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Google's Search Results Degraded?
scrm writes "According to this Wired article, recent tweaks to Google's PageRank search algorithm have degraded rather than improved the accuracy of the results." I noticed this firsthand the other day, but only when I was searching for pictures of famous people, but all my technical queries came back fine.
Heh, and just who are these famous people you had to have pictures of?
Those pidgeons must be slacking off...
Old algorithm was better . See http://fantomaster.com/graphics/googhell.gif
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
The article suggests that many people are saying pagerank is working badly because they have lost their previous power to affect search results. Overall, the pagerank seems to have improved in this latest incarnation (IMHO)
"I noticed this firsthand the other day, but only when I was searching for pictures of famous people, but all my technical queries came back fine."
Famous people Google Search: "Courtney Cox getting a facial"
Results: "Courtney Cox advertises facial creme from Loreal"
Technical Google Search: "How do best use lube and type one handed"
Results: "www.pinkbits.com"
...available in Mark Pilgrim's blog
Well speaking for the only site whose PageRank I regularly keep track of (my site) the new algorithm hasn't changed all that much. I, for one, am now coming up a little higher.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Even with a degraded algorythm (if it is in fact degraded) it is still better than all other search engines IMO.
-i@i-
Those pideons must be slacking off...:)
don't let anyone know, otherwise people will get wise to the fact that people buy their rankings on search engines, stop using them, they will lose "business", and will have to go back to being fair and objective and useful 100% of the time!! that's just plain un-American!!
JLH
google still seems the best. Sometimes I use teoma or lycos because they give different top results. Being tied to one search engine seems bad as you miss alot.
I had an instructor point us to a page on networking that was amazing good but not found on any of those 3 search engines, at least in the top 30. Most of those top 30 hits wern't very good either.
Maybe yahoo has it right, The web should be indexed by people.
Regardless of whether or not the changes have degraded the service Google provides, unless Google (quickly) addresses this problem to the (at least superficial) satisfaction of people, it will hurt Google.
AlltheWeb.com must be soaking this up with glee.
-- jetlag --
Strange, I would think "Coward" would come up with quite a few results before coming up with your personal page. That is, unless you're the owner of the Noel Coward society.
Seems it was rarely if ever imposed, and I was sooo looking forward to being a King someday.
BTW, this term used in Terry Pratchett's works, "Wyrd Sisters" and "Lords and Ladies" He's go another work due in Novemeber, but the US cover art looks like crap, again, so I'll be ordering Night Watch from the UK.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yes, the web should be indexed by people.
But how about not one that requires sites to pay to get in? (Yahoo)
At Google, go to the "Directory" tab, or go to DMOZ.org (Open Directory) itself. DMOZ is bigger, better organized, has fewer broken links, no ads, and is built by hand by people who know their categories and are interested in keeping them linking only to sites with meaningful content.
Semi-mindles search spiders are not all there is in finding stuff on the Internet.
Sadly its true :(
This seems to be the most evidence presented in the article. Looks like baseless whining to me.
We need the original-flavored Google back. Maybe a cache of Google linked from Google?
This is most probably not intentional.
There are glitches in every complicated software. Maybe they were trying out some new algorithm that wasn't completely refined yet. Maybe it was a random off-by-one bug that has been already fixed. Shit happens all the time, Google is no different.
There will probably be many people who try to see a conspiracy theory behind this and say that Google has sold out.
This is very unlikely. The nature of the described flaw suggests that all queries are affected. Now why should they skew the results of everything to appease a single entity who might have given them some money? That just doesn't make sense.
When men used to be men
We who are editors at dmoz hold a lot of power right now. Its time for you to share in some of that power. Head over to dmoz and apply to edit your favorite category.
Can't decide where to apply?
Whether the rest of the article and of Google's changes are simply causing a rash of sour-grape whining or not, one thing I did notice when I used it yesterday: for a current topic of major interest at least to its part of the world, I got a helluva lot of dead links and blank pages ("Document contains no data" and when I checked, sure enough, it was just the HTML and /HTML tags, with no content). This did strike me as unusual not to mention annoying. More to the strange, none of these "dead pages" were in Google's own cache.
:( and no, it's not pr0n :)
(I still haven't found what I was looking for
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I had been searching for information on US bills that are still in circulation, and I found that google did a poor job in finding what I was looking for. The catch is that I did the same search about two months ago, and I got all kinds of decent sites from google.
Well, so much for PageRank. Im afraid this is whats going on: Link base PageRank, like 1 person per vote democracy, was turning dangerous for the few with enought resources to put some pressure at google. Lest see how they solved it. Problem: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22go+to+hell%22 Microsoft was #1 at "go to hell", thanks to popular vote like linking. AOL was #3, Disney #4. Solution: http://www2.google.com/search?q=%22go+to+hell%22 They are no counting any more Anchor links from "no-authoritative" web pages. Joe Doe pages dont count any more. Only Anchor links coming from pages oficialy "recogniced" at big sites whit a superior page rank to start with, or directories like Dmoz or yahoo count now. If this is the case, we can say PageRank is DEAD. From now on, big corporation marketing rules over popular choice. take this as a example: http://www.google.com/search?q=correo+gratis "correo gratis" is spanish for "free mail". Hotmail was #1. Now, at www2, is nowhere to be found. Hotmail is pagerank 9, and hundreds of spanish web pages where pointing at it as "correo gratis". Now is not, but is still #1 if you look for "free mail". Why? joe doe pages dont count, hundres of spanish users linking at it dont count any more. Only the "official", msn network pages count now, plus the few Dmoz pages pointing at it using that text as links. Most of those pages happen to be English Only, so only the english version of the query survives. Oh well. .
I wish the article had given some more concrete examples rather than just quoting a few disconentented webloggers. I use Google many times on a daily basis and have found no change in the quality of their results. I guess some people are just fixated on their own ranking rather than the quality of the first results. At least the article touched on that: "I was beating out Mark Twain before -- that's probably not fair."
--Sam
It seems like whenever someone makes a decent search engine, someone has to tinker with it until it breaks. I wish they would stop that.
I notice that google gives a date with the results, and that this is when the googlebot, apparently, visited the link. As a test, I put my keywords in over several days, and google returned the page I was looking for with a date that was, in most cases, only a few days old, together with a short sentence from the beginning of the page. I had thought that googlebot took a month to go around the internet and list all the pages, but from this date thing, I would think that googlebot only takes a few days at the most. Try this: put "gary gray tropical discussion" in google. I just did, and the date returned is 10-1. I didn't put it there, googlebot must have, IMHO. Very nice, anyway, and google and search engines that work with a bot remain my favorite.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
Well there is a problem solved. Searching 'scientology' comes with www.xenu.net at #2. This is a Good Thing(TM).
I encourage people not to judge Google's update before a few patches. All x.0 releases are non-functional. All you software engineer should know.
-- nyri
To test if we really are in front of a Dmoz dominated Update, we have set up a Aspseek based small search engine, a GNU search engine with a crude PageRank-like ranking system. We have indexed around 1.500.000 pages, using as the starting point 700 Dmoz very competitive dmoz cats, including up to 250 pages per site, following up to 10 outside link, with up to 100 pages per outside link. What we found was that 59% of our top 20 results on the 100 cat-related competitive Keywords where also top 20 in Googles new index, and 26% of our Top 10 where also Googles Top 10.
But we must also said that we have not been able to find a so-compelling relationship using no-competitive categories. A 2.000.000 pages index with non-competitive regional cats, using non-competitive Keywords, showed a very small correlation between top 10, top 20, and even top 50 results.
So, our working theory right now is, yes, small changes, probably committed in order to fight both googlebombing and Pagerank commoditization, have affected the index accuracy in many different ways.
We think the index is unbalance, or unless much more unbalanced than the last one, and, as a result, the weight of some previously no-so important characteristics are souped-up, opening the door for abuse.
The main effect of all of this is small well managed sites at competitive categories can not relay anymore in good content + good linking to get a good listing. They will have to pay Google using Addwords program. That is the main change here. Forcing small business to pay to get at the top, using advertising space.
But we do think this update and the changes committed are, to say the least, unbalanced, and the new algo is rampantly open to easy abuse. Lets hope Google good old Phd common sense returns soon, and a new, improved update takes place as soon as possible. Lets hope they are not tring to make a easy killing by forcin small popular sites, all of the sudden deprived from traffic, to pay google using Adwords.
/Styx
Most of dose categories are now dominated by garbage sites and spamers. Good sites with a lot of content and a lot of popular links who used to be #1 or #2 are now #60 or #100, precede with spammers and affiliation programs and 1 page redirection sites.
Those sites are being forced to pay Googles "affordable" Adwords program to stay alive.
Thursday and Friday when I was doing searches I was getting back these really weird hits. When
I would click throught it would be a page with a bunch of links to unrelated sites.
The hits would all point to different domain names and have a different "look", but I would click through and get the same result.
I checked this morning after reading this article, and the bogus hits were gone. Looks like someone had found a way to fool pagerank and google quickly closed the hole.
Did anyone else notice this?
According to this Wired article, recent tweaks to Google's PageRank search algorithm have degraded rather than improved the accuracy of the results
Actualy, according to the artical, a few people who run blogs seem to think that google has been degraded, while google itself has not seen a higher number of actual complaints.
Basicaly what happened is that google took some mesures to reduce the effects of "googlebombing" by bloggers.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Not quite. Now, at the competive categories. Is pretty easy to detect who is the one at the top at conpetitive searches:
The spammer with the greater number of Dmoz Editor accounts.
"According to this Wierd article, recently...."
:)
[cleaning spects...]
At Google, go to the "Directory" tab, or go to DMOZ.org (Open Directory) itself. DMOZ is bigger, better organized, has fewer broken links, no ads, and is built by hand by people who know their categories and are interested in keeping them linking only to sites with meaningful content.
First, I would suggest going directly to the categories at dmoz.org rather than the Google relistings. Google picks up revised RDF dumps from DMOZ whenever they please, but the lag in the cycle is pretty long. If you are looking for the "fresher" data, go directly to the source.
Second, DMOZ can become what you say it is only with proper editing. The project itself may list 50000+ editors, but they're volunteers and there is a lot of ground to cover. A large number of edits are made by those "high up" in the directory structure to "lower"/"deeper" categories less well understood. Certain branches of the project are neglected; others eat editors for breakfast with the amount of work that needs to be done. Volunteer and help out.
You may also want to investigate ChefMoz and MusicMoz, too.
I've had occasion to play around with AllTheWeb, which also often gives different (but still relevant) results on lots of queries. Worth a look.
What do you expect when Google's technology is based on the spatial orientation of pigeons as outlined in Google's own white pages!
Google's results are now less accurate because people are cheating. The way pagerank works is widely documented, and people abuse from it to get better scores.
I work for a company that hosts pr0n sites. Maybe 95% of our partneers are cheating that way. Fake sites, fake auto-generated HTML pages (with pseudo real sentences), cloaking (what Google sees is not what visitors see), javascript tricks, etc. are a must. They spend most of their time on trapping google, it brings more money than working on the site itself.
The company I'm working for has even a team working full-time on this (spamming search engines, and creating thousands of fake sites just to promote one real site) .
{{.sig}}
never should have stopped using gopher...
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
I couldn't help but thinking of this story dealing with PageRank abuse, and wondering whether it inspired some contemplations at Google about the value of PageRank today.
BTW: The story should point out that a few people feel that Google "degraded" the results, but that is not a conclusive statement: They don't like that their BLOG isn't coming up at the top because of their recursive link arrangements, but that doesn't mean that the results have degraded for you and me.
Here's why.
Your job, as a webmaster, is to produce a user friendly, useful, maybe informative website.
Google's job, as a search engine, is to find the sites most likely to be of interest to a user, based on their search terms.
Therefore,
To get good rankings, all you have to do as a webmaster is produce a user friendly, useful, maybe informative website.
It is Google's job to optimise to the web, not the web's job to optimise to Google.
So,
Search Engine Optimisation is big massive NET LOSS to you, because all it results in is getting visitors who aren't the slightest bit interested in your website or product.
It also results in a soon to be pretty useless Google, so please don't do it.
In Google, type in "God" and click the I'm-feeling-lucky button. Very interesting results!
* you can't beat the best google-spammers in the end ... they're always smarter, quicker, difficult to identify
... let's hope this isn't a reason
* worse rankings with a particular keyword mean that a company will seriously consider using AdWords to maximize the traffic gain from google - so hey, it's good for google
* the big mistake is to use a "static" relationship between websites as a measure for a site's traffic or importance - better offer a "google counter" (google has the resources, I suppose)
All things considered, Google is still doing pretty well.
-lj
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Webmasterworld, the forum cited in the Wired article have a conference next week.
.
:)
Looks like Google will be there
Google used to be pretty damn good. Have a hard time finding stuff these days though. I think one part of it is time. Google made its debut during an explosive time of growth for the 'net. That means the majority of the searchable items were roughly the same age, and so timewise context wasn't really an issue. But now that we've all got a few more years around our waists, some of those documents aren't going to be much use to us folks who are living here in the next millenium. An aged document should get a heavy negative score unless the user is explicitly looking for old stuff.
Was having problems with a program last night and kept finding links from 1996. I kept saying to myself, "My good man, surely those bugs have been fixed since then!"
Looking for things on the net with any search engine is a distinctly unpleasant experience. Kind of an impotent feeling to type in an explicit search with all the trappings ("bla bla" -foo -gar..etc), and to get a bunch of nothing in the results.
And don't ask me why, but I've been getting an uneasy feeling about google. Where do they get all the money such a company needs to stay afloat? They're in a pretty good position to learn all kinds of neat details about everybody. Pretty powerful position to hold.
Alltheweb works pretty well as a google alternative, and it has a better design too :)
Don't get the wrong idea, I like google, but having just one search engine that's commonly used is a bad idea. No other company can really compete due to the fact that google has so much traffic to sell ads on.
So anyway, that's why I pimp alltheweb whenever this topic comes up.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...it's the most intelligent comment I've seen on Slashdot since my last lot of mod points expired.
Panic! Disaster!
...
"tim ward cambridge" always used to get me in seven of the top ten places - now it's down to six!! Better get my mates to put up a few more links
But as I'm still on the first page with "accommodation cambridge" I can agree - famous people are worse off, but technical queries are unaffected.
...because I've noticed some odd correlations.
For a long time, a search on "Samuel Johnson" returned Frank Lynch's "Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page" as the first hit. And, flatteringly, but mysteriously, a search on "Eyeglass Prescription" returned a web page of mine as the first hit. (I say "mysteriously" because the only page that Google reports as linking to my page is... my own home page! So it is not PageRank that accounted for its ranking).
About a month ago, Frank's page dropped to #3 and mine dropped to about #20. In Frank's case, the #1 spot went to a fine Samuel Johnson web site at Rutgers; in mine, I was edged out by a bunch of commercial sites selling eyeglasses.
The interesting thing is that two or weeks ago both sites popped back to number 1.
And then a few weeks later, Frank's is again at #3 and mine is down around #10 or so.
I don't think there's any reason why eyeglass prescriptions and Samuel Johnson would be connected. (And, no, Frank's page and mine do NOT link to each other!) So the changes must reflect tinkering by Google.
Neither Frank nor I use any kind of "cheating" to boost our ratings. And I don't think the sites that climbed above our did, either. Nor do I think many of the sites involved changed ANYTHING significant that would have altered their rankings.
(BTW I'm NOT giving URL's because the contents of these pages are irrelevant to my observations, I don't want them slashdotted, and this is NOT an attempt to boost the rankings of either page).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Come on, Microsoft and bill gates have had bad terms associated with them at google for ages. Assuming that google changed this just for M$'s sake is ludicris.
If that was all they were worried about, they could simply have manually changed those searches to exclude MS (as they have done for people as small as Bernie Shiftman), that guy who spammed his resume around everywhere. Searches on his name would turn up pages bitching about him.)
Btw, you definitely deserve a +5 for plagiarizing this post verbatim. Well, except for the paragraph breaks, I guess.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If someone can produce an informative website, they might benefit from some usability advice. In the same way, that person might benefit from some Search Engine Optimisation advice.
For example, choosing good HTML page titles that reflect the content of each page helps Google to understand that page. This will drive relevant traffic to the site.
Someone who gets you "visitors who aren't the slightest bit interested in your website or product" is not optimising your site.
If everyone optimised their site for the subject matter on that site then search engines become more relevant, and the site owners make more money.
http://www.bible.com/answers/apornog.html
He still beats Tracey Ullman, though.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Most of those "funny" search results (like go to hell) were the result of googlebombing, one of the very few loopholes in Google's spider. That loophole has now been closed, and I personally don't give a crap. Remember that Scientology was using it to inflate their Google rank too.
I agree with you 100%, but I don't think it'll ever happen. If everyone did as you suggested, and no one cheated, we'd live in a perfect index world - search results would accurately reflect what's on the web. Searches would be easier, and more relevant sites would come up with more specific searches. The number of hits you got coming from Google (or anyone else) would likely depend on the "real" content of your site.
Then, one day, someone would rediscover that by putting "Anna Kournikova Blowjob" on their site, they'd get some hits they wouldn't have otherwise. No harm, they think, it's a few bytes and it's not hurting anyone. Webmaster tells his friends, they tell their coworkers, and this continues until the search engines have to begin working around the issue.
Sound familiar?
Unfortunately, people aren't always honest, especially when it's something they perceive as benefiting them without hurting anyone else, especially if the benefit is financial. They don't care about the integrity of some other website's engine, they care about profits. Realize also that even personal sites do this; people like other people to see what they've made. While your idea is a great fantasy, near-perfect search results will only come from human-edited sites, or a better algorithm than we have now.
I noticed that google is plural-sensative. For example, "SQL alternative" will give a bit different answer than "SQL alternatives".
It does not seem like a very good idea to me in most cases.
Table-ized A.I.
The service search engines provide to all of us, in the face of what can only be charitably called a glut of data (some of it actually useful to some of us) is remarkable. (And let's be clear: We're talking about Google, possibly the only thing keeping the net from collapsing under it's own weight in ether.)
It's great that Google is effectively "free" to us, but should that be so? I'm personally willing to pay a nominal charge -- perhaps in the form of a subscription -- for access to the most effective search algorithms. It has that much value to me. If someone wants to create a free system -- as Google has done -- that's great. But as the web gets bigger and hairer, we might need to think about ways to support (read, fund) continued development of effective search/navigation tools.
There's some serious linear algebra in publicly disclosed portions of the PageRank(TM) algorithm, and the really good stuff is probably even funkier. This sort of thing isn't going to be hacked together on the weekend by your average penguinista. Could the brains behind Google go diving for herring in richer seas? I suspect so.
PUTO SUDACA
The pagerank algorithm is one of the most important reasons why it is so good in bringing up relevant and popular results. But, this is just one of the ways of searching for good results and will not always work to your satisfaction.
Google gives preference to the number and quality of links to a particular site rather than the content of the site itself. One can easily come up with cases when this is probably not the best approach.
For example, consider a portion of the web containing lyrics of songs. If you search by artist name or song name, google will return excellent results, because the pages are probably linked using the names. However, if you only know the soneg from radio, you might want to search for songs containing a few particular lines. The pagerank algorithm might not be the best fit here.
All your favorite sites in one place!
If a site is "convicted" of google-spamming (use the ranking engine to prescreen, and human checking to verify), or of helping to spam, it should be permanently blocked from the results by name and IP.
Result: pr0n sites will be too terrified of deletion to munge their ratings.
My site (submail.net) uses mod_gzip and sends compressed content to Mozilla all the time with not a single problem so far.
Background: Among other things, I am always trying to discover music from independent (especially blues) artists that post mp3's of their stuff on the web. I have been boycotting the major record labels 100% for about 15 years (hooray for independents!) for several reasons: 1: CD prices have always been a rip-off, 2: most major label artists suck, 3: I have worked in music business (artist/bands/production) and detest the industry for the way that it exploits artists, 4: I have always loved discovering talented "unknowns" and turning other people on to them. I went through a new music dry spell until the web started to become a vehicle for independent artists to promote themselves.
It's amazing what's out there now - I've found great artists from all over the Americas, Europe, Australia, Russia and even a few from Asia. I have found a lot of crap, too. The mp3 search engines are essentially useless for this purpose (I don't want major label music) and I have never used Napster or any of the off-spring. Links pages are more often out of date than not and webrings have similar problems. I have contrived several search techniques that try to exploit the strengths of search engines and the likely information on an artist's site. One very simple one is to look for "mp3 +(insert name of a well-known blues standard) -(a lot of keywords to exclude the many sites that put "mp3" on every page that simply lists a song title just to pull in traffic) -(specific sites that pollute the searches)", to find artists that cover the song and also have their own tunes.
I have been a proponent of Google for many years. It came along just as I really started to dislike Altavista and I was an almost instant convert. But I am always on the lookout for a backup or something better. I have tried Teoma several times in the last year (as recently as last night), but I'm not terribly impressed. I find its interface and the way it presents results simplistic and dumbed down and it appears to have indexed far less of the web than Google. I got turned off Lycos years ago, when it seemed to want to become another portal/Yahoo (as if we need another one).
The one search engine that I do use as a regular alternative to Google is Alltheweb. For one thing, IMO, its advanced search is currently better than Google's (I swear that I have brought Google to its knees by entering too many keywords - it stops responding and is inaccessible for several minutes thereafter - this has happened several times). When I've done back to back comparisons with Google, Alltheweb seems to fare pretty well and seems to find more international pages than Google. The difference in top rankings can also be useful. Google has some nice features that Alltheweb does not, such as the elimination of duplicate pages.
For one-stop searching, I find Google best for me, but Alltheweb is a good alternative.
Sigs are bad for your health.
I know Pagerank algorithm is patented.(6285999) Will I get into any trouble if I write any open source software using a similar algorithm? Thanks.
Your job, as a webmaster, is to produce a user friendly, useful, maybe informative website.
Google's job, as a search engine, is to find the sites most likely to be of interest to a user, based on their search terms.
And somewhere in the middle, the two concerns meet. There are a *lot* of unintentionally odd entries in Google that should be cleared out as misleading. Three examples: (1) Redirection URLs from one site but content from the targeted site; (2) Past versions of multi-version documents such as Wiki revision URLs; and (3) Static redirection documents from relocated sites.
All should probably be combatted by site maintainers through application of robot exclusion rules and a little redirection know-how. However, given the frequency with which I've encounted these awkward entries, I'm guessing that attention to such detail has gone by the wayside.
The web is not optimizing Google.
Your job as a webmaster: Generate massive quantities of traffic... While figuring out how to be profitable.
Google's job, as a search engine: Generate massive quantities of traffic... While figuring out how to be profitable.
Now, the webmaster could accomplish that by offering tons of great content at a better price, and Google can accomplish this by having the most relevant results. That takes care of the generating traffic.
Now, profitability... Tons of great quantity at a reasonable price will not be supported by 100 users... You need hundreds of thousands for the economies of scale to work in your favor. End result, you do everything in your power to drive traffic at your website. Top of mind awareness, etc... What you postulate is that they should stop sending me Credit Card offers because if I wanted one, I'd call. True, but would I call your company or another one??
SEO actually shows that we are achieving a Search engine monoculture. Back in the day when we had varied competing engines, bombing one site hardly had any impact. (Actually, most results were bombed so you got used to checking several engines.) And these techniques were around about two minutes after the first Search Engine went online.
Google was an evolution beyond the early Excite, Lycos, et. al. If an unusable Google is the result, new ideas will surface that are evolutionary. This shows that there are areas where you could improve on Google search technology and either compete or license it to Google. Then we will have an improvement over Google like Google was over Infoseek, like Infoseek was an improvement over Yahoo.
Webmasters are NEVER going to play nice with the search engines. The job of the search engine designer will be to limit the ways in which his system can be abused. XHTML should be a big help, as most search engines get easily fooled by having their parsers parse verrrrrrry loose HTML. When they start actual content checking and checking for invisible divs and other HTML tricks, the engines will evolve again. I'm suprised with the increase in processor speed it hasn't happened more recently, but the extra horsepower has been dedicated to indexing PDF etc... Next generation maybe.
Hammy
On the real web, the one where I make my living building and promoting commerce sites, the truth is that no matter how aesthetically pleasing, no matter how well engineered for human use, no matter how informative your site is or how low your prices are, if your site is not easily located by the methods people actually use, it is worthless.
I don't waste my time doing search engine optimization -- I make very good use of my time doing search engine optimization. I don't use doorway pages, spamdexing, googlebaiting, or any such cheats, but I do build every site from the ground up with the primary focus being search engine spidering and indexing. That's why I'm still in business, and my clients are not only still in business but are spending right now on expansions and upgrades to their sites.
Your utopian vision would be fine if the real world would just consent to be ruled by it, but the real world is a fickle and contrary organism that defies such simplistic wishfulness.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
I e-mailed the problem to Google about a week ago, but so far they didn't seem to get around it. Anyway, a Google search on my last name reveals my personal homepage as the result number one, which is no surprise, considering the last name. However, the cached version of what supposedly is my site is an entirely different site that I have never heard of. Furthermore, since the results of Google search use the title and description from the cached version, the title for my homepage as well as description come up pointing to RhytmicPalmz.com or something of that nature. It seems to be a cache glitch, at least so far I haven't been able to come up with valid explanation for that.
So what? It's their site... go use altavista if you don't like it.
One nice thing with Opera (6.0) is just type "A" then your query in the box where you would enter urls and it auto feeds your query to All The Web. Supersearch feature in Opera is also handy. I hope when they release 7.0 they add more engines to that very handy feature. When I'm on the Windows machine I sometimes break out FirstStop they have a free version which is decent for meta searching a few engines from the desktop. Searchlores is another interesting place to look for way too much information about search engines, and very strangely organized at that. Google is still my default search engine, but sometimes you can't find what you want there easily. Files can be particularly hard to come across. I use Atomic File Finder when that becomes bothersome. FTP-AFFD
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
here here
yes, the old code was better! "go to hell" doesn't show microsoft's web site anymore!
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
MusiMoz is a really a good idea, but still not a lot of material, I really miss Audiogalaxy for discovering new music and artists. It will be intersting later to make some connection betwen p2p programs and MusicMoz when the later will really mature.
I wish you didn't post as an AC because I think you hit the nail on the head: Google was merely responding to public sentiment about the manipulations of PageRank.
if it wasn't for the slow search time, kartoo would beat google. Well, atleast in my dreams :P
That was one of the funniest things I've read in awhile. Thank you.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
Try searching for these:
"will you stand above me"
"was once just a baby"
Can you guess?
...with an additional 'e'.
And while we're at it, could she be any thinner? Put on some weight, girl!
It seems that Xenu.net is now number two again, and scientology's official page is number one. I haven't check this recently, but Xenu.net was number one for a long time, and although I'm not sure if Xenu.net would have changed this much in such a short time, I think it's important that Xenu.net stays on top. Once again, Xenu.net, who Xenu.net Xenu.net, would Xenu.net till Xenu.net Xenu.net's.
This is especially true when it comes to groups.google.com. The posts you make with "X-No-Archive: Yes" don't show up to the public, but they're archived alright. And believe me, there are organizations who're more than willing and have more than enough money to pay to get at those posts. Google doesn't archive binary Usenet groups, or binaries in non-binary groups, eh? Right... Look at their technology. Extrapolate. Imagine if you were Mr. BSA trying to figure out who's posted a pirated copy of Photoshop this year. Who would you call?
Think also along the lines of targeted searches, periodic results of top matches for particular keywords, etc. When the US Customs Service wants a list of the most frequently-located sites for the keywords "child porn" or "preteen pics" or "little boys," who do you think they call?
Google has an enormous amount of data, much of which none of us will ever see. Because we don't pay.
while i search on images.google.com,my bandwith theft, speed slow and slow and slow, before google cashe servers were highspeed and independent,but now is not and that depending on bandwith of online users.
I think Google has only improved in recent weeks. For example, my blog now gets the top hit for Irish Porn Star. That's what I call progress.
Da Blog
There is no mention of Peter Norvig. I would think as the guy in charge of 'Search Quality' he would have the answer.
I have some pages ranking various search terms according to google hits (see my home page for links). I noticed that new terms tend to switch between two numbers for some time, but finally they stabilize. I suspect this is a cache effect, Google is a big system, and information may take some time to propagate within it.
DMOZ also has the problem that many of the editors are biased. This is especially true in commercial categories, where editors will often make it difficult for competitors to get their sites listed. Yes, there are supposed to be rules against that, but it still happens. For commercial categories it's hard to find expects who are also impartial.
exactly! this needs to be said more.
of course, sadly, there will always be the hucksters with the get rich quick schemes...
in the end, as google matures, i'm sure it will continue to be about the content...
J-Log: Journalism News, Media Views
"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
buy some more."
-- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
degrading, but not degraded that I've seen yet. BTW, last post.
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