I ended up giving up on Bing, as it was coming up short in other areas. Going back to Google, I found one way to tell why they showed a result. It seems if you click the cached link, it will provide some info at the top, like this:

(using my earlier example of db.view)

Every time I've found a result that was missing a word I typed, or in this case it changing what I searched for, it's using info from pages that link to the result.

Now if only I could find a setting to turn this behavior off, I'd be happy. Really annoying to put in a 6 word search, and have it return results that only contain 5 of the words, due to the sixth being on some other linked page.

Put a '+' in front of every term you require.

+I +know +that's +annoying +with +UBBthreads, +guess +I +never +realized +it +was +mandatory +with +Google +too.

Yeah, that's really awful. You didn't used to have to do that with Google. I don't think Google realizes how awful that search behavior ("sites that link to this page") is for people like us who search very specifically. Perhaps for the average user, who might be searching for more general terms and ideas, it's not as noticeable.

What I'd like is a way to permanently block specific domains from my search results. For example, "NEVER EVER show me results for Experts Exchange."

Hmm. You could probably hack together some kind of addon or Greasemonkey script that always inserted -site:experts-exchange.com to your queries but thats prolly a little annoying...

I never understood the point of that website. The top of the page tries to convince you to register/pay by hiding the replies but if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can see the replies anyway?

Can't remember the search now, but did come across one this past week where even the linked pages didn't have the term I typed in. Filed feedback on that one. Maybe if enough people do this, Google will get the hint that some of us would like an option to search for everything that we type, without having +to +type +like +this.

Also, now looking into a way to outright block any Gawker media site from my search results. Lifehacker stuff comes up from time to time, but their new site crap now tries to trap the browser. Clicking back just reloaded the story, instead of taking me back to my Google search results.

This makes me think of two topics-

1) I use tabs to surf any list, opening up new tabs and holding the original list open. No reloading required.

2) The Gawker 'facelift' is crap. I've dropped my visits (gizmodo and jalopnik) by about 90% because of it. Why is it crap? Because I want to look at a list of headlines, not ONE GIANT STORY and a tiny list on the side. Also, load ALL the comments, dammit, not just the 'featured' ones. WTH does that mean? 'Featured comment'?? It's all a step backwards, IMO.

I tend to use tabs if I'm researching something in depth, but skip them if it's a quick lookup search. The Lifehacker trap caught me due to a quick lookup, and it was even more frustrating since I was using the magic trackpad gestures. It's just not possible to gesture quick enough to get two back commands to be issued to defeat the trap.

I'm not a fan of the new design for the most part, but I don't dislike it as much as others seem to. Even Kevin Purdy of Lifehacker, though, strongly insinuated that he disliked the redesign.

As for the "featured comments" thing, I don't understand your dislike of it. There are large buttons at the top of the comments that let you change what it displays, switching between "Featured" and "All." I have it show all comments myself.

The main thing that annoys me about their featured comments is that it doesn't seem like people get pushed into the "featured" strata very often. I think it's left up to the users to promote other users to "featured" status and then they always show up as featured commenters. Seems like a weird system to me.

What I have always liked about their comment system is that replies to comments are hidden by default. This is essential, and something that blogs like Engadget NEED to implement. On Engadget, someone posts the first comment and then every commenter after that tends to insert their comment as a reply to that first one, and they do it just so they won't end up further down the comments page. If replies aren't shown by default, they'll just create a new comment of their own, and actual conversations can happen (not that Engadget commenters are the best conversationalists in the world).

Anyway, I wanted to compliment part of Lifehacker's comment system, even if I don't think it's perfect. Comments are a huge challenge for blogs anyway, especially popular ones.

With the old site, the two choices *show comments and *expand replies were held in a cookie, so with any subsequent visit to any other page, I'd see the same view as last time.

I don't want to click 'all' for every page.

I'm really kind of peeved at them and have not poked around for the controls for the page. I just haven't been interested in expending energy toward getting it back closer to the way it was- instead I just stopped going there.

I've seen some discussion about the possibility of arranging the page back to something more familiar, but again, I haven't done the research to see what that is all about.

I don't have an account there. I didn't like the account setup requirements for some reason and was very happy just lurking. I don't want to have to 'log in' just to get the page to view the way I want.

/rant

edit:
Ok, 'blog view' was easy enough to click... But what's the point of the sidebar with headlines if I've got all the headlines I want in blog view?
still not happy.

edit2
Ok- frustratingly clicking around on various buttons and views, I happened across a commenter that mentioned this:
http://ca.gizmodo.com/
"ca" for "classic" I suppose.
Now I am happy.

I think you're talking about two different things at the same time.

The setting you're talking about now was to expand replies to all the comments. That has nothing to do with featured comments, so that's where you confused me.

You are correct that now there is no way to leave replies expanded, but I don't want that anyway. If I see a comment that I think needs following up and I see there's already a reply, I'll expand it, otherwise it clutters things up and has the potential to break conversations like I said happens at Engadget.

On the topic of Google search results, I just happened to come across this in my Google Reader.

Goodbye, Experts Exchange!

[edit]What Dignan said ^[/edit]

Sorry I wasn't more explicit, but that's the exact subject of the post right before yours

Oops!

The new Gawker layouts are just plain broken unless you use Google Chrome.

Using any of them in classic mode, dipping into a full article, results in extra junk being loaded into the history, trapping the user in the article page.

In Chrome the back function works, but even in Chrome, it has problems, failing to return to the column position of the article read.

Added:

Didn't realize it at first but the article titles jump around depending on the associated image size. Don't like that at all.

Gizmodo still hasn't fixed their crap.
I've been using ca.gizmodo (and ca.jalopnik) to get at the old style layout, but for some strange reason during the early part of the day these sites show stories from February 23.
At least today it's Feb 23, could be different each day.
Still sorta odd.
I wondered if anyone else noticed and plugging 'february 23rd gizmodo' into google, I came up with this random blog entry that pretty much sums up how dumb they were to change their format:
http://fartonice.com/graphics/gizmodo-and-digg-when-web-design-goes-wrong/

Anyone else notice that when navigating back from clicking on a search result in Google that the search query and results are not the ones you just used to find the result you just previously clicked?

Example:

Search for blue roses
Don't click on any results
Search for red roses
Click on any result
Navigate back with the browser's back command/button
Google search string says "blue roses" and shows results for blue roses

Arrgh!

Sorry, Bruno, but I think you're going to have to blame this one on your own computer. I just tried exactly what you said in Chrome, Firefox, and IE, and none of them do what you say. When I go back, it gives me "red roses" and the corresponding results.

It may very well be an incompatibility with Safari, but nothing on my system has changed in the past few months in terms of software, but Google HAS rolled out changes to their search page.

A new Safari was just released, so I'm going to try it out to see if anything changes.

Works fine for me using Safari under Mac OS X 10.6.6, without the recent Safari update.

They have, but I'm not having the problem you are. Maybe it's something that was wrong with your system before they made whatever change they did that made the problem evident? I'm just saying, I've tried it on a couple computers now, and I suspect I'll have three more tomorrow I can try it on, but I'm guessing I'll see the same thing. Granted, I don't have any Macs to test on, though.

Seems to work fine after updating Safari. Strange.

I've reproduced the problem again. Here are revised steps for trying to duplicate the issue. Seems like it works if I do exactly what I wrote before. Sorry.

All without quotes.

Search for "blue roses"
Click on any result
Use BACK command in browser to return to results
Search box correctly reads "blue roses"
Type over the word "blue" with the word "red" and search
Click on any result
Use BACK command in browser to return to results
Google search string says "blue roses" and shows results for blue roses

Obviously "blue roses" is an example, it seems to happen regardless of what I'm searching for.

The "back" button in this case is totally the responsibility of the web browser program, not the site. So it's got to be some odd twist in Safari that's doing it there.

Cheers

I still can't replicate the problem Bruno is seeing in Safari on google.com and google.ca. Tried logged in and logged out, and I always see red roses when I click back. Maybe you have an extension wrecking havok with Google for some reason.


Not looking forward to when sites do muck with back incorrectly using HTML5.

That's already a problem, though. In fact, some form of it may well be Bruno's current problem, at least if "Instant" ajax search is turned on. After all, in that case the results page would have been about blue roses when it was first visited, and only later ajaxed itself into being about red roses as the result of some keypress events. So on browsers (including Iceweasel, FWIW) where you do see red roses when you return to the page, something clever is happening, probably to do with all the ajaxy bits rewriting the current page URL.

Peter

Unfortunately there are countless sites that prevent the back button from actually going back to the previous page/site.

Results start to appear in Google LIVE as I type the search query. So if anyone is trying to duplicate the issue, make sure that this happens for you too.

Yep, I see the changes live. If you wait a little bit, the URL bar even updates to show the new search. I did try again, with http://google.com still in the URL bar by the time I searched for blue roses and clicked a result. Clicking back did return me to the full URL with blue roses in the search.

Does the same issue happen if you turn off all extensions?

Now that Google instant is rolled out everywhere, I do actually like it better then the old way. It seemed odd at first, but it does save time when trying to refine a search, usually from having to go back and add + or " around something.