With the recent blackouts, particularly of wikipedia, and my desire to do a “work-around” I went back to google and looked for the google cache but discovered that it is missing from its usual place.

This is partly because with the new google facelifts, I have resolved again and again to abandon google, with some greater success this time.  Each recent change that google has implemented has seemed to degrade rather than boost its functionality for me. And that’s just the stuff I see in the UI, not the degradation of the search results I am sure has occurred.

I was going to post this on the wikipedia workaround thread, but thought it would be better on its own.

The google cache is now located off to the right and requires a time-consuming mouse hover, mouse move, and click, far away from the initial results of a search.

Maybe that’s just because I can’t stand “google instant” and so have turned it off. And that takes either persistent cookies which I will not tolerate, or a time-consuming setting of session cookies for turning off what I cannot stand in the default settings.  I apologize for the rant. Again, a bit milder:

The google cache result links are now located off to the right and require a mouse hover, mouse move, and click, away to the right from the initial results of a search.

My personal bugaboo with Google is the disappearance of the advanced search link from the Google Books home page. You have to do a search before the link to the advanced search appears, and then it’s at the end of the all the results, requiring a bunch of scrolling. Basic search on Google Books is useless; you need to set parameters on the advanced screen before you get any kind of usable results.

I hadn’t realized that, sobiest. Thanks for the heads up.

When Google first appeared I recall that it made a virtue of its plainness. As opposed to its competitors (which at the time were mostly portals, crowded with everything under the sun) Google appealed by its simplicity, that pure white page with the Google logo, search box and an estimation of the number of sites covered, which soared ever upwards. These days you have to tinker around with one or several of the growing number of gadgets up on the top-right to opt out of this and opt out of that in an attempt to regain that pristine simplicity. And it’s a sure bet that after a few days Google will forget those preferences and revert to the way it thinks the page should be. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to go back and turn off the instant search or reset the number of results shown per page to my preferred setting of 100.

This really seems to fit the “truth is stranger than fiction” addage. If a sci-fi book had been written where a user had to do the “hover, drag, click away” move to access an important feature (before google actually did it, that is), the writer probably would have been roundly mocked by sci-fi fans for the absurdity of the idea that any company would do that. Ditto for making you do a basic google book search just to get the option of clicking on advance search (to do your “real” search.)

In fact, when I found myself doing the fake google books search just to get to the advanced search option, I felt kind of foolish, and was fairly certain that there was a way to go straight to the advanced search that I was just too dumb to find.  So i’m actually kind of relieved to know that that’s how the software was set up and it’s not just cluelessness on my part.  It’s not that HARD to do, but why would google make its customers jump through this hoop?  Not to mention that you already have to click on the “even more options” link just to get to google books in the first place (which, in addition to being annoying, probably leads to a fair number of less sophisticated users not knowing the google books feature even exists).

Does this link work for others?

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

The advanced search screen linked by sobiest above is the one I have used for years.  It seems to change the least over time. I put domains I use often in the domain box with a space in front of them so sites like Wikipedia jump up first with a single click in the domain box.

Persons here seem to use Google books a lot so one could put [space]books.google.com in the domain box and it would jump up whenever you click there. (Many clear out history often, so this might not work for those persons.)

I, too have used that google advanced link for years.

I wanted to mention that I have discovered how to get results that look like this, even today:

That link takes you to the page for an advanced google search, but not for an advanced google books search.

You can, of course, bookmark the advanced google books search page, but only time will tell how long that bookmark will work.

Svinyard118 - 21 January 2012 02:04 PM

That link takes you to the page for an advanced google search, but not for an advanced google books search.

I have noticed, sometimes, after I shut down and restart the browser/computer, links that worked when tested at post time have stopped working. So it is oftentimes difficult to determine if links ONLY work for me or if they also work for others. Or will continue to work. Or not. I suppose this is intended to be an enhancement of the user experience.

That “advanced google books search” page:

http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?

Not to mention that you already have to click on the “even more options” link just to get to google books in the first place

You can just type in “books.google.com” That’s how I habitually get to the Google Books site. I guess I could type “books.google.com/advanced_book_search” but that’s a bit lengthy and hard to remember exactly. Given that there are a number of other links at the bottom of the Google Books page, I don’t see why they had to eliminate the one for advanced search. Really stupid on their part. Stuff like this makes me want to use Bing.