Offline: "Google News Archive Search Page: Gone Forever Or Temporary Bug?"

Here’s a report by none other than INFOdocket’s Gary Price posted on Search Engine Land (he’s a contributing editor there).

Direct to Search Engine Land Report

In a nutshell, the interface was taken down sometime in the past few days (without notice) but the material, the millions of digitized articles remain online. Now, they’re a bit more challenging, time consuming to get at especially for those with limited advanced searching skills.

The Google News Archive Search Page interface currently redirects to the Google News Advanced Search page. The challenge here is that no help or documentation is provided on the page.

What About Searching For Help?

If you run a search for News Search Archive Help in the title and near the top of the page. Selecting the link news.google.com/archivesearch/help.html redirects you to the Google homepage. Confusing and aggravating.

Today’s news happens not that long after Google apologized to users about not having done a good job of communicating clearly about the end of the Uncle Sam search interface/site.

Direct to Search Engine Land Report

Another Possible Glitch or 100 Results Max

When we did search the news archive, we were only allowed to review 100 (10 pages, 10 items per page). The links to continue forward are in place but selecting them only turns up the same results we found on page 10. Google usually allows searchers to see up to 1000 results. We’re not sure if this is old news, something new, or a glitch.

Two Examples
1. Search: “Digital Cable” Toronto
Approx 1000 results. However, after page 10 the same results appear on every page.

2. Search: “Tim Berners-Lee”
Approximately 11,000 results. But once again, the results from page 10 forward are the same on every page.

Filed under: News, Patrons and Users