How to Get Google to Show You Good Search Results Again
Google has gotten worse at showing us useful search results, and I know I’m not the only one who has noticed this . Recently, for example, I was looking for a post on Lifehacker that included the word “Kelvin,” which isn’t exactly a common term. Instead of looking at several articles that mentioned it (including the Connections column I was looking for), Google decided that I would be happy to see results that included “K,” the scientific abbreviation for a unit of temperature. And it gave me a results page full of articles on how to save money in your 401(k).
These untargeted search results are becoming increasingly common, and we can only partly blame the results for being cluttered with AI-generated junk and human-created SEO bait. I have no information about what people (and bots) are writing, and I can’t use Google’s ranking algorithm to shuffle the pages. But I can tell you how to make Google search for what you typed.
How to force Google to search for the word you need, not synonyms
Here’s the reason this happens in the first place: Google is trying to be helpful by looking for words similar to the ones you’re searching for (and, more cynically, they may try to help advertisers by directing your interests to things that advertisers want to sell you ). Most of the time this is useful; for example, searching for the word “sneakers” in the plural will also return pages where the word “sneakers” is written in the singular.
Lately these settings seem to have become much broader, giving us untargeted searches like the one I mentioned above where I search for a temperature unit and get advice on pension funds. Previously, this could be easily corrected: you had to put the word in quotation marks. Lately this has become less reliable (although sometimes it still seems to work).
Enter verbatim version. This isn’t new, but it’s become even more important recently given the ever-expanding adjustments Google makes to our search queries.
How to enable verbatim mode in Google search
On the search results page, look for a menu that says Tools . This may be on the far right side of the screen.
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On your desktop, notice the far right side of the page, to the right of buttons suggesting related searches or different search categories (images, shopping, etc.).
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On mobile devices, under the search box you will see the categories “images, shopping…”. Place your finger on these words and swipe left; at the end of the line, on the far right, you will see Search Tools .
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When you click “Tools” or “Search Tools” you will see a drop-down list labeled “All Results” . Click or tap on this and you will see the Verbatim option .
This Verbatim feature in the Tools section is the key to finding the words you actually typed. We can’t promise anything about the quality of the pages you’ll land on, but at least you’ll get a more targeted selection.