Last Updated on May 25, 2020 by Mathew Diekhake

Google is now showing a message when they’re letting you know that nothing managed to match your search particularly well. So now you know not to bother clicking around, which will be interesting since Google doesn’t give exact matches or anything close to it anymore.

Google is constantly updating the search results, up to at least once per day, to try to give users a better experience. One of the ways they’re doing that now is by giving you a message at the top of the search results on smartphones to let you know when Google wasn’t able to find any results that it thinks were very helpful for your query.

The problem is though that in an attempt to apparently fight spam, for years now Google hasn’t returned results that are anything close to the exact match for what you were searching for, which makes you wonder how this is going to work. The reality is that Google hardly ever shows you the right results for what you actually want right now as it is. My own work is often content shown behind completely irrelevant content to a query.

It’s likely that the major search function that chooses to bury results that actually are relevant to your search is still not going to be seen in search results, and you’ll get the notification to let you know that Google doesn’t like anything it knows about for your query. In that regard, we advise you do actually keep looking at least a few pages deep because we can assure you that Google is far from perfect still.

Google admits that its new feature isn’t pretending to be perfect, rather it is letting you know that Google “probably” doesn’t have a good match for what you’re searching for in Google.

Starting today in the U.S., we’re rolling out a new message that lets you know when Google hasn’t been able to find anything that matches your search particularly well. While you can still go through the results to see for yourself if they’re helpful, the message is a signal that we probably haven’t found what you’re looking for. When possible, the feature will also provide some alternative searches as well as tips on how you could reformulate your query to better find the information you seek.

Read more: New message feature when not able to find matches for Google Search

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