Researcher vs Search Engine

The researcher’s guide to beating the search engines

Gary McGath:

Here’s the secret: Search engines think you’re stupid. They think you can’t construct a proper search and they have to “help” you by guessing your real intent. Statistically, this isn’t so unreasonable. Most people have no idea how to construct a search string. They can’t spell. Search engines have dumbed themselves down to the level of these people. This is great if you can’t remember the spelling of a name and you’re looking for popular articles, but it’s murder when you’re trying to get an answer to a difficult query.

In the old days, we had to learn advanced search techniques because the search engines weren’t all that bright.

Now, we need to learn advanced search techniques to work around the search engines thinking they know what we want better than we do.

Sigh.