the U.S., Google has again made a large tweak to its algorithms to provide more up-to-the-minute search results. The change affects around 35% of queries and is intended to give users more recent news and stories. For breaking news stories the search engine will now weight more heavily the most recent coverage, and not just those sites that are linked the most, and for general terms the search engine values fresh content more than old. Google is hoping that these recent new changes will provide better search experience and stops users from switching over to Bing, which just recently launched its own GroupOn like site."
Re:Bring back ability to use plus and quotes... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was under the impression that the query foo +bar meant that bar was mandatory and foo was optional, but that items with both would be at the top, whereas the query for "foo bar" searches for the phrase "foo bar" without considering any documents that just had foo or just had bar, but didn't have them both together.
Re:simple fix (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like Google to actually search for the terms I asked for, and not what it thinks I should be asking for --- I fight that bloody autocorrect feature daily. Search for any programming term and chances are you'll get a tiny message saying 'Searching for FOO instead (unless you really meant BAR)', and then irrelevant search results.
If you go look at their forums, they're full of complaints about this. Including people saying that their company name can't be found at all, because it gets autocorrected to something else if people try to search for it!
I understand why this feature's there, but please, please, provide a way to turn it off...