But Can You Find What You're Looking For?

I avoid Google with a passion. I avoid Bing with a passion. There are alternative search engines out there that work wonders- the best ones are the ones that specialize in a particular topic (i.e., GlobalSpec).

I am not going to tell you what my favorite search engine is, because I don't want you or anyone else to start gaming it...

Ditto!

I don't have much trouble with this flood of junk because most of my searches are in niche fields that don't interest the content spinners. It must be a source of deep frustration to everyone else, though. On the rare occasions when I search something of more general interest, I have to wade through piles of junk SEO listings. Fortunately, these content farms have a certain style and signature that makes it possible to skip most of them when going through the search engine results, but it still means you have to go through five search engine pages to get three or four valid results.

I'm not sure I put much trust in Google's dedication to uprank high-value sites. After all, they are a beneficiary of all this pseudo-content churning, because they broker much of the advertising revenue that results. Like another respondent, I try to use specialized search engines as much as possible.

This is a huge issue for those who are trying to use the internet to track down real data.

The current paradigm is keyword-driven, and I think that's going to have to change.

I have run across these poorly-written "articles" during my searches that give very little meaningful information. It's a waste of time for me.

One impulse I have is to suggest that the web be split up between for-profit sites and non-profit, educational, research, and information sites. I don't know how it would be done, but my initial idea was to use different protocol descriptors.

Even so, I really need search paradigms to mature. My ideal search paradigm would involve a context-sensitive concept. For example, I have an electronics part I'm interested in. I can type in its number. But what if I only want a datasheet for that part? If I add the keyword "datasheet" I'll probably find one, but the search will also pull up any site that mentions the word "datasheet" on it. I have similar problems if I am looking for application circuits. The search will bring up forum posts that just mention the word "circuit" when what I need are real annotated schematics. I should be able to tell the search engine that "I want a datasheet for this part" and it should know what I mean.

The above aren't the greatest examples, as I have my favorite specialized sites that almost always get me results. But search engines should be able to do this job, too, and my searches don't just involve engineering. In looking up data about people, subjects, technologies, the results can be much worse, especially if the keyword I use has multiple meanings and the one I want is not the "popular" one.