Slashdot Mirror
Google Blocks 'Optimized' Pages
Rhett Creighton writes "For the past few years, webmasters have found tricks that bring their page higher for a given keyphrase search. Google recently implemented a filter to block sites that appeared to be tricking it into gaining a higher ranking. This NYTimes article reports of angry retailers who are losing their businesses, while this article gives more technical conspiracy theories of what google is actually doing."
Seth Finkelstein has been posting a few theories lately on what Google is up to. (Also contains links to other articles.) He suspects they are using some sort of Bayesian filtering around the rule "If a simple search has spam-related keywords, penalize high-spam-scoring results" (spam being search-keyword spam on web pages -- not e-mail spam)
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Google needs to fine tune their code. Enter "goatse.cx" and clicking "I'm Feeling Lucky" brings you to their uptime page at Netcraft, not the horrible image we all know and cherish.
ps: f1st pr0st.
Trolling is a art,
If the purpose of a search engine is to help us find the products/content we're looking for then why are they trying to filter out worthwhile search results? About 50% of the time when I'm searching, I AM looking for vendors of a product in order to do price comparisons. So, if Google turns their search engine into a search engine that ignores those types of search results then they've just moved out of the No.1 position in my favorite search engine list. Maybe I'm missing something....
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
Every month or so, Google updates its database again, and every time, webmasters all over the world whose pages happened to go lower in the rankings complain that Google is broken and the sky is falling. This time is no different, except that mainstream news has picked up the story. Here are a few facts to keep in mind:
1. You can't say with authority that "Google has implemented a filter." Google isn't talking about how their rankings work. The webmasters and SEO types are like astronomers trying to figure out how Google works by observing samples of results. Take everything they say as a theory and nothing more.
2. There's a fine line between making responsibly search-optimized pages and spamming Google, and many of the people who complain are on the spamming side of that line. If you look in the forums where SEO types (and spammers) hang out, 90% of the messages are complaining that their site has disappeared and Google is wrong. If you look in web development forums, 90% of the messages are from people excited to see their pages' position increase.
3. For every webmaster that complains about their site's Google position going down, there are one or more sites whose positions have gone up. Often they're equally deserving of the traffic.
4. There are strong rumors (and some statements from a Google representative) that suggest that this is the last major update to Google's database, and that incremental "freshbot" updates will continue from now on. If this is the case, it may only be a day or a week before your site changes position again, so why complain?
5. Most importantly, notice that it's always webmasters complaining. Never end-users. Guess which group Google considers its customers?
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
Does this mean I can't raise my ranking by linking in my Slashdot sig anymore?
If this stops the hundred odd spam sites coming up every time in now what seems to be every time I search fo a query that involves a dictionary word, then as a veteran web surfer, I'm all for it. But there'll always be a way around the filter, take it a day, a week, a month, a year. Things really can only get worse.
this harks back to the days of meta-keywords where sites had a page full of meta tags to get more search engine hits. of course this can still be found if you search for something like "$BAND_NAME" +mp3 - you'll get sites that just say something like "Download mp3s by $BAND_NAME" but won't have anything to download, they just want you there for the ad impression. whatever filters Google comes up with would be welcome, and future searches will be more accurate, not just a ploy to make money.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
With the huge number of postings on all the various forums, concerning this update, most people don't know where to start looking for information about the recent Google update. The following is an attempt to put down rationally (I hope) most of the information that is known and the (unproven) theories behind the update algo.
Introduction.
Starting on the 16th of November, a major shift in results was seen on Google. Veterans recognised that Google appeared to be doing a major update, not seen for many months, as reported first on WebMasterWorld who named it Florida, continuing the tradition of naming updates rather like hurricanes. In this case it was a hurricane! As was usual with many updates, there were moans and groans as people complained about their sites falling. Many people were unaffected (including us) but the symptoms of the sites being dropped were not usual. No penalties, such as PR0, seem to have been applied against pages that had fallen - yet none of the pages targeted at specific key phrases, particularly index/home pages, appeared in the top results for these search terms. Indeed some had dropped hundreds of places and, in some cases reported, off the scale. Yet these pages did appear for obscure phrases and were obviously still in the index.
It appeared to us and to several other respected names (though hotly disputed by others) that some sort of over-SEOd filter had been applied to check if overt SEO had been done for that particular phrase. It was as if Google were checking to see if external links to the site included the phrase, on-page optimisation was being done for the phrase and even if the domain included the phrase. If the density of the optimisation, both on and off the page, appeared too artificial, then a filter was tripped and down went the page - solely for that phrase.
Google had never looked favourably on abuse of their systems and many established SEOs looked upon this algo tweak as a way of Google getting rid of the abuses of links and stopping the scrambling for getting (and sometimes buying) links including your required anchor text from other high PR, but probably irrelevant to your subject, sites. It seemed to make sense.
On Friday, 21st November, Google decided to tighten the filter. All hell broke loose as tens of thousands of sites disappeared from positions they had held (in some cases) for years. We noticed some of our client sites plummeting for their major key phrase from being #1 to total invisibility. Yet this was only in highly competitive areas, not for their secondary phrases. These sites were, in most cases, not highly optimised, had not sought reciprocal links but had achieved their rankings through being on the web for 4 or 5 years. The bad news was that their company name and domain included the key phrase, sites (including directories) linking to those sites included the key phrase in their links and Google interpreted this as over-optimisation and down they plunged. In many areas all the top 20 ranking sites disappeared, including industry leaders, to be replaced by educational sites, news review sites, government sites, major shopping portals or directories. Something major had happened - but what?
The Facts!
Thousands of web pages have been suddenly demoted in the Google search results, primarily on the main commercial search terms for which they targeted their pages to be replaced by other sites who, in the main, referred to the search term obliquely. Several were the main shopping portals or business directories which gave listings for companies who may provide the services requested, many were not.
Very high-ranking authority sites seemed to be unfiltered.
The changes were starkly obvious on regional English language Googles where a regional filter was employed and there were less commercial sites with authority.
An example for Google UK is the search for the word shelving. On the
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
I for one really don't give a rip if retailers throw a hissy over this. When I search the web it's because I want information, not because I want to buy something.
If I want to buy something I use Froogle. That's what it's there for.
The real moral here is that if you're depending on your placement in a search engine for free advertising, you'd better have a backup plan.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Search engines have been doing this for years. I used to run a small website and researched extensivly how to raise search-engine rankings (can bring enourmous traffic). Most search engines have always tried to stop people from spamming their results. Google does this to, in order to bring us better results. They also don't try to hide it -- read some of the about google information on the site. It says attempting to manually boost your pagerank will usually cause you to be penalized.
Google was my #1 tool to find my penis enlargement products.
Now I can't even get a home loan!!! And I can't consolidate my debts!!!
What am I gonna do???
I wrote a small software app for a the company I work for, and someone linked to it from a discussion forum.
.exe file.
That gave that name of that program xxxxx.exe 1 hit on google. About 3 days later a search for the xxxxx.exe provided 3 hits, two of them were porn sites that somehow harvested the name of our
While it's not a huge deal, I e-mailed Google and heard nothing for 4 days. I didn't expect a response and told them that in my e-mail. However then I recieved a personalized (not a form) e-mail regarding my comments and that they'd take the issue seriously.
24 hours later they were able to filter out these porn sites that were harvesting new terms that appeared in Google.
I gotta say props out to the boys there, it's one classy establishment.
Olagam
Google - thanks abound from me. I personally find it distasteful when I'm searching for research on a particular topic. More times than not - most of the top listings are by an amazon or other shopping portal that has NOTHING to do with my search.
Yes, many businesses are being hurt by GOOGLE's policy - however, it is GOOGLE's search engine! They have done nothing wrong but try and give authentic results to their Web Surfing friends.
Google has a specialized tool to access their search engine specifically to do shopping/price comparison... So yes, you are missing something. :)
Besides, these sites were using hacks to artificially inflate their pagerank instead of providing a higher quality site to increase it.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Given the underlying reason why google is a good search engine (leveraging the popularity of the site by others), I don't want "my" search engine to be fooled into giving me commercially-orientated results.
If Google has re-organised the page-ranking system to cut out the link-merchants, I give it an unreserved thumbs up
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
...is no substitute for a business plan.
So some people are trying to cheat the system, and Google is taking steps to prevent this. Good for them, I say. I'm tired of getting pages that appear to be legitimate, only to find that they're just redirect fillers.
As for Google's practices in general, retailers are free to moan and groan about their rankings, but there is no obligation for Google to specifically cater to their needs. If Google decided to change its algorithms, such that all links were turned alphabetically rather than by PageRank, they would be well within their rights to do so. Of course, I imagine that such a move would result in many people seeking other search engines soon enough.
"Embrace, extend and extinguish"
:-(
They are at it again !!
Oops I thought we were not talking about Microsoft
Other search engines and even an open source Google type engine is being developed that any web sites can tie into providing the same type of results. Previously big VC money was required to build a "Google" but as hardware and bandwidth prices continue to drop other are now capable of providing the same scope of service. I predict after Google does its IPO key personel will cash out and the company become nothing but an "asset" for the suits to screw with. Remember Infoseek? .... and Yahoo, really sucks now!
Don't they realize that Google wasn't created for them? Rather, it is created for surfers. There is one surefire way to get noted on Google if your business depends on it: advertise. You get what you pay for.
This just in... Someone claming to be on the inside is saying that SCO will make Google its next target.
Source Claims SCO Will Sue GoogleIf you didn't notice the subtitle: Industry wags are saying that God invented SCO to give people a company to hate more than Microsoft.
Let the Microsoft conspiracy theories fly.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Google still decides who's in the top searches
Half the time you get results for where to buy what you are searching for, instead of more relevant information.
Slashdot reporting on Google manipulating its backend database to stamp out "Google trolls", while Slashdot manipulates its backend database to stamp out "Slashdot trolls".
The irony is thick, like the smell of ozone when you lick an electric socket.
The writeup made it sound as if the NY Times article was about upset retailers mad at google when really they're upset at the company that was tricking the search results.
The last job fair I went to I spoke with a company that basically did this as their main service. Glad I don't work for them.
for "boost page ranking", and got this cheesy online marketing company:
http://www.page-rank.boost-web-site-traffic.com/
My first reaction was that these guys are scam artists. But, they did appear at the top of the page...
Obviously it is still possible to scam google. To web experts: how do they do it?
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
The free search engine that listed me for free is no longer paying off! Waaaaaa! Waaaaaa!
I for one welcome the change. Too many times have 20 of the top 30 links taken you two one site, but camafloged to google somehow as to look seperate. I experieced this painfully while looking for ringtones for my cellphone.
Google is first and foremost a search engine, not a marketing tool. Those who thought otherwise are finding out they are sorely mistaken.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Despite my personal pride in being one who tries to grasp a concept/issue via multiple sources from different perspectives, i just realized that the vast majority of my information these days funnels through google. And i know i am not alone.
I would wager google's potential control of information distribution and content filtering rivals that of major centralized information outlets like CNN or the NY times. Kinda unnerving.
From the second linked article:
An example for Google UK is the search for the word "shelving"... On the main Google search for the same phrase, the results return 1 site that sells shelving, 6 shopping portals, 2 Universities and 1 Amazon store. Yet previously these results showed 9 shelving suppliers.
What does this guy expect? He searches on a single word and expects that every result be a retailer? Why not add some extra terms, like "buy" or "seller" or "retail" after that, buddy?
Seriously, should I start crying foul when I search Google for "dog" and it returns information on breeds rather than specific pet-stores?
most of the non-/.-reading public hasn't heard of froogle...
On the flip side, I help run a set of mailing lists for car enthusiasts. We've been around for 12-13 years, and we have archives that cover almost all of that. We were using htdig, and it sucked/broke a lot, so we tried google's search, and it sorta worked ok(mailing list archives are horrible for google because of the crosslinking etc)
Until recently- the last year or so is when we started noticing problems. The last 6 months, complaints about holes and odd behavior have skyrocketed; for example, you can search for "master cylinder 2003" and get some posts, but search for "master cylinder" and 90% of the time, you won't find anything from 2003 in any of the results. The whole seems to be from about 2001-2003, and some messages simply can't be found.
I emailed google pointing out the problem, and after 2-3 weeks, got a long-walk-short-pier kind of email that basically said "we can't really control how much we index, sucks to be you". Thanks google.
Soon as we find a free, full-text search DB engine that doesn't suck, we're switching....we'll probably give htdig another shot, but it'd be nice to have something a little smarter.
Please help metamoderate.
Google needs to separate commercial pages from purely informational pages. Anyone searching for information (not sales products) gets inundated with e-commerce sites. It's a waste of time, building complex queries that weed out dominant company names. affiliate sites, and words like "cart."
Google needs to expand its advanced search options to include toggles for different ranking criteria. Anyone who has searched in vain knows this. I have several dead-end searches every week.
Google needs to change it's outdated automatic e-mail reply blurb. Staff may read every e-mail received but saying "[we] try to send personal responses to each message" is just baloney. That was true in the early years.
Google needs to get off its laurels and start listening to its customers again.
Google is tracking clicked URLs by making the links all redirect to the destination site THROUGH a Google page.
Is anyone else as concerned about this as I am? Sure, Google, might just want to use the data to optimize their engine or provide a service to customers, but do I really want Google knowing WHICH of their sites I (based on my IP) navigate to? They should at least have put up some notification.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I love to see those bogus hits forced into the index by SE-optimizers to get flushed down the toilet. Even if this somewhat messes up the results at the moment it will hopefully help to get rid of search result spammers in the long run.
i've kinda felt like in the past few weeks i've noticed my searching improved. it seemed for a while that i would never see a homemade page without going to page 6 of results. in addition, even though .net .org and .com aren't followed as well as they were a few years ago, if you do a search that will just include .com sites, you will see more companies turn up
just put "site:com" in the search.
what im worried about right now is google doing the ipo thing and becoming a lot less useful. we will see.
- Buy scrotum at scrotum.blockbustervideo.com
- Buy scrotum at scrotum.paulsplumbingsupply.com
- Buy scrotum at scrotum.bigandtall.com
- View scrotum at scrotum.highschoolreunion.com
YES YES YES $$$$$$$ BUY BUY BUY !!!!YES YES YES $$$$$ BUY BUY BUY !!!!
www.scrotum.dk/buy/ - (link goes to MP3.com)
Where none of those sites have anything to do with scrot, but google pastes it into a string and a phony hit nonetheless...and this is what they're fighting over?
I live in a small town in northern British Columbia called Dawson Creek.
Trying to search for a query like "Dawson Creek" information in your search query yields mostly hits for the television show under a similar name.
After politely emailing Google mentioning to them that although we're a small town of 10-20K people, we do like to have a web presence, nothing has changed.
Meanwhile, searching in Altavista for "Dawson Creek" information yields results only pertaining to the city. Hmm.
So Google is trying to filter out sites that are using tricks to better ranking. I don't see why people are getting pissy about it. This is a good thing. Sure it may suck for the webmaster who's trying to get in the top 5. Search engine placement is very competitive and can have a significant effect on bottom line. This doesn't make it fair for someone to manipulate results though. It's also bad business for Google. Would you keep using Google if every time you searched for something and started going through the results you found almost no relevant content? Kudos to Google for not bending over for a bunch of big-marketing scumbags.
...think about it for a moment. Some searches return mainly academic institutions and not commercial entities. So google might have gone...
"Hmm...if peoples businesses are no longer on the first page what are they going to do? Bingo...they are going to pay for sponsored matches to stay in the game!".
And lo and behold...we have finally found out what should replace ???????? !
Step 1)Create worlds largest and most popular search engine
Step 2)Shaft lots of commercial sites that use the most searched for keywords, causing lots more people to purchase sponsored matches
Step 3)Profit!!!
As the article said, it seems to be only the most popular search terms. Which means probably those that require the highest price per click on their sponsored matches. Now, more people will try for sponsored matches on those keywords, pushing the price up (artificially) high.
We are always warned about the dangers of a monopoly/monoculture, and this is precisely why.
I am NaN
No hidden goatse or replaced text in this one, so go ahead and mod it up!
Every scumbag with a copy of Frontpage and $19.99 a month for web hosting is trying to become a millionaire with affilate commissions.
The more Google does to obscure the peddlers of obnoxious scams and "get rich quick" Amway types, the better.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I had a site that was in the top 5 every time i searched for "gravity bong" for months. It is not a commercial site and i wasnt doing anything that i know of to boost the rankings. Now when i search for it im not even in the top 100 :(. I dont know if im even listed at all. Check the site out for yourself if you want, it is small but informative :
Gravity Bong HowTo
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
I have little sympathy for companies that get blocked because they set up lots pseudo-identical sites in an effort to garner better google restults.
No company that relies upon their website for business should fail to account for their google rankings. To not do so is dangerous. This means preparing one's site for googlebots and heeding it's terms and conditions.
Not that I'm saying it's not unfair that google wields this much power. But it does.
--- We have a pool and a pond, the pond would be good for you.
I run a teeny Miva Merchant site which used to be a 'regular' (html, cgi) web store. It has been up since 1997 with little or no changes. No meta tags or keywords on the site.
A week after I messed with that stuff, Google put my site at the top of the list when you do a search for some uncommon keywords related to it. It was nice to see, but so far of limited usefulness.
Now with the Miva site (which are notorious for not being indexed) I will have to come up with a revised strategy.
I would tell anyone - pay attention to your tags, and the immediate content of your site. Everyone is fighting for placement using similar keywords, so checkout the top results and see what they are using.
OT - Doesn't Barry look like he's making some deal on the phone? "Yeah, I can get you Ted, but he's gonna cost ya. He's huge at the Laugh 'n' Snort. I think he'll go for that, I'll call ya back."
Frankly whatever there doing isn't good for us the user as Goggle is becoming a waste of time as a search engine, every time I look up something I have to go through pages of bought for adds and other crap of little or no relevance.
:(
Exactly like before Goggle set up and made searching easer, the circle turned
I suppose it is just another symptom of monoculture. It would be real nice to have two or three search engines that were reliable and shared the market space. OTOH, it is a 'free' service, so I am not complaining, and am happy to have such a service.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Im against filtering personaly.
But when Im looking for the latest information on something odd and a dozen pages where I can "buy books/dvds about 'Goatse.cx' " pop up, it tends to get annoying.
Since people dont like to filter search engine spam to get at what they want: Google has the right to protect the quality of their search results.
If you dont like it, use another search engine.
I love how people whine and cry whenever they don't get their way.
Guess they should've have been trying to screw with the system! They're lucky Google doesn't block them completely.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
... no, not at all!
Rather, it was that thousands of obscure websites got promoted!
Think Half Full, not Half Empty!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Lately some search results have been filled with spam pages designed purely for climbing up the page ranking scale on a site that may not offer the information you are looking for.
I think google should make a modification to the google bar so users can rank a sites relevancy.Kinda like StumbleUpon (I think thats the name).Users can weed out the spam results and we can get the great search results google once used to provide...
Now I can't even get a home loan!!! And I can't consolidate my debts!!!
Stretch the truth on the first two, and stretch your payments on the third.
You search for "programmer animator" and my site still comes up first. The Google changes didn't bother me one bit.
Google is in the business of providing search results, not providing companies that find ways to "trick" the ranking engine into getting free advertising.
Taken directly from google's technology explanation page
-----
Integrity
Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.
-----
To me that says: if you succeed in tricking the system, don't base the success of your entire business on it because it won't last forever.
I mean seriously, ever try to search for something legitimate, like Infrared Photography and come up with 700 pages related to some kind of XXX web site because someone figured out that if you put an infrared filter on some sony camcorders you can see through womens clothing? Of course, all 700 links point to a site that is totally unrelated to either legitimate Infrared Photography, or seeing through womens clothing. It's very frustrating from a user's perspective (no matter which user you are!).
The commercial sites that used keywords in a proper way (ie in META tags and just by way of having them in their actual site text (!!)) are not getting shafted here. It's the ones that created bogus landing pages with all sorts of keywords that don't have anything to do with their own site that are getting the boot.
People were exploiting Google, and Google is responding. Finally. Has nothing to do with a monopoly (which, btw, Google is not).
Look at the Netcraft page for microsoft.com and www.microsoft.com - they have their windoze boxes behind Linux
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
As a long time user of Google and a reasonably large advertiser - our company is now questoning whether Google will survive the next couple of years. Through contacts, we have pointed out to Google (and submitted spam reports and submitted poor results reports) that one of our competitors has 2,700 duplicate doorway entry pages to their site. Several hundred of those are illegally indexed using "our" trademarked name. We also advised them of another competitor with 159,000 doorway pages - all indexed and showing up in results. Google's response . . . (silence)
Trolls suck. Go throw your feces somewhere else.
I would love to see better sorting of free porn, hentai, and warez sites.... Far too often I am looking for that elusive CD Key, and it's all the way down on the 10th page!
Damn you Google! I want my porn and warez now!
Do this search and you will NOT see a web site listed that actually tells you the calories in a Bagel. I think Google is doing the RIGHT thing,in fact they should do it even MORE:
Try apple calories, fruit calories, etc... same thing
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
If that's what they're doing it's fine with me. That's the way it should work. Have a search engine that produces realistic results. If the big sites are dissatisfied with their placement they can pay for a sponsored listing. It's profitable for Google and creates a good balance for everyone. Surfers don't get a bunch of garbage and companies can still have good placement.
When Google filters an abused search term, it should put a "search for commercial products on Froogle" link -- problem solved
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I'm sick of seeing spam on google. I'm glad that my time is less likely to be wasted by those goddamn ebay redirect pages and "search engines" because of this.
Google updates every month, and every month webmasters throw hissy fits over PR and SERPs.
I get SEO spam simply for being the technical contact for a couple of domains at work, and I will bet my bottom dollar that anyone who does business with those people will be wiped of the map come the next update.
By contrast, all the sites I manage still show up as usual. I've been no.1 on key terms for a while, simply 'cos the sites provide relevant, useful info in a well-structured manner, and doesn't mess around with Google.
One thing I am curious about is whether or not Stuart Langridge's accessible image replacement technique counts as an attempt at spamming Google: after all, it hides header text behind images...
Not really. "I'm feeling lucky" that I, unlike the gentleman in the picture, do not have a 6" diameter asshole.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I have been complainig about google for a long time now. The garbage that comes up after a search has been terrible. As a rule I skip the first few screens of any search because they are just adverts and redirects. I used to think that the time was right for a new king of search but if google can clean up the cheaters it is possible that they could continue to rule. Remember that the way that Google became popular was the fact that all other search engines were saturated with garbage results in the form of highest bidder on a particular search words.
Stay tuned for new sig...
If my karma is terrible, how can I ever get to have normal karma, since everything I post is now at -1 and hence no one sees it???
What's up with the NYTimes link in the article? Did the submitter decide to track people through a webmasterworld.com referal, or is this a /. experiment?
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
After suspecting I was being scammed by my mortgage broker, I types "Mortgage broker scams" into google. I'm in favor of google doing anything it needs to do to stop garbage like this.
o ke r_scams.htm
This is the type of link I got back. The last paragraph is my favorite:
http://www.mortgage-broker-in-1.com/mortgage_br
The text of the page, that was followed by a LOT of links:
"Sourcing on the web for the best deals on mortgage broker scams? Well you've definitely arrived at the right place because that's what we're information experts in. Of course, being a new information web portal we don't yet have a monumental amount of information on the precise search term you were looking for - mortgage broker scams, but we're getting there.
Locating relevant and useful mortgage broker scams sites is often difficult. Which is why we created this website. Detailed research went into building this web site on mortgage broker scams to send you to the best web sites.
Coming across the best mortgage broker scams websites isn't as easy as it sounds. After a meeting of our team of planners and engineers we decided to build this site to assist you with your navigation. I'm thrilled to say that the countless hours of work we did studying info databases on mortgage broker scams for you to visit.
As the mushrooming of e-commerce continues mortgage broker scams businesses learn more in offering their products and services for sale The biggest benefit that the web mortgage broker scams businesses will maintain over store-front mortgage broker scams businesses is the significant savings they have an operating a successful business.
i just typed in my Slashdot user name and the first three links were my two(!) vanity sites and my Slashdot page.
Typing my real name in was less successful.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Retailers that use 'tricks' to ensure their sites float to the top of Google deserve to be punished!
Yes, even Slashdot is not immune to these morons.
A few days ago I tried a seach for "cellular customer satisfaction". The first several pages were bogus resellers (many of them the same page under different URL's). None of them contained the kind of information I needed about how customers rate the various cellular service providers. This morning the same search is yielding lots of useful data instead of the fake spam-like pages I had been getting.
KUDOS to Google for fixing this! Whatever changes they've made to their pagerank algorithm, Google is suddenly working again like I expect.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Google's "PageRank" formula is their top-secret way of determining in which order to display websites for any given keyword. Everyone knows that refering links is the main component of PageRank, but Google has always been hush-hush as to what else is included in the formula.
It's also known that PageRank isn't a static formula. Google reserves the right to change it at any time, in what is known by Google-watchers as a "Google Dance".
The only legit way to be highly ranked by Google is to be the most authoritative source for information about whatever you discuss, and naturally links will form from other quality websites on your topic and up the PageRank scale you go. www.microsoft.com being a 10/10 ranking doesn't indicate that Google likes Microsoft, it just simply indicates that site is the most authoritative site about a topic a lot of people talk about, Microsoft's products.
Any other way to cheat the system will result in penalties applied to your score. It's not so much a filter as it is negative factors in the formula. Google steadfastly claims that it doesn't maintain a blacklist of "bad" sites, but it is clear that sites designed to cheat Google's PageRank formula always fail once Google tweaks the formula. They don't need a blacklist, they simply identify the characteristics that define a "link farm" and then apply a penality. If a given site has a lot of links to external domains, very little non-link content, and absoulutely every linked to site returns a link back to the orignal site, it sure smells like a link farm and that's what the system penalizes.
To put it bluntly, anybody who's business depends on being displayed on the first page of Google results should be buying AdWords placements. If you're working hard to stay #1 in the editorial results, you're never gonna win. And no, just because your business depends on it doesn't mean you get to sue when Google pulls an ill-gotten #1 ranking out from under you.
Your mistaking google with some kind of MPAA, RIAA, SCO or micrsoft type character. I think its clear google is a SEARCH engine, bot a marketing machine. They would have done that along time ago. There just providing fair/right search results. Just because some company embeds the word SEX 500times into all there pages doesn't give them a right to complain when google filters for this.
No, this is
There is no inherent search feature embedded in the protocols of the net.
One had to be invented, and business did so build one with very cool original technology.
Google is a business - it exists to make money.
It makes money by selling its search engine and ads and being good so people will use it.
Shopping is one use, not the only one.
Like the power companies and MS before them they are a 'want' that will soon become a 'need'.
One of two things may then happen - people start making anti-trust noises and/or want it ubiquitous and as usual, accountable, like public utilities.
As for the former, they're not guilty of the sort of nonsense MS could think up on its laziest afternoon. As for the latter, because they're a proprietary system with lots-n-lots of trade secrets, it's hard to imagine the transparency needed to operate as such a utility.
On the other hand, go read the history of Edison & Westinghouse...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Google is great. The one thing that annoys me though is the amount of useless e-business sites out there. When i'm searching google I want free information. Information, just like the stuff in the library, but without the cold winter walk / late fees. If I'm buying something i'll include a keyword such as "price" or "buy"; heck, I'll even use froogle. The fact of the matter is that these useless companies are just clutter. They should be removed. If we wanted porn we'd just hit usenet.
They used the system to get their businesses listed higher in Google and now they are complaining about Google using their own system to correct their own product...
This simply means that if business want their rankings back they need to go back to the drawing board... sure they aren't happy about it.. they are businesses after all, but then were users happy about having to sift through a bunch of business ads to get through to useful information?
Google doesn't force end users to use their search engine, they simply have become very popular due to the quality of their searches. I see nothing wrong with attempting to increase that quality by downranking sites attempting to trick their algorithm. They owe the end user nothing, and if their changes decrease the quality of results, the marketplace will decide on a different search engine. After all, those sites were creating an artificial value for themselves at the expense of other, more legitimate sites. If anything this will lead to the *actual* value of google sponsored matches, not an artificial one.
With the various search engines available, I wouldn't say google has a monopoly, and if there is a monoculture favoring google, it is because of end users choosing quality, not because people are forced to use google. I see nothing dangerous here. Google owes us (end users and webmasters alike) nothing not a specific ranking algorithm, not a free search service, nothing at all. If they have found ways to monetize the service they provide, all the better, because I am happy that the service exists and want it to remain around. For the record I don't work for Google, nor am I affiliated with it, and I am not running a website.
ACMD eht detaloiv evah uoy
Make money fast and easy by ensuring your 99th-ranked page gets displayed ON GOOGLE'S FIRST PAGE!
1) http://www.google.ca/preferences
2) Number of results: display 100 per page
3) Profit!
You can't lose!
When I was trying to find that Paris Hilton porn, I kept downloading files claiming to be the real deal but that turned out to be transvestites fucking horses. Maybe Google could tweak that search engine too...
do not read this line twice.
I for one, look at other sites for info on companies selling stuff. Pricewatch.com (not affiliated to it in any form) is an excellent example of a site that helps customers compare prices, location, availabilty, etc. of Computer parts and electronics
Maybe now, when I search for "Ludivine Sagnier nude" I'll stop getting 8,000 results for generic naked celebrities page subscription. And maybe, a good link or two about various universities in need of nekkid pictures of Ms. Sagnier (RTFA)
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I just did a search for dvd burners and there were actually a handful of informative articles in the top 10. I obviously can't link to it, but a similar search a month ago gave me pages and pages of no-name online retailers, which don't tell me a damn thing about DVD burners.
Most of the "Buy it" links point to http://www.qksrv.net which takes you eventually to this page.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
If I googled before for ski club, we would be lucky to be listed on the first page. Most of the respondents were commercial and had *nothing* to do with skiing. Now we are no. 1 in the listing. A looser search for and "Skiing" lists some local resellers of equipment and we are still quite visible (being the largest such club in town) and that is reasonable.
Google has just become a lot more useful!
See my journal, I write things there
Fantastic!
Now instead of searching for things and getting a million plus one hits on Kelkoo I'll actually find what i'm looking for!
If all these f***ing websites that artifically inflate themselves (like those pricks at Kelkoo) are shouting this loud about it...great, means Google did a good job...let's all buy them a beer
Maybe Google will be worth using again.
If I search for a review of an item I just get 50 links to shopping portals. Kelkoo seems to be the worst offender for co.uk.
But if I actually want to buy something I end up with 50 pages or portals all linking to the same article on amazon.
It's about time Google should add a -shops filter to automatically filter out retail sites.
I was about ready to give up on Google, because every time I went looking for reviews and information about products, I'd get page after page of link farm shopping spam sites with no actual information like nextag.com (one of the biggest offenders).
I just went and typed in a typical search, and now the top half dozen pages are actual reviews, not spam. No nextag.com. Go Google!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Like being sued by SCO http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38045.htm
This is fair enough, however. If you want to be associated with high-value keywords, you must either use those keywords in a proper context, or pay for AdWords.
:)
For every site that loses a spot on the first page, somebody new moves into the first page. The complaints here are from the owners of the sites getting bumped out, but nobody seems to be saying that inapproprate sites are moving into the first page. In fact, those who don't own such sites say it's the inapproprate sites that are getting kicked out.
When you search for FireWall-1 in google, Check Point comes first and second, and I come third. Since I run the longest-running FAQ site on Check Point FireWall-1 (and I'm pretty non-commercial), that's not surprising since there are links to me from just about everywhere. And actually, if you search on FireWall-1 FAQ, I come first... :)
Either way, I'm happy with what Google is doing.
-- PhoneBoy
The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of anyone, including the poster.
If Google's algorithm-mucking gets rid of the dozens of pages that say something like "NUMBER ONE TOPSITE FOR...(your search term here)" then it's fine with me. Back in the days of Altavista and such, people rapidly figured out how to get their page of mindless drivel to appear on pretty much any search...and they're slowly figuring it out with Google too. I'm glad to see they're being proactive and not letting their search engine turn into a Netster.com.
Google still has some tweaking to do. Search for "political slang." The first result is for "Political Slang Christmas Ornaments."
It's a feeder site: all sites like this do is corral keyword searches using a log of stuffed-up domains, subdomains, meta tags, bogus copy, and alt tags to give the appearance of heavy linking and high-incidence keyword frequency, thus bumping it up the Google results. On their server side, they've got a script that checks the referring URL, grabs the keyword(s) which were being searched for, plugs them into $keyword all over the page, then returns the page, keywords added, to the surfer. What's the bloody point? Political slang Christmas ornaments? Are you kidding me?
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
Funny -- one of the sites I run recently took a hit in the rankings, and we didn't do much optimization. I researched it last night and found that Google has just rolled back to a very old version of their data. Last week the title tags they were showing for our site were up to date, but now they are showing data from over a month ago.
I wonder if this rollback was in response to the complaints?
In any case, without much trickery we were able to get relatively good ranking in the latest (pre-rollback) version just by having actual content and decent title & meta tags.
Cheers.
But one of Google's guidelines, posted at its Web sites, says, "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content." The company warns offenders that they can be removed from the search engine.
Since when are they the Internet nazis?
-insert a witty something-
What I'd love to see is Google block all those stupid search sites... you know the ones that make there google result look like an interesting page but when you click it you get a page that has 50% adverts and some search results for whatever you where searching for ...... those really bug me.
No business will be sent to Olagam from me.
Google already has presearch words like "link:" and "site:", what about adding more?
shop:
history:
research:
linux help:
etc, make a few hundred pre search words that people can easily look up EXACTALLY what they want... it's possible that they are working away at this at google labs.. it'd make sense to me for this to be the next logical step.
So if google is drowning in crap, what search engines do the slashdot crowd prefer? I could use an engine that doesn't produce reams of mailing-list archives or spam redirectors...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Just do a search with scientology and notice that there are now at least 4 sites in the top 10 that are Good Sites(tm). As opposed to a couple month ago when the only one was xenu.net
I think that this is really a great thing on behalf of Google. Because, let's face it when one organisation can artificially promote their site in a search engine, then that could be considered as the first step towards censure.
Murphy(c)
Do the world a favor, drive over a marketeer today! These plaid-wearing pinheads would paper over the entire surface of the planet with ads if they could. Absolutely nothing is sacred to them but the almighty dollar. You want to know where the axis of evil is? Look no further than Madison Ave. Line em up, let er rip, then bulldoze as needed. Nearly as bad as telephone sanitizers.
I've seen the online retailer rage first-hand...
It's thier own fault. I'm sorry. Google doesn't OWE them anything. They aren't paying google.. google is indexing the web, not promoting their business.
People who do all kinds of work and fuss over how to perfectly optimize their page so they will get a higher google ranking than all their competitors... they need to understand that there are no rules in the game they are playing.
IT's also common sense that, if Google is what makes or breaks your business, you should understand all the risks involved.
Google is a service that is, for the most part, free to those who benefit from it.
Somebody discovers that they can manipulate this service to increase their benefit.
The people who provide this (free) service chose to ignore those manipulations. Maybe they deliberately lower the ranking of some pages, to hear the whiny TFH crowd speak.
Then those same whiners--who contributed NOTHING to the process from which they benefit--scream for damages.
If someone invented a pill to make people immortal and one of these jerks didn't get his pill, these same folks would want the inventor jailed for murder.
Until you form a union and negotiate a contract with google--that includes a "past practices" clause, just STFU.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
The answer is that people will start to look at the list of ( different ) sponsored links as a source of information. My eyes gloss over them normally, but if the search results themselves are nothing but the useless aftermath of a google ranking war, the sponsored links can sometimes have what you want.
This is of course good for google, and fine when you are shopping.
When you are NOT shopping, this becomes a problem. I might have bought an empty basket to use to make my own gift basket. I may have some fake grass in the bottom, and some fruit and nuts and an electric razor, but I typed "Gift Basket Ideas" because I want ideas for more stuff to put in the basket for the guy who has everything.
I get 10 pages of links to the same company selling pre-filled gift baskets, and some sponsored links to other companies selling pre-made gift baskets, but I don't get the link I was looking for.
Links to "Martha Stewart's how to put together a homemade gift basket that is so 'perfect' that it looks manufactured and the person you give it to thinks you bought it at some overpriced yuppie store" and "Some random person's home page with their arts and crafts projects that happens to have great ideas for basket filler", are conspicuously absent.
Eat at Joe's.
What is it with these buzzword people nowadays? Just because someone uses statistical filtering doesn't mean that it's bayesian...
While we're at it, Experts Exchange looks to be jinxing Google somehow. Its popping up on a wide variety of technical searches with links to questions, almost invariably with no answers. The things I was looking for are invariably there on mailing lists, project websites etc and appear instantly with "-"experts-exchange"" in the search. It's been happening for a few months now and seems to be getting worse.
I reckon people using the site are blogging their questions or answers, screwing up PageRank for that site as a result.
-Baz
perhaps the most telling thing here is that the businesses are whining. Perhaps for the moment someone would want to search for something and *not* be sold an item?
I am also searching for another engine to use.
Most of the time I get great results, but as you not, for some searches the spammers win.
Fortunately you can use Google's Report a Spam Result page to complain. Hopefully as more and more people report a particular spammer Google will move to purge the spammer.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Would someone mind clarifying the acronym "SEO"? It is used repeatedly in the article, but in the context of an audience that already knows it. I don't.
I still can't search for a batch to exe compiler without getting back page after page after page after page of warped and twisted links back to Brandon Dargo's piece' o' crap...
Note, the aforementioned piece' o' crap may be all well and good, but it's of no use to me, and because its so ubiquitous it's made locating a working alternative extremely difficult. I mean, I had to revert to altavista for chrissakes... *shudders* Sooo many bad memories....
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
The New York Times is better than Kevin Sites, no matter how many G.I.s he blows for the story.
the problem here is spammers setting up "surf-farms" (think Alexa and all those Asian pages that display as the 'top' sites) that simply surf and mark/index pages that are competition low and mark their pages high..
And Alexa has been spammed to hell for a long time, if google did that we will all end up using directories like yahoo again..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I know p2p search is hopeless, but here's some ideas on how to do it anyways. I'll phrase it like an inductive proof: first make a node, then add a neighbor.
NODE - I'd use Lucene. Lucene is a traditional keyword search engine that is fast, lean, free and open. It's carried under the Apache Jakarta project, so it's not going anywhere. And, it's easy to develop with. Alternatively, any good search will do... you could probably bang something together with GNU shell utils.
NEIGHBOR - Turn search into a common TCP/IP protocol, a la SMTP, FTP, etc.. Telnet to port 534268 (the digits that most look like "SEARCH"), and have something like this:
If there are no results at that node, the server forwards you on:
So, you'd start by querying your own host's search-engine. Perhaps it would spider N-deep from what you browse, so it would perhaps have ready responses for many of your queries.
But your own node may not have the answer for you, so you forward on to the next. How does the forwarding table get setup? One way to do it would be by hand, but also, I imagine posting "known expert" lists to gnutella could help automate the process. A list would be a map of keywords to IPs. These lists wouldn't need to be too robust, as they'd serve to occasionally seed the network, not constantly sustain it.
Once you had a good forwarding table on your node, you'd have access to quite a large search DB. With 100 nodes in the search network, each using 1GB for its index, and 3:10 index to indexed ratio, that's 100*1GB*3.3=330GB of indexed text. Let's say the average webpage is 100KB (?), that's a total search DB size of 3.4M pages. Increase the number of nodes to 10,000 and increase each node's index size to 10GB, and you have 3,460,300,800 pages, which is just about equal to Google, which is currently at 3,307,998,701. 10k nodes happens to be about what distributed.net is running right now, and 10GB is getting cheaper by the minute. ;)
>so they have been pressuring Google and other >search engines very hard to "eliminate" blogs >from search results.
So they buy Blogger, then make it free all across the board with all the options meaning even more people and theyre trying to "eliminate" blogs ?
Let me guess, youre degree is from the D.McBride Business School?
zack
Now their pages will be rated on merit.. too F-ing bad..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
>so they have been pressuring Google and other >search engines very hard to "eliminate" blogs >
>from search results
So they bought Blogger, made the whole service free getting even more people and theyre trying to
"eliminate" blogs ?
Let me guess, youre a graduate of the D.McBride School of Business?
zeke
Rather gives lie to the assertion that "Marketing is a legitimate occupation," in my mind, when there's always some marketing industry apologist out there ready to defend Yet Another Slimy Marketing Tactic as "smart marketing."
If you have trouble finding reviews of peripherals among all the links to stores selling the peripherals, add one of the following keywords to your search:
I was looking for ringtones for my Ericsson phone a few weeks ago, and (literally) the first 3 pages were all sham sites that were filled with ads and lead back to - you guessed it - www.ringingphone.com!
Those sham sites are no longer showing up in the Google results, and I can actually find what I was looking for instead of having to wade through the cesspool shopping mall that the internet is turning into.
hey. Google also filters pages, given complaints from copyright owners. As a joke, try search for kazaa lite and look at the bottom of the screen..he he
anyway dmoz.org is a good supllement, sofar uncensored
He hates when people mention Seth. Or what happened to Censorware.org. Or how Slashdot could continue to employee such a vindictive, hypocritical person.
I have fallen foul of Googles new 'optimisation'. My site was for a time ranked pretty highly for the keywords 'chess game'. For months I was never out of the top 30 places, even spending a few weeks basking in the glory of being on the first page.
:P
I did this by following the advice from various websites, and scattering the keywords through the front page and getting various web sites to me.
It didn't take long to get a good ranking since I submitted my software to over 300 software sites, the description contained the keywords and software sites naturally give a link to the publisher. I don't think I was cheating, my site was always relevant - the keywords were, chess game, not artificially, chess game, used
Do Google have to keep changing their search rules? I mean, does it really improve things, or do they just have to shake things up when webmasters think they have figured out how the ranking works? I feel I have been penalised for playing by the rules. Perhaps the only way to win the game, is not to play.
Since I have no interest in seeing that image EVER again...
Did you run that test with Safe Search ON or OFF?
1) 534268 -> 53268 (to make it legal)
2) Any search you get results for, you should put into your index, possibly expiring old content.
3) On a failing query, the remote server may not have a forward link for that query, in which case it would simply say "HITS 0", and you'd have to backup and go to the next neighbor in your pre-order traversal. If no node has an answer, the default could be FWD google.com, or perhaps a metasearcher like dogpile. That would be a great bootstrap, as results would quickly be moved from the big search engines to the p2p nodes instead.
If this is true, Google must be preparing to welcome its new Microsoft overlords....
Email was a wonderful thing until some cretins decided it was their god given right to fill the infrastructure so full of shit that it's becoming impossible to maintain and of much more limited use, all because they're so much more important that everyone else and want to hock their crap.
IRC was a wonderful thing until some other pack of cretins decided it was their god given right to deluge the infrastructure with shit, all because they're so much more important than everyone else and want to have their immature little pissing contests
And the web and the search engine concept was a wonderful thing until yet another pack of cretins decided it was their god given right to deluge THIS infrastructure with shit, because they believe that this great big network exists soley to promote their crap
So who gave them all the fucking right!? And why are these pieces of shit always the first to whine about how THEIR rights are being trodden on? I just wonder what sort of process makes these pricks honestly believe that such a beautiful and diverse resource is there for THEIR benefit and it's all fucking ME ME ME.
OK I can play ME ME ME too! I want to be able to browse the internet without your fucking product being shoved in my face!
I want to be able to communicate with my friends and colleagues over email without having hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of dreck advertising your disgusting crap shoved in my face!
I want to be able to use a realtime chat network without enduring splits and lags and security checks and masses of scans just because some braindead 12 year old moron got a bug up his ass about someone insulting him over this system!
Why is it that these days if you look at an IRC server or an SMTP server, 90% of the source is a ghastly and hugely tangled mess of code that's just there to keep the 0.001% of pricks who want to ruin it for everyone else out, and managing those systems turns from a straightforward and communal activity into an arcane battleground where everyone is an enemy? Just try scaling that up tenfold for Google and their golden egg laying goose that every selfish twat wants to work how THEY want it to work and fuck everyone else.
Argh... I would be honoured to shake the hands of the techs running Google, and good on them for actually fighting back against these fucks. And as for these cretins listed above, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COMES WE WILL MAKE SAUSAGES OUT OF YOUR FUCKING ENTRAILS (to borrow a nice little expression from someone by the alias of TRASG0)
They'll just figure there aren't any widget suppliers in Mytown. Are the webmasters going to complain? Hell yes, loudly, and rightly so.
Rightly so? So these webmasters are complaining because a search engine that indexes their site FOR FREE is not showing them in the search results where they were before? Sure they can complain, but I don't think it's "rightly so". If they don't like it, maybe they can ask for their money back?
I didn't expect a reply, but several days later I got a personal response from someone at google explaining what they were going to do about the problem and agreeing with what I said.
Indeed, a very classy establishment, especially when compared to other U.S.-based companies these days...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Another wierd coincidence - by the end of the next quarter, they're supposed to go public (Google IPO - oogles of $$$).
Another wierd coincidence - With Yahoo's recent acquirement of Overture, and the ownership of multiple search technologies, it is rumored that they may end their contract with Google soon, and power their own search.
Another wierd coincidence - MS "trying" to develop a better search engine, already trying to take on Google, even before Longhorn.
Now isn't that a great way to drastically increase their revenue prior to becoming public by making all the top searched commercial sites pay for ads on Google, especially when a bulk of those sites' revenue come from the upcoming holiday season?
Wow - Google seems to also know how to play chess!
That's why I have to laugh whenever I read stories speculating that Microsoft might do to Google what they did to Netscape. It's one thing to steal a big consulting/integration contract by throwing lots of marketing and engineering resources at the customer. But to dominate the search engine world, you have to earn and maintain the trust of millions of users who pound on your engine every single minute. I used to think that Infoseek, Altavista, and the others died solely from corporate neglect. That's partially true, but they were doomed anyway, as soon as Google appeared. Because none of them ever understood what Brin and company seem to understand instinctively -- a public search engine requires hard work on a huge scale, and it never stops.
It's great that Google continues to tweak there search engine to produce the most accurate results. The people complaining are the commercial businesses that are relying on Google search results for free advertising. First off, these "businesses" should not be relying solely on Google search result hits for traffic to their sites, they have to advertising somewhere. Secondly, Google has every right, and duty, to continue battling against businesses from gaming the search results.
My sites have probably increased in position on Google because of these changes, but I don't plan on reducing my advertising budget.
LoRider
google is a user's best friend
google is tops for work time searches
google is still spidering and caching my old server
google is goood
google is urged to go public
google is the real winner in its own
google is the world's favorite search engine
google is faaasst
google is dancing
google is your friend
google is gong bezerk
google is featuring the google
google is $deity
google is so cool
google is lief
google is first time our top referer
google is microsoft ?
google is a powerful weapon indeed
google is 'feeling lucky'
google is excluding knife advertising
google is a harsh mistress
google is gong bezerk it seems forums are flooded with complaints about google's new search algorithms
google is a target for any optimization campaign simply because it has managed to obtain the most attention from users on search
google is just the juice
google is probably archiving all of your images
google is a part of my brain
google is god don't piss her off
google is a global phenomenon
google is thinking
google is skynet
google is just freaking me out
google is watching you
http://www.talknerdy.org
I hope this gives them an upperhand. In the last couple of days, I have been found that googleing has just become like the 40 minutes search engines journeys for a single subject of the past.
-><- no
I blogged a short article about this back in October:
:)
http://twid.livejournal.com/72781.html
With the search on "warlock records" now, google gets better results, but actually filters out completely the Warlock Records home page that I used for the demo search! I guess filtering sites that include the phrase in their URL might be a bad idea.
Overall, the new results in the search have excluded a few search honeypot sites, but since the new search is now excluding the direct link to the record label, the search results are worse, not better, under the new system.
I generally like alltheweb's results better after a few weeks of using it. I think it's kind of a OSX vs. Windows thing. Since alltheweb isn't the most popular search engine, it isn't targeted by the search engine spammers and thus your results are generally better.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
You were complaining that 'xxxx.exe' was being used by porn sites. Get it?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Obviously, depending on Google's free side to support a business is risky -- but the alternatives just aren't all that pleasant.
I help run a small business on the side -- http://www.beadstore.com. We are one of the good stores on the web -- we sell a specialty high quality product that has a small but dedicated global following. We provide a fair amount of information about each product and excellent customer service.
We are also reliant upon Google for a huge percentage of our online business.
Realizing that free listings were completely hit or miss, we began advertising on Google through Ad Words. Since then we've been spending anywhere between $500 and $3000 a MONTH on advertising -- which for a small business like ours is a huge hit.
And yes, we've spent countless hours trying to optimize our page position in Google. But we've never resorted to the kind of sleazy tactics some use. So when Google "tweaks" its code and the whole Google Dance shifts, it can mean major rewards or huge costs. What is a small business supposed to do? We have basically two options -- forgo advertising and be forever subject to Google's whims, or pay what amounts to our single largest operating expense (besides inventory) to guarantee some sort of Google traffic. I guess the third alternative is to bypass Google directly, but that's a tough way to go, though we try whenever we can.
So I have a fair amount of sympathy for the good eggs out there trying to run a website business, not because they ever have a realistic hope of becoming dot-com millionaires, but because they love their product. Google is a fickle mistress -- and while we may not have many options, showing a little sympathy when one of us gets dumped isn't really such a bad thing.
This guy doesn't seem to affected by Google's optimization. He still manages to come in on first place when searching for "localhost".
Perhaps he's about to earn a lot of money when some companies want to regain their previous positions.
You can get info about Page Rank in this paper.
domain, directory, files, content
If you have such a domain name, Google makes a high assumption that your site is all about what the domain name says. This is what led to many creativly descriptive domain names like the above.
I have a huge collection of drivers and other files on my site. Looking for one of those files generally results in my site being at the top of the search results.
If somebody e-mails me looking for a file on my site my first stop is Google and I've yet to not find it on my site from the first page. Sometimes I just browse through to find it but with 500,000+ files it's a bit of an undertaking.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Oh, I can only dream.... No more "Enhanced For Internet Explorer 5 and Higher" sites!
Constitutionally Correct
I did a Google search to find out what you were talking about: http://sethf.com/freespeech/censorware/essays/cens orwareorg.php
Makes sense that this is the kind of person that Slashdot employs. Certainly explains a few things that these people are running the show.
And why does Google account for nearly all web searches? Because all the other search engines sold their soul to the devil (return the sites that pay, regardless of relevancy, and dont return relevant ones if they don't pay).
The lesson is If you sell your soul to the devil, you get a poor deal (with the possible exception of Robert Johnson).
This applies to more than just search engines.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UT
The first result "STILL" redirects to Ebay
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TOP GOOGLE SEO
Unbe-freaking-lievable what weird ideas of entitlement people have when it comes to free services.
In any case it's simply very poor business sense to rely solely on being listed in the top 10 Google results for the search "fruit basket" to get any business.
Frankly, I think they should give users options to tweak their algorithm. It's terrible that SEOs are abusing their system, but I really think their anti-SEO system is seriously wack, and degrading their search results over all.
Autopr0n doesn't even show up on a search for "autopr0n" despite the fact that no one used the term before I did, and lots of sites have linked to me, with that term. Rather my slashdot info page, k5 info page, and livejournal show up on the first page.
And then some pages that simply include "autopr0n" in a long string of crap search terms designed to get links from search engines! And beyond that a bunch of garbage links. It's really annoying.
And yes, back when google didn't suck I got a lot of hits from people search for "autopr0n". Don't ask me why.
The root cause of course is SEOs and other spam types, but google should let people tweak the algorithm they use when they search.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
On the contrary, an ad is worthless if nobody sees it. Google knows very well that if they screw the users, the users will go elsewhere-- and there are many companies eager to be that elsewhere (more appear every month, it seems).
you know you've hit the truth nerve when you get rated troll for bagging google :)
And I really dont want to know what the "uptime" is over there at goatse.cx
Some of the previous posts mention that one of the problems is that Google weakened their algorithm because of Blogs. One solution would be to allow blogs to have a special search rating, so you could include or exclude blogs from your search. The only thing is how would you feel about such an option?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It seems to me that the real source of the problem is in an assumption by Google, and most other search engines, that they can provide a purely string based search without any semantic context.
...) that select the a particular customized search algorithm in the Google engine. This proviudes enough info to direct the user to a customized algorithm tailored for the users expected type of results. In some respects, this is what Froogle and the other google specialty searches are about, except through the front page interface. This also provides a legitimate hook into bringing blogs back into the fold without interfering other users by looking for reviews and/or user comments.
For the issue at hand, the new filtered results implicitly assume no site can legitimately grab too many links above some threshold for non-trademarked words. But in the case of a shelving provider being referenced as "shelving" (as exampled in the second article), that is not the case. The result is commercial entities with a high PageRank are filtered out.
This is fine for users looking up info about shelving, but not for user looking to buy shelving. Hence my comment on semantic context. In this case, a simple drop down of search prefixes ("I want info about...", "I want to buy...",
And in traditional Google fashion, Google could provide links to possible alternative searches in other semantic contexts, just like they already do with spelling and the like.
The prefix approach is only one possibility. Maybe a sentence parser would be better (if you can convince current users to convert from keyword searches).
Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives some approximation of a page's importance or quality. PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page. PageRank is defined as follows:
... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) +
Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' PageRanks will be one.
Link Here
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I certainly won't click on that link. What's there to prove that it really is a robots.txt file? I mean, it could be ASCII "art" of the life and times of the rest of that website...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I, for one, welcome our new search engine overlords!
I'm getting so much junk in Google results these days... if I could get a seach engine that gave results for several different semantic domains (am I using that word properly? sigh), that would be a lot more use to me, and I would probably switch.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
[ ] Click here if you do not want to see results of people trying to sell you something.
[ ] Click here if you do not want to see results of people reviewing something.
That way I could search for something like "Plasma TV" or other things I can't think of without seeing tons of store fronts. It's better than it used to be, but it would be a nice option.
Indeed, Ms. Wiesel of Cesta Gift Baskets said last week that she had resorted to a new strategy: purchasing advertising on Google. "Now we've become a sponsored link," she said, "just to stay in the game."
Sounds like the system is working to me. Company A spends thousands of dollars on marketing, consultants, domain names, and virtual servers (with support contracts) to get 8 out of 10 results on the first page, while Company B spends say $1,000 (number pulled out of...well, you don't want to know where it was last.) to be a sponsored link on Google. Both A and B are feeding the economy in two different ways to get essentially the same result. The question is...which are you going to click on, the paid ad or the search results that all look similar?
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
How about sites that claim to have information on a specific topic -- almost as if they've intecepted the Google search, but they are really a sort of portal page to paid advertisers with no real information on the topic you were searching for?
I'm sure you've encountered them... I can't think of an example at the moment though... and I couldn't find any, so maybe Google has already taken care of this problem.
Just add "Hold the spam please" alongside "I'm feeling lucky". When clicked it displays results starting at the 31st ranked page. Think of the money google can save on computer and math geniuses using my simple approach instead of getting into all this filter hoo-haw.
Yeah and if you are searching for anything related to females you pull up a bunch of porn sites.
-------------------------------------
Technically, we are beyond survival.
PageRank isnt a secret, its basically a weight of how much money you pay google.
There's a nice baseless alligation with no proof. I know of plenty of AdWords buyers without a PageRank, and plenty of non-buyers who have good PageRanks. Doesn't tend to lend itself to a direct corelation...
Instead you get "infomercial" pages whose only purpose is to direct you to the commercial pages. I wouldn't even want them to try wasting money on finding a magic formula to separate the commercial sites from the informational ones. Like you said yourself, you make complex queries and it still doesn't work at all.
I usually don't find it hard to come up with some additional keywords that narrow it down, in the specific case. But I'd have a damn hard time finding a general formula for it. A little creativity is still required, and frankly I don't find that too terrible in a world where most answers seems to be "look it up" rather than "reason it out"...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
maybe some of those 'retailers' will start using adwords like they should have been doing in the first place. If a site can't get a good click through rate using adwords, tricking google to list them higher in the search results is not going to do them any good. The problem with many of these 'retailers' is they don't actually have any reason to show up on a search in the first place, they have nothing to offer that is related to my search terms. This kind of internet marketing is every bit as annoying as spam and sitefinder. There are too many useless sites out there run by idiots who are just trying to squeeze some cash out of the internet by preying on people who don't know any better. They are just hoping that enough people will fall for their 'set this page as my home page' popup and have some numbers to show their equally useless advertising clients. For the businesses that actually have some services/products to offer, adwords is the best way to get your site to show up on google.
TallGreen CMS hosting
There will always be people out there who are wiser to the ways of computer crap than myself...and Google trying to quash these 'crap' pages has hurt other legitimate websites tremendously. I have used Google since it's inception and loved it dearly...now it's become a corporate giant of the search world of the internet and looks the old saying is coming true. "With power comes corruption" I have started using Teoma.com to search and it's like having the old Google back at my fingertips. If anybody has anything to say about Teoma pls let me (and everybody else) hear it. Good day all !!
It looks like they count terms on the referring pages, so as long as 'goatse', 'troll' and 'overated' are still relevant, you'll be fine :)
;-)
cLive
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
It appears they finally did something about that. Most door pages, particularly in porn, stuffed keywords for Google to see, then send everyone else to the porn site via metarefresh=. It avoided SafeSearch and caused situations such as Junior searching on medieval castles for a book report and getting page after page of results sending him to Victoria's Torture and Bondage Castle (with popups).
Also, pages with too many advertiser-only tricks seem to be down. They are still there, but fewer. I guess this is being sidestepped by setting up apache to giving Google ip's one version of a page, and everyone else the real page.
Spammers *DO* know about Bayesian filters. Of late a large cross section of my spam is arriving with a random block of words in the semi-non-display tags and footer-esque parts of the page. These words have nothing even remotely to do with the nature of the advertised "product" or "service".
This is clearly a response to the Bayesian filter.
The same hacks who make the spam generating software are right there ready to sell their meta-crime to the web-varnishers.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
NO NO NO NO
Google is one of us. They are one of the good guys.
Don't hate Google! Please?
Paranoid about losing that ranking, I have always been careful to have any other pages I create (on various servers in different domains) point back to that home page. Now, it would appear that doing so is harming me. A search on my last name alone point to a site that I just happened to visit and put my last name on. Including both first and last names goes to some other site.
I think this pretty much rules out specific highly-commercial keywords as the ones being targeted by google.
On the other hand, when IE first appeared it really was something of a joke. It was just a rebranded version of Spyglass Mosaic that Microsoft hurriedly licensed when they realized that they'd ignored the Internet for too long. Lots of silly bugs and poorly designed features.
But that's all beside the point. I wasn't talking about the browser war -- I never even mentioned browsers. IE played a part in destroying Netscape, but only a small part. Netscape's main source of revenue was supposed to be on the server side. This was true even before Microsoft destroyed the market for browsers by making IE a freebie. But once Microsoft became a competitor, Netscape had no hope of selling its server software or integration services.
I remember a news article, '97 or thereabouts, about Netscape and MS competing for a major integration contract. (Can't remember the name of the customer.) MS, being late to the party, didn't even jump in until Netscape almost had the whole thing wrapped up. All the specifics had been negotiated and agreed to, and only the final formalities were left. Then MS beseiged the customer with a massive sales pitch, a huge and expensive prototype, and of course a lowball bid. (When you have MS's revenue streams, you can afford to take a huge loss just to get a long-term customer.) Netscape never knew what hit them.
That sort of thing explains most of MS's dominance of the software market. But it doesn't work against somebody like Google, which essentially depends on millions of small customers who can't be easily turned.
Thanks a lot. You people have just ruined my career. I have no idea what this goatse thing is about, and being naturally curious tried to go take a look (for purposes of sociological research, natch). I got a message that access to this site was denied because it is "deemed unproductive" by the IT staff of my employer. (I did mention that I am at work, right?) AND my attempt to access it has been logged. Sheesh. Now I'm going to get fired for trying to look at something, and I don't even know what it is.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
google is useful and successful and praised by its satisfied users because it shows them the pages they want to see.
Anything done by a page author to try to improve the page's rank -- anything -- is an attempt to show the end user what the page author wants to be seen, not what the end user wants to see.
Those using the web for commercial purposes can't help but want to deny this reality somehow. They can try, but as long as google is google it will try to to thwart them, and they really shouldn't complain. (Though of course they will...)
Perhaps that's because ongodly amounts can be made by getting that #1 ranking. While AdWords are great (we spend over $15k/month on them), they don't supply enough traffic, so just like everyone else in our niche, we jockey for that #1 position. (The #1 rank in our niche is worth over $200k/month.)
Shouldn't surprise anyone. Its simple economics.
Google is not a marketing tool but merely a search engine!
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
Exactly. Forget about what they do or say, they're magic wonderful pixie dust people who should be excused for things that would be considered outrages if anyone else did them. All hail Google!
Google has total control of the free search engine market. If you are a small business and you want free advertising, you are mostly dependant on Google for search engine traffic.
Let's peak at the top 4 search engines, by traffic:
Now what happens if you build a legitimate site, packed full of useful content. You build a decent business, and probably get half your traffic from Google's results. You make enough money to support your family... and poof! Google doesn't like you anymore and you haven't done anything wrong.
So it's no surprise that people complain, and complain loudly when their listings are dropped from Google. Google is the only player in town. We need more Googles!
Actually, Google ignores META tags, because people try exploiting them, and PageRank style systems work better at judging content.
I'm with you that Google is both in the right and a fantastic company, though.
May we never see th
To all the retail web sites that rely on being on the first page for business, that could be loosing 'millions' because of it....
PAY FOR A DAMN AD!!!!
I mean its not to hard. If a web site is making tht much mony for you, then surly its worth paying someone to keep it in a promenant position. You can never rely on such nebuls thinghs like search rankings to make sure you are on the opening page, but you CAN rely on paying some money to make sure it is. Google has a nice feature that puts ads at the top and side of the page. BE ONE OF THEM if you want business. I know I just about OLNY click on the sponsored links when im looking to buy something. If a companies too cheap to advertise and relys on tricks to get to the top, I dont want them tol have my business. [/rant off]
I really hate getting search results from other shitty search engines that populate with spammish links to companies who sell anything that could possibly have been a result of your search term.
GOOD FOR GOOGLE.
. . . works just fine. I find that natural language searches work quite well. The real problem is people don't know how to search. One word doesn't cut it. Two words isn't much better. Searching for phrases that you would expect to find does wonders. Creative pairing of words, as well as limiting searches to site: also works very well.
harmonious design
People who run e-commerce sites, and the "search engine optimizers" they sometimes employ, tacitly assume that the only possible query surfers could have in mind is "Where can I buy X?" And they then proceed to get badly excited that google is "failing to return relevant results" if it dares to return highly-rated links that merely provide information about X.
If your competitor is illegally using your trademarked name, then get off your ass and do something about it yourself. Why should Google fight your battles for you ?
Sheeesh
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
I still use Google.
My earlier comments may have been overgeneralizing; my point was to illustrate that the end user is not the only customer, and is not the only one that Google has to answer to.
Nothing like a good ol' flamewar.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
to SearchKing?
No, wait... on second thought I really don't give a damn about SearchKing. screw 'em.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
fuck, this michael is a creation of the devil.
What kind of frustrated man can do things like that ?
What kind of pretentious guy can blame all journalists for being impartial ? What kind of pretentious guy can proclame himself a journalist when workig at /. ?
Fuck, every day passing by reveals that /. is not that different from any other fucking big corporation...
Hopefully, still many real insightful people.
Thanks for casting a light on this point.
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
Its about time that google did something about this. There has been lots of irrelevant pages appearing in top listing for many keywords, when you check the pages, you see that even old tricks such as hidden text is being used. Hell, yesterday I hit a page that said: this page is intended for search engine indexing, not for human viewing - and with all the crap text on it - and what am I supposed to do with that page, because humans are the ones following the links to such a pages after
benig idnexed by the search engine - namely google.
I think google should do more, and one good idea I think: is to set up a rewards program, instead of just asking people to report bad behaving sites, they can pay people a small fee for reporting such sites, and I think that would be effective in creating a comunity effort for keeping the search space clean from such crap.
These words have nothing even remotely to do with the nature of the advertised "product" or "service".
Makes you wonder what kind of idiot buys from an advertisement that has, or is even mostly, random garbage.
I wonder if it will hurt their sales at all?
But one should never underestimate the power of stupidity.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
Man, all google needs to do is an option to ignore Domains with _ in them as well as the file component. I hate all those fake sites with 15 _ in them.
:)
That would fix 90%
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
...well, until the third page of results. :-P
Still, regardless of whether it needs work or not the returned results are much more tolerable and cleaner than they have been for a very long time. If people really want their sites to rank highly among my searches then the content of their sites should be at least somewhat relevant to them.
Bottom line, Google now wants people to pay for advertising. If a company wants to make money selling shelving, then it is going to have to advertise. I dont think you can run a shelving business and not advertise it in yellow pages. How can you consider not advertising with Google? At least Google does link to the Yellow Pages, so you're covered.
If Google doesnt find a business model that works, its going to go away. So complaining that Google should be free is just a bunch of commie hooey. The irony is that most people doing the complaining are techies who expect to get paid for the work they do. Or is it hypocrisy? :-)
Have you ever tried actually searching for something you were interested in buying on Froogle? I haven't had much luck. The pictures and quoted prices are often wrong or mismatched. Froogle's algorithms for separating multiple products posted on the same page seem not to work very well, so if you try to search for one product that has a few certain characteristics, you might get a page from a place that sells several products, and each has only one of the characteristics you're looking for. Froogle is not ready for prime time. A good product search engine really needs knowledge about specific product types so you can search for specific characteristics of the type of product you want. Full-text search just doesn't work as well, especially when different sites format their listings differently and Froogle's separation of products is so unreliable.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Excuse my late reply, but could you possibly pass on a short list of what you guys drink (Beerwise) over there? American's can do many things well, but Beer is not one of them. :)
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
:)
I knew something funny was up with google.
That's why all your ratings are messed.
Welcome to the End