Searching using Google

Google is the most popular search engine in most parts of the world (except in China and Korea). One of  the reasons it is popular is that the results are displayed quickly . About 3-4 years the search results were very useful, which made it popular. 

However in recent years, the search results have become less relevant. Google’s algorithm is based on the principle that a website’s importance depends on the number of  website’s that link to it. In the early days of  the internet, most websites were non-commercial in nature and links were usually relevant and free, so their algorithm was fairly accurate.

Search engine traffic is  “free” traffic for webmasters. Once you rank well in a particular search engine, you will get most of the visitors for a particular search term. Since monetizing traffic became easy with advertising programs, webmasters do not mind spending money to rank well in search engines. So the more the webmaster spends on purchasing links, the higher a page will usually rank in Google.  Also they seem to give a lot of weight age to the amount of  text on a page, it does not matter whether the information provided is useful.

This has reduced the usefulness of  Google as a search engine, but it still can be used, since it indexes a lot of web pages. If  you are searching for information about a particular product or service or reviews about it , the first results are likely to be irrelevant. To get accurate information you should type “the name of the company + the name of a competitor/another company” working in the same area. The results will be fairly relevant.

Searching using forums

Search engines like Google are based on algorithms can be useful for finding certain kinds of  information. But they can easily be manipulated and in recent months, many useful websites can no longer be found using search engines. A better way to research a particular subject or topic is by checking a relevant forum.

Compared to other types of  websites, forums take a lot of  server resources and the webmaster must spend a lot of time maintaining the forum. Revenues from forums are fairly low,  but for a  person searching for information about a particular subject, the information available is valuable.

Usually  a large forum with more than 1000 members is a more reliable and accurate source of  information. Many smaller forums may use a forum posting service initially to get it started, but generally the information provided may not be the true opinion of  the forum member. Most well moderated forums do not allow new members to post links in the message, urls can be included in the signature. This prevents junk messages from being posted.

In a single thread, a number of  individuals will post their opinion or share information about a particular subject. A website, product or service recommended by a large number of  forum members is likely to be more useful than algorithm based search engine results. Also unhappy users are more likely to post on forums, though some posts may not be reliable.