Published on 12, July, 2020
I wanted to look for an ex display kitchen, all the ones that first came up on a search seemed to be in London, so I narrowed it to north Wales, after the sponsered links and ads, what comes up Swansea! WTF, how is Swansea in North Wales? A few others came up but none said where they were, a couple had London phone numbers, why is the internet so bad at giving you what you ask for? I'd rather it told me there was nothing matching my search results, than be given what I didn't ask for.
Internet search engines use predictive AI to 'guess' what you might be most interested in, combined with what they are paid to promote. Much of this information comes from the cookies, and their permissions to share information with each other.
The only surefire way of getting a completely unbiased search in G oo gle is to delete all browser history, Cookes, etc. or using a different computer without logging in to any of your accounts. There are various more secure ways to stop engines storing information to 'improve' your searches but they involve alternate software. It's a pain, because the very things that make our lives easier, cookies to remember the good stuff, are also used to 'tailor' what we are shown of the internet. G used to have a page where they listed information it had gleaned about you based on what you searched for - and it got me pretty accurate, apart from the sexist assumption that IT people are male. And this was in the 90s.
The same happens to me when I search on Amazon. No matter how explicit about what I am looking for it 'tries to be helpful'.
I think that maybe part of the problem it has with me is that it dosen't know me enough, I routinely refuse cookies or just allow essential ones, I only regualarly use about 3 or 4 sites, email, here, newspaper and amazon. I might look at others about once a month. I did try deleting all my history and it was even worse, not only did it put things I use several pages in, but it didn't make searches easier or more responsive. The more stuff like this happens, the less likely I am to search, and just go to the few local shops there are, or have someone drive me to Llanduddno, where all the big shops are coralled into inaccessable courtyards.
Mind you even when I do look for something everything looks the same, it's like you can have anything from anywhere in the world as long as its the same couple of dozen things in standard sizes, unless it's Chinese when it will be to small.