While a bit OT, I'd like to know why search engines have quit working well in recent years. It used to be that if one typed in what one was looking for, the search would pull up whatever was closest to the words entered. Now they pull up all sorts of garbage unrelated to your search. It seems to have started with Microsoft's "Bing," but has spread to all the others. Any suggestions how to circumvent the problem?

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Any suggestions how to circumvent the problem?

Frequent your local library's reference desk.

I am afraid we're way past that, Proof. Indeed, they'd just tell us to go to Google.

Well, I don't use anything but Google, but I have to say that I don't feel that a bunch of garbage comes up when I am looking for something. Can you give us an example?

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Originally posted by Geoff:
It seems to have started with Microsoft's "Bing," but has spread to all the others. Any suggestions how to circumvent the problem?

I don't use Bing, but Yahoo search is powered by Bing, so any problems with Bing will presumably be duplicated there. As far as I know the only other search engine in common use is Google. Are there others that you use?