Google used to be better. Really.
Years ago, Google's standard search feature always gave the best possible results no matter what you were searching for. And it was a great tool for researchers, teachers and students. There was even a focused sub-domain specifically for research and scholarly pursuits; Google Scholar.
But the years have not been kind. Google is the most popular search engine by far, but as the tool has grown it has become such a strong target for commercialization, advertising, scammers and spammers. At one point, they were very good at deprioritizing these listings, but more recently results are worse. And it is not just me that has been saying it.
- BusinessInsider.com - Google Is Getting Worse As It Loses Fight Against Search Engine Spam
- MarketVantage.com - Google Search Is Getting Worse
- SearchEngineJournal.com - Ex-Googler Answers Why Google Search is Getting Worse
This trend was top-of-mind again recently when I tumbled upon the following post and thread on tumblr. I share it here in near entirety as I feel like it shares a lot of good alternative resources, specifically for researchers.
Now, in Google's defense, they have always maintained the Scholar sub-domain as the best alternative for actually scholarly research. Whether this separate site still has good results in recent days is something I have not tested, but it's worth keeping if needed.
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