Slashdot Mirror
Google Traffic Takes Down Web Site
bazonkers writes "Searchenginelowdown.com reports that it appears that the Google logo yesterday (honoring Gaston Julia) linked to the Google image search results for the words 'julia fractal'. The resulting traffic generated from clicking on that 'featured logo' incapacitated the servers of the top-listed images, hosted at an Australian university. This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."
Imagine just how much money could Google make if they sold just a small ad on their home page on a 24-hour basis occasionally, maybe even limited to modifying the Google logo in an agreed upon way linked to a page on the sponsoring site. http://www.google.com has to be the most hit page on the planet right now, so such an ad would have awesome power and be able to command top dollar.
Google's clearly taking the high road by making their home page an ad-page zone. I wonder how long that's going to last after the IPO and by definition, profit-hungry interests (such as your 401k plan) get control of the company.
Google should make every link go to Slashdot, and slashdot should make every link go to Google. (Though I fear many googlers that read slashdot would be scarred for life)
webpage
The server in question, by domain name at least, seems to indicate that Google's USA homepage was directing viewers on a path that led to a server in Australia. Just wondering... did any of the trans-oceanic network links show any visible spikes in traffic as a result of this event?
I hope /. doesn't lose its rep as the premiere internet stampede as people start referring to the "Google effect".
/.) gives can be, as they say, as much a blessing as a curse.
Much as I enjoy perusing information (and I do follow the links), this does raise a good question. Obviously, it's generally a good thing for a website to get traffic (usually, that's why the website's there), but are there moral implications for overloading a perfectly innocent site (fortunately, this site seems academic, so we aren't hurting business, per se)? Should we have a guilty conscience for bring down servers as wantonly as we do? I think not, as the Internet is open and free and who's going to stop us, but it's an interesting point they raise.
Reminds me of when I served at a restaurant and managers would complain when business was slow, but they'd get equally upset if a couple of buses pulled in and we were slammed with 100+ customers all at once. With so many customers, it was tough for us to give them good service, much less take good care of the customers we already had. I guess the exposure Google (and
I'm a little surprised that this has never happened before, as they often have featured logos. I guess those fractals must have just looked too alluring, and people had to see them. Then again, i'm quite surprised that so many people click on the featured graphic, perhaps people who aren't familiar with Julia, and were interested in what the graphic meant?
Google clearly has an international network of highly powered servers that have the ability to send out content via HTTP. Maybe Google could open up a side business for those who need a lot of web capacity fast for a short duration, for those who want to keep their websites up despite a major media mention that will quickly subside.
Since we're upgrading mail to be more spam-resiliant, we might as well upgrade websites, too. I think it's time that even website files are distributed via a p2p method. Swarmed downloading, and uploading via a tracker a la BitTorrent (but more seamless than how it can be done today) could help distribute load balance over the internet.
Let's assume that for an hour google secretely replaces all href's in all results to slashdot.org, could half the internet take down slashdot? That'd be an interesting thing to try.
keep it simple.
Wouldn't it have been more fun to have changed the pictures? I thought google actually stored the thumbnails and served them up.
If not, there are a various protections you can use to prevent the image being shown on another server (using the referrer is one, not particularly robust/compatible method) Many free websites use this method.
If google doesn't store the thumbnail, then it is not the google servers hammering them (as the site claims) but all the users doing the search. Thus it is irrelevant of how many servers google has.
I.O.U One Sig.
umm...i think all major traffic (like images) from the site would be stored in your isp's cache (or your own local cache) after the first time you load the page...so it probably wouldnt have much of an effect on the site's server to sit there reloading the page all day.
eBayDig 1s a typo saerch engien
When Google made a rare and somewhat nonsensical editorial comment in the form of their modified logo
... And even so, there would have to be a search link or two from that article, which would still in turn "slashdot" the first few query results.
Not sure I follow--it was Julia Gaston's birthday, and Google has been known to put up special logos on famous birthdays.
Next I suppose you think Google should write an article honoring each holiday they put up logos for. =]
Why do people complain sites like Google or Slashdot shouldnt link to sites, because they get too much traffic?
People put their sites online so other people can see it. You cant then complain when lots of people see it, saying, "I only wanted a couple people seeing it". Its a public site, so expect the public to come. Just make sure you get a plan that doesnt charge when you go over your bandwidth, just shuts you down.
Of course, Google is not obliged to warn them because their content is on public domain, but I think it would just be a matter of courtesy..
That brings to mind, should Slashdot start warning people before they are referenced here?
Uhm, they change their logo and have it link to a search query on a farily regular basis, especially on holidays.
I run a fractal-related site, and just the leftovers from people clicking through to sites that had links to my site was enough to give me 10x the traffic. I had calls from my host and a few other problems, so I took the web sites down for a few hours while trying to help some other folks figure out what was going on.
I've been slashdotted four times or so before, so I know what it's like. The server handled it just fine, it was the connection that was the trouble.
I'm glad that the initial onslaught is over, but I'm still seeing elevated traffic levels, and probably will for a few days. This is normal for any kind of slashdotting.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
IMO Google should institute a policy for links such as these; they should link to their own google cached versions, perhaps caching any other content such as images as well, instead of linking to the "featured" site.
The least they should do is warn the site of potential megatraffic. Anything less could be seen as slightly irresponsible on the part of google. However, it could also be they don't really realize how much power they really wield. Are there any google employees who read slashdot that can comment?
At 8:00 a.m. EST, my Mom IM'd me at school to tell me that the Internet as slow at home. At 9:00, my friend who uses my wiki told me that he had been letting it load for about an hour and it wasn't loading. The Xbox-Linux project's wiki also is hosted on my server, and it was inaccessible.
All these web sites are hosted on my little Linux box in my basement, on my parents' cable-modem with 40 KB/s up to the Internet. What happened to me was that the Google logo, linking to the image search for "julia fractals", had my friend Jonathan's site as the top hit. (The exact hit was this page.)
The page was all-but inaccessible, as was my server. I eventually SSH'd in, copied the files to my JHU web hosting space, and set up an Apache redirect to serve the files from there. JHU (my university) has a pretty big pipe, I've learned over the years I've been here. :-).
I mentioned this in a blog entry I made on the topic. It seems that now the search finds some other first hit, the .edu.au site mentioned in the story. Perhaps that's because my server was "Cthuugled" (eaten alive by Google, that is), and no one could reach the first link for so many hours.
|/usr/games/fortune
Why does the author ask those questions?
There's no facility on that page to respond, so it implies these questions are rhetorical -- leading to answers that are more favorable to the ill-prepared website.
My response to these questions follow, if anyone's interested.
No. If you don't want google to index your site, set up facilities to prevent it. Google shouldn't be held accountable for your inability to handle large server loads any more than the phone company should be held accountable for every single person that unexpectedly calls you. In the case of a phone line, you'd set up an unlisted number, in the case of Google, you'd block that referrer. Again. No. Google attempts to return results based on what its database is able to determine is the most relevant to the query being posed. Google already doesn't assume responsibility for any of the content that they link to, and there's no justifiable reason to change it.I have some sympathy for people hit by flash crowds due to being mentioned on sites like slashdot, but I have no empathy for people who find being linked from google (THE most widely used search engine on the internet, I might add) is causing too many hits to their site.
You'd think that google could at least cache the top 10 hits or so, on their own servers , then only direct say 1/3 of the traffic at the origional servers.
.. if they are going to generate that amount of traffic all the time, at least they could be smart about it.
I mean come on
I have absolutely no idea how this got moderated +5 interesting. What are you trying to say, here? That Google isn't "in the content business?" Of course Google isn't in the content business...that's why they're called a search engine, not a "content engine." They find other people's content for you...that's how a search engine works.
There was no "editorial comment." They change the logo to reflect an important event in history on any given day...it just so happened that Gaston Julia's birthday was that day. They're a search engine, and they want to promote their searching ability...why would they waste time and money hiring someone to write an article about fractals?
I'm not trying to flame or anything, but what exactly where you trying to say?
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Looks like Google sent a server Gaga and it went down the Gurgler..
Now if they were TRUELY smart, they'd have used those hits, IP addresses and timestamps as random seed for some internet fractal art! Oops, shouldnt have suggested that - somebody will probably get rich off it.. *shrug*
-- Jim (If it sounds crazy, it probably is!)
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
We have a bit of diliema with Google. On one hand, we get high Google rankings for search terms relevant to products we carry. On the other hand, Google does a complete index of our 4,000+ page site every week, and it takes several days.
We're on a wireless Internet connection due to severe lack of affordable Internet out here in the country, and they want to limit us to 30GB per month. I hate to complain to Google because we do get a lot of new customers from Google searches.
Don't forget the superbowl effect... this commercial took down a site far faster than the wettest of slashdot's hypertext induced dreams. I hit the URL seconds after it showed up during the superbowl anti-tobacco ad. Thirty seconds later, it was reduced to a molten ruin that hasn't been seen since slashdot reported Linus had birthed Daryl McBride's love child. It was epic. So don't give me your slashdot effect or google effect. I bring you he SuperBowl effect.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Sorry, but you're wrong. There's two major problems with what everyone has stated up to this point (include you). For starters, the web uses a protocol that's inherently master/slave based. Because of this, anyone who hosts a website has an inherent ability to offer traffic policing to customers to prevent costing exhorbants amount of money. Offering/not-offering this feature is a part of the free market system upon which capitalism is likely to gain customers. Even those companies who don't offer such a feature might begin offering a p2p solution to http (a mix of http and bittorrent, possibly). The second point is that you, yourself, use an isp of some kind. When you can't access a web site because of of a /.ing or a "google-ing", you're not getting everything out of the internet. Not only that, but the 20 or 40 requests an ISP gets to get a website is 20-40x more bandwidth than if the isp cached requests. So, in effect, there's an obvious market for isps who provide caching, not only because of the direct bandwidth savings for themselves but also through the marketing about being able to see /.ed sites (though I'm sure marketers can create a better buzz phrase). There's also traffic shaping/policing to encourage the use of their squid or other web proxy.
So, in effect, there is an economic solution to the problem at hand. There's also the fault of the people who put up web pages that get /.ed, as they bitch and moan instead of trying to find a technological solution to the problem.
A web server can be made into a p2p distribution system to handle the load instead of crapping out when it runs out of connections. And ISPs can benefit by marketing their caching technology (fact is, HD space + CPU power are still growing massively faster than bandwidth rates, so caching conceivably is to be the fastest for some time to come).
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
And not what makes them great. The reason Google is good is they return the most relivant results (as determined by their quite efficient engine) for any search, not random, the highest paying, etc. They do the same for things like their banner links.
/.) and you live through it. Doesn't last all that long anyhow. If you choose to host on a home network (as I do with some of my stuff), be prepared that it might get taken out if someone big links you. If you host with a large provider (as I do with other stuff), find one that has a good TOS, with something like a biggest-day exception to your BW limits.
Part of posting content on a totally public, accessible forum like the Internet is teh knowledge that the big boys may take intrest in you at some point. You need to accept and deal with that. I've had servers I own or maintained hit by a lot of people before (from Wired rather than
Here's the actual text now:
Using Google? (Reading Slashdot? The followup story)
Looking for images of quaternion fractals?
On the 3rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed. The reason was traced to Google introducing a fractal looking logo (see below), which when clicked, performed an image search for "julia" and "fractal". The two most interesting resulting images on the top row of the list were on this page (or rather the page that was here).
[Image used without permission from Google]
In order to get this server functional again, the pages that were here have been moved somewhere else. It shouldn't be too hard to find them if you really want to, do a Google search for "Quaternion fractal" or if you would like to create your own Quaternion fractals try POVRay.
Please note that this is not a criticism of Google but rather an interesting dimension to the power they wield. They have hundreds (thousands?) of servers worldwide that distribute their traffic load. If even a small percentage of that traffic is directed to a single server.....what chance does it have?
Questions: Should Google ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server? Should they regulate traffic to individual sites/pages by changing the order of the search results?
Happy searching!
Google giveth
and Google taketh away
Blessed is Google?
[Roger Bagula]
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
It is times like these I wish I didn't hate pay-for-click banner ads and had a few myself.
I found the above statement from his web site interesting.
Here is an idea. How about developing some code that only kicks in banner ads when hits go above a certain rate. This could help mitigate the costs of above average traffic, while keeping your site banner free for normal situations.
So it's time all the big ISP's to start using transparent squids or whatever, like the small ones do! They should slowdown (or even prevent) the /. - google effect.
Is your ISP forcing you to use a cache????
No sig
I'm hositing a website for a Janet Jackon fanclub... I had to take it down for a few days after sunday since every person on this world started to query search engines to find "janet jackson superbowl". :)
Suddenly it's not that great anymore if you have a high ranking on google and other search engines...
ohwell... since sunday we've probably become a "adult oriented" site anyway (the way americans see it). I'm even starting to get personal mails from people offering me free adult hosting
Ricardo.