dimanche 2 septembre 2012

Google won't find my own stuff on Google+

Like a lot of people, I increasingly use Google+ as my blog. I expect to be able to find my stuff on my blog when I want it.

Not on Google+.

See, I wrote (blockquoted would be closer to the truth) several parts of a book I really like (GURPS Bio-Tech) and I wanted to share it with other. I titled every quotes “Transhumanist fictions (X)”, with X being the iteration.

If I want to find all of them, I thought I should use Google+'s internal search interface and type "Transhumanist fictions" (quote included) then restrict to my own results. Sounds sensible, right?

To my astonishment, Google+ was unable to find them all!

OK, so let’s stick to tried-and-true solutions, the good ol’ Google Search:

site:plus.google.com "Transhumanist fictions"
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:plus.google.com%20%22Transhumanist%20fictions%22

Or even more brutal:

inurl:plus.google.com "Transhumanist fictions"
https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:plus.google.com%20%22Transhumanist%20fictions%22

In both cases, Google was unable to find content I wrote on Google’s own service!

By using various tricks, I managed to find back some of them:

But Transhumanist fictions 4, 5 and 8 are still impossible to find. Bing, DuckDuckGo or Exalead did not perform any better. And all this posts are less than six-month old!

Conclusion: If your writings matter, don’t post them straight to Google+. Post them on a real blog then share them on Google+.

1 commentaire:

  1. When I want to retrieve an old post on Google+, I use my profile / posts page.

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