Google continues to kill advanced search

Google doesn't want you to search; it wants to tell you. This is a point that I often make on courses that I run, and one of the best examples of this is the way in which they are continuing to downgrade the advanced search function. Once, a very long time ago, when you opened the Google search home page, you got a direct link to the Advanced search function to the right of the search box:

However, in recent years they have made it more difficult to find the advanced search function, by removing it from the area of the search box - you either needed to know that it was hidden under the cog in the top right hand corner:

or you could simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the 'Advanced search' option:

Now however that's gone as well. If you scroll to the bottom of the page now, that option has gone entirely:

No Advanced Search option anywhere. To be honest, I can't say that I'm surprised. In their continual rush to tell us what we want to find when we're searching, having an Advanced search option - which implies that Google can't cut it at when it tries - is just an embarassment for it. Besides, it costs money to keep a function like this going - it's not as though it's a multi billion pound company that's made a name in the area of search, is it?

However, it's disappointing, and I'm pushing Advanced search right towards the top of my list of the next Google functionality to disappear.

Comments

[Anneli]

How annoying they keep hiding this! I have found it through link along bottom of screen to Settings. It's now in there.

[Kim]

The cog is to the far right of the screen, if you click the advanced search is still there.

[Katherine Bertolucci]

They're not the only ones. The Phoenix Public Library recently "upgraded" their OPAC. It still has Advanced Search but without the same functionality as Basic Search. For example, you cannot sort a results list achieved through one of the Advanced Search techniques.

This attack on information skills is not new. Clay Shirky once commented that the tags "movie" and "film" do not need to be coordinated because people who use "movie" do not want to see what people who use "film" want to see.

David Weinberger, in “Everything Is Miscellaneous,” falsified data to imply that libraries still use card catalogs and don't include subject headings in the catalog record. See my “Searcher” article (02/2009), "Beyond Findability: Organizing in the Age of the Miscellaneous."