WTF is wrong with Google?

They're now using their machine learning algorithms to determine site locality and applicability rather than static assignments and verticalisation. It will get better...
 
Beachless said:
Works fine without using site:
Click to expand...

Yes but they are different queries.

":za" would ignore the colon and search for za somewhere
":site .za" says specifically that you want domains that end in .za

The former will give you .com & other domain results
The latter will only give you *.za domain results
 
I also miss simply changing result settings to South Africa with 2 clicks. Not sure why it went wrong or why they bother having the option now TBH since most of the results seem even LESS local. It went FUBAR at about the same period I did a lot of overseas travel so I had assumed that the country specific search went haywire in my case due to that, but it seems it's not just me.

The /ncr route is fine but cumbersome to change the URL every time you want to narrow a search to SA and site:.za excludes any local site on another domain.
 
garp said:
I also miss simply changing result settings to South Africa with 2 clicks. Not sure why it went wrong or why they bother having the option now TBH since most of the results seem even LESS local. It went FUBAR at about the same period I did a lot of overseas travel so I had assumed that the country specific search went haywire in my case due to that, but it seems it's not just me.

The /ncr route is fine but cumbersome to change the URL every time you want to narrow a search to SA and site:.za excludes any local site on another domain.
Click to expand...

Just put any word from your query within quotes and use the South African results option as before.
eg. the OP was searching for 150000 litre water tank, just select SA as country and put the word tank in quotes ie. 150000 litre water "tank".
It would show results as it used to previously.
Not as easy as before though
 
1) Enter your search text and do the search
2) On the results page click "Search Tools"
3) Click the "any country" dropdown and select "Country: South Africa"
 
^^vampire^^ said:
1) Enter your search text and do the search
2) On the results page click "Search Tools"
3) Click the "any country" dropdown and select "Country: South Africa"
Click to expand...

Doesn't work properly
 
DJ... said:
They're now using their machine learning algorithms to determine site locality and applicability rather than static assignments and verticalisation. It will get better...
Click to expand...

Their alorithm is particularly ****e lately. You can't search specific phrases anymore using quotation or +, as results keep coming back without the specific phrase.
 
^^vampire^^ said:
1) Enter your search text and do the search
2) On the results page click "Search Tools"
3) Click the "any country" dropdown and select "Country: South Africa"
Click to expand...

You will need to put any word in quotes as well as doing the above.
 
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