I am so over Search Engines

A few years ago (maybe 5 years), I used the web as my own personal library of resources via search engines like Google & Yahoo..

If I or a friend were sick, I’d hit the search engines with a list of symptoms.

Prescription medicine? I’d check it out online and make sure I knew the side-effects and, when appropriate, seek out generic equivalents.

Computer problems? Likewise.

I might not always get the answers I needed on the first page but fairly quickly.

Today, I searched Yahoo for “best websites for baby information” — no quote marks and you can click that link to reproduce the search.

Best Chairs, Inc? How the hell did that get in there?

In fact, why did any of those guys show up at the top of the page.

How are they relevant?

Now, I search medicine, I get only advertisers and scam artists repeating the same information, over and over and over and over again. Right down to the punctuation. Or, worse, a fake site made up of keywords (that happens a lot).

What gives? How come these services are making all these megabucks but their primary goal and business description is consistently delivering less quality.

Ticks me off.

These days, bookmarks are more and more important, I find a good site (not related to search engines), bookmark it and go there when I need the info. I can no longer use Google or Yahoo to help me find the way.

Sean