Wow - Google Custom Search Is Badly Broken
So I just happened to be over on ruby-doc.org and I did a search on for strfitme. This was the astonishingly bad results:
WHAT. THE. HELL??? The first result on ruby-doc.org for strftime is how to use strftime for python!!! Now if you look closely here, what you will see is that the python entry is coming up as an ad. Let's look at this again - here is what you see when you are on a 13" MacBook Pro with a Retina display:
Default Search Results
Search Results After you Scroll Down a Bit
So here are the errors from a user interface perspective:
- Ads within the search results ARE NOT clearly labeled. That's bullshite; I'm sorry but it is bullshite. If the ads look just like actual search results then, well, it is confusing as hell. I am a search professional and I got confused.
- There are enough ads that the first search result is off screen entirely – on a decent size screen – think about how this looks on Mobile …
The actual first search result is:
https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.5.1/libdoc/date/rdoc/DateTime.html
and that's ok but the better result is to the offset link:
https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.5.1/libdoc/date/rdoc/DateTime.html#method-i-strftime