OT Searching Usenet

I was watching a documentary called "Download: The True Story of the Internet:" One of the shows is about search, and Google has made quite a few dollars by showing ads on their search page. It seems that people are willing to pay big bucks for ads.

I just wonder how may advertisers are unhappy since Google search has ruined Usenet searches. As I have quit using Google to search Usenet, my hits have dropped significantly. I can only hope that the hits drop so low as to cause Google to go back to being useful.

Google has changed from enormously valuable search tool to a useless piece of crap.

Reply to
Metspitzer
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Agreed. But is there anything else out there that has a Usenet archive? I, too, miss being able to find ancient old posts.

Serious question, BTW.

Reply to
aemeijers

aemeijers wrote in news:f7ednRM89ta6W9jQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

You still can find all old and new Usenet posts on Google. Google owns what used to be Deja News' Usenet archive.

On the Google home page, click the word "More" at upper left. From the resulting drop-down menu, click "Groups".

Once on the "Groups" page, click "Advanced Groups Search" at upper-right.

At that point, you get an approximation of the old Deja News search page.

After your searh results are presented to you, change the radio button below the text-box to "Google Groups" from the default "All Groups". This gets rid of the Web results, and limits the seach to Usenet. Each time you run a search, you need to change that radio button; it does not stay where you put it.

My point of distaste with Google is how they deliberately misdirect people by pretending that Usenet is Google.

Reply to
Tegger

Metspitzer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

That's how Google makes all of its money. That's how Google stays in business in the first place.

Not sure what you mean here. What kind of "hits" are you talking about?

It's still pretty good, but you do need to tailor your search terms carefully, with judicious use of symbols like +, - and "".

Reply to
Tegger

On 1/30/2011 2:33 PM Tegger spake thus:

I agree with his "piece of crap" comment. It's true that Google has a vast searchable Usenet archive (bought from Deja News), but their search is often broken beyond repair, no matter what kind of search terms one uses. Dunno how well it works now, but I've had bad luck with it in the past.

And there are two other good reasons to hate Google Groups: the mistaken impression that Usenet *is* Google Groups, which they do little to dispel, and the fact that GG is a huge spam portal, despite Google's protestations against spam.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

David Nebenzahl wrote in news:4d45e98e$0$6179 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.adtechcomputers.com:

It works as well as it used to, BUT you MUST use "Advanced Groups Search, AND change that radio button to "Google Groups" (Usenet-only) from "All Groups" (includes Web boards and Web boards that repost Usenet articles).

The mistaken impression they /actively promote/, you mean.

Didn't they used to have a slogan that went something like, "Do no evil"? Whatever happened to that?

Reply to
Tegger

You can use scroogle scraper that strips off the ads and anynomous you when you search so you don't get the google tracking cookies.

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If you like it, throw them a bone and contribute a few bucks to the cause.

Reply to
gfretwell

It is crap, sometimes obviously so, like when the server does not work at all. Most of the time the results are totally screwed up.

Anyone who is familiar with searching UseNet should have been doing that for years. Besides dumping spam on UseNet and totally messing up the UseNet archive search results, you get tons of garbage group results nowadays.

When Google Groups first took over from DejaNews, the first gutting of the search engine was when Google removed the most-relevant-groups list. That was an omen. The most-relevant-groups list was useful for determining which is the best group to post your question to. Google messed up that feature because, as history has proved, they could not care less about UseNet.

The uselessness of the UseNet archive search under Google, and the massive amount of spam Google dumps on us every day, gives Google Groups a negative value.

Google sucks.

Reply to
John Doe

I understand the menus- I think their algorithm is broken. It no longer finds posts I know I made years ago, so I must assume there are similar holes when I search for other authors.

Their NEWS search is broken even worse.

Reply to
aemeijers

It is really weird, like voodoo. You never know what results you are going to get, if any. Results vary from one search to another, with the same exact criteria and settings. You rarely see programming that bad. I think even Microsoft would be better at it. At least Microsoft keeps their servers going.

Reply to
John Doe

-snip-

Yep-- That's been my experience, too. I've tried to find a couple conversations I participated in on alt.quotation from several years ago & nothing comes up.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

On 1/30/2011 5:47 PM Jim Elbrecht spake thus:

So I'm not sure whether their search routines are broken (a little hard to believe, this being the great Google, after all) or if they're just quietly "pruning" their Usenet archives to make more room ...

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

I just got the Google Groups UseNet archive search result where all of the posts are numbered "1".

Anybody who says Google Groups UseNet archive search works well obviously doesn't actually use it.

Reply to
John Doe

Its still there, search groups groups.

Google has made a mess by google spam. Google spams.

They are currently trying new things on the groups engine and its a mess. I intend to switch ASAP

I also do not like the image search scripting, and try to go Elmer Fudd or basic. Google was the first to use multiple data type searching which was wonderfull, search web, images, video, groups.

Except Google like to call forums into the usenet category.

greg

greg

Reply to
zek

Google has been consistently destroying the original dejanews functionality from the day they took over. My guess is that they make more ad revenue through real-time google grouping, and have deliberately dumbed down the archival searching to prompt people to instead ask a question in real time.

The problem is that there was a wealth of information contained within those archives which is not replaceable. The accumulation of tens of thousands of individuals, each with their own area of specialties, each contributing knowledge that otherwise had not, nor ever will be published.

We lost a virtual user-generated Alexandrian library, all thanks to the greed of Google.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

Never noticed that button.

On the advanced google-groups search page there is a similar button for "Google Groups". I always assumed it got you only the groups run by google. Sounds like google and usenet? Is there a way to only search usenet - no groups run by google?

Reply to
bud--

...

I expect and hope that there are other complete UseNet archives (like government, Microsoft, maybe some other big companies, maybe some rich individuals/organizations).

Google hires lots of H1B workers who probably could not care less about the public UseNet archive.

I would pay a small fee for access to a real UseNet archive that is searchable. Maybe premium UseNet servers will start something like that.

Good luck and have fun.

Reply to
John Doe

I think that button has been changed to do so. But still, the search results are screwed beyond recognition, and you get lots of garbage "sex" groups mixed in with all of the Google Groups spam. And sometimes the server does not return anything, and so on.

Reply to
John Doe

bud-- wrote in news:ii6rmi$uht$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

That's the point. Google is calling Usenet "Google Groups".

Google does NOT run Usenet and never has. They just feed Usenet goups through their Web portal and don't bother telling you where they're actually getting the stuff from.

By calling Usenet "Google Groups", Google is likely trying to make ad revenue by getting people to read and post to Usenet through Google's Web portal.

Anyway, if you want Usenet-only archives, you need to click the wrongly- named "Google Groups" radio button.

Reply to
Tegger

No, you can't. That's the problem. The search function is broken, so that search results are a hit-and-miss (mostly miss) affair.

And don't forget to change the number of results per page to 100, because the search will _only_ show you hits up to the maximum number of results you specified. Doesn't matter if there's five thousand hits using your name on alt.home.repair - it'll tell you there's that many, but only display the number of hits you selected.

The best I've been able to do is repeated searching using a combination of keywords and dates in an attempt to bring up additional search results. But sometimes, using the date parameters in Advanced Search ends up eliminating all possible returns, because, again, the search function is broken.

Google has been aware for years that this is broken, and they're not particularly interested in fixing it. I can only assume that they've decided there's not enough money in it to make it worth their while.

Reply to
Hell Toupee

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