http://74.125.95.93/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?hl=en&tid=68eef4f9581f51bf
For those not familiar with this search tool, it was the best way to find anything on US federal, state and local government web sites. Plug in a word or phrase, hit enter, and voila! Really good and targeted stuff would be at
I stumbled across it several years back and have been writing and talking about it ever since, and have many others. I have shown numerous people the value of this tool, until...poof- it was gone!
AGGGHHHH!!!! This is horrible!! And worse, they really don't understand what they did!
In the discussion link posted above Rishi K from Google says you can find everything in a regular search.
WRONG!!!! Regular searches include all the non-government sites we were able to filter out through the use of www.Google.com/Unclesam. Rishi, you don't understand the nature of our searches and you are WAY off base.
Too any and all in the government market: drop Google a line and tell them "Google, bring back UncleSam!".
If that does not work....Bing- are you paying attention?
Posts
Mark -- Rick Robinson suggests that search.usa.gov, powered by Bing, is a worthy substitute. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteWhat about http://search.usa.gov?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree that the removal of "Uncle Sam" from Google may not seem ideal, but it looks to be part of an ongoing review on what people are searching for and where.
Even the government is doing this with the new executive order on streamlining service delivery. There is a moratorium on new sites, and some consolidation and elimination of other sites.
What's more, government officials in charge of various websites are focusing content on what people are looking for. And the govt is getting more serious about "customer experience" in such a way that I think we can expect to see fewer sites, better content and as a result - better search results for citizens.
Completely agree; by doing the rough cutting out of non government sites at the top, so to speak, the results were always more focused and made things much easier to find. Now to get the same results I have to iteratively figure out what to put into the advance search so sites I'm not interested in disappear from the results.
ReplyDeleteGoogle dropped one of the world's BEST search engines. If you ever wanted a clean search limited to stuff related to government....now you don't have one!
ReplyDeleteIf you used this tool and will miss it, you're not alone. Tweet @google, or introduce me to someone there so I can find out more. I think this is a tool worth fighting for.
Readers of the new book about Google, "In the Plex" know that Google is all about the numbers. I don't know what Google was thinking when they "killed UncleSam".While I did love the no-ads version of UncleSam, how did Google miss the opportunity that $550 Billion worth of federal vendors might appreciate to connect with federal buyers?
Rick Robinson ,National Director of Emerging Technology for Blue Beacon Consulting and author of the GovWin article about the demise of www.google.com/unclesam compares the competing search engine, www.search.usa.gov. And he does let us know he helped build it. But ..in my opinion, not nearly as good.
If you agree...tell Google. @google on twitter, or tell me who you know there, and I will ask them what they were thinking.
Earlier in June, Google dropped one of the world's BEST search engines. If you ever wanted a clean search limited to stuff related to government....now you don't have one!
ReplyDeleteBut if you used this tool and will miss it, you're not alone. Tweet @google, or introduce me to someone there so I can find out more. I think this is a tool worth fighting for.
Readers of the new book about Google, "In the Plex" know that Google is all about the numbers. I don't know what Google was thinking when they "killed UncleSam".While I did love the no-ads version of UncleSam, how did Google miss the opportunity that $550 Billion worth of federal vendors might appreciate to connect with federal buyers?
Rick Robinson ,National Director of Emerging Technology for Blue Beacon Consulting and author of the GovWin article about the demise of www.google.com/unclesam compares the competing search engine, www.search.usa.gov. And he does let us know he helped build it. But ..in my opinion, not nearly as good.
If you agree...tell Google. @google on twitter, or tell me who you know there, and I will ask them what they were thinking.
There was a long debate about the removal of the uncle sam search on Google's webmaster forum. One webmaster decided to create a custom google search engine that only brings back results from government websites. His site is http://www.unclesamsearch.com/
ReplyDelete