Follow Up on Google Favoring Yahoo

After yesterday's story about google favoring Yahoo links, I got word from Sergey Brin from google. He says that the reason that the site tested showed so poorly is that a robots.txt file prevented Google's crawler from fully indexing the site. The robots.txt file has since disappeared, and the next index should show a change in the rankings.

Comments

Morons, all of 'em.

[Xzzy]

Gee, I wonder how many problems in the world could be solved if people put out a little bit of effort into communicating with each other. Rather than asking Google what's up.. the guys in the story yesterday put MONTHS of effort into proving how they're getting shafted by Google's search engine. They make accusations.

Google hears about it via Slashdot, and in less than 24 hours, the real reason is revealed.

Kinda makes me wonder at humanity, when we're all so locked into our own little shells that we occupy ourselves trying to prove something that five minutes of talking could solve. Sort of like how most Americans never say hello to their neighbor, and can live next to them for years without ever exchanging niceties.

Re:robots.txt ?

[don_carnage]

What's interesting is that sometimes people look for the robots.txt file to find hidden directories on a server. Hmmm... /journal, /naked_school_girls, /personal_finances...

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Partial retraction from MedWebPlus

[Frac]

Here's a partial retraction from MedWebPlus: (they admit they know now why their rankings dropped, but they still question why Yahoo is on the rise)

http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/ notes7a.html