Slashdot Mirror
How Google Can Make or Break A Small Business
securitas writes "USA Today's Jefferson Graham reports on how Google affects small business through its rankings and text ads. The feature describes how the fortunes of small companies turned when their Google ranking rose or dropped, as well as the effects of Google's paid search text advertising model. Search Engine Watch says that Google now performs an estimated 80% of the searches (200 million) on the Internet every day. The result is that Google has become a critical part of any online marketing strategy and has spawned a whole Google-optimization industry where consultants can charge $5,000 per site for tweaking. The feature is light on technical details but the stories of those who prospered and suffered due to Google make a good read."
Google's AdWords program is remarkable in that truly anyone can buy ads. Small businesses with tiny marketing budgets can buy ads easily. Individuals can buy ads. The interface is simple and easy to use. Google even has a bunch of small business friendly features like limiting your cost per ad and total daily ad spend.
I've bought a bunch of ads on Google, most recently for my startup, Findory News. Most web advertising is expensive, difficult to set up, and performs poorly. But, because you can pick such specific keywords with Google Adwords and the advertising engine refuses to show ads that don't perform well, you can easily get in front of people that might be interested in them.
...to cyberspace. So go ahead businesses, pay tribute to your new Google overlords.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Why blame google when you can blame yourself? If you can't compete, start looking for other jobs.
Go Google!
If you rely on another business so much that it can make or break you, it's time to find a new business model. It's not Google's responsibility to send traffic to your site, and I'm sick of people complaining about Google being unfair as if there's some magic entitlement to good rankings.
I for one welcome our search overloard.
I bet an article on "roll forming" would have worked just as well. If someone wants to find a SOAP client for GForge,
typing "gforge soap client" into Google puts you where it should - right here.
Seems like this is being made a bit more complicated than necessary....
The Army reading list
it's true and i can prove it -- we dont use google adwords, and we're going absolutely horrible! XD
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
You, sir, are nothing more than a SPAMMER, and deserver to have both your cranium and all your boxen readjusted with a LART.
Use the Lunix, and teh Lunix shall set you free.
I'm sure it'll be said here more than once this discussion but the fact of the matter is that if the life of your business depends on your Google ranking I would say "Don't be annoyed when it drops and breaks you: be thankful that it was up there in the first place, giving a chance to a business that obviously has no other hope".
Unfortunately, you don't.
1. Start new small business 2. Tweak google. 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!
The next latest and greatest craze, in my humble opinion is Vivisimo.com, except it's not an easy word to remember at first. It's a great search engine though, it not only ranks pages, but breaks them apart in groups so when you're doing a search for something, you don't get 5000 pages of porn before the topic you're looking for actually shows up. Give vivisimo a try and get the word out to your friends as a viable alternative to searching.
EnjoyHelpful Tip:
I use Google Alert for my personal site. I use it to track when other pages link to my site.
Per their About page:
With Google Alert, you can automatically keep track of anything on the web! Google Alert is the web's leading automated search and web intelligence solution. It runs daily Google searches for you and emails you when new results appear. Many people use Google Alert to keep track of what the web is saying about them, their interests or projects they are involved in. You can use Google Alert to keep track of any time someone mentions your name on the web. You can also track mentions of your website, your place of work, or your favorite hobby or celebrity -- the uses are limited only by your imagination. Click here for some great search ideas and some useful tips. The Frequently Asked Questions provide more detailed information about Google Alert. Selected as BBC's Website of the Day and USA Today's Hot Site, the free Google Alert service enables people in over 120 countries to stay up to date with their interests. Users include journalists, marketers, IT professionals, lawyers, doctors, salespeople, educators, researchers, and government employees. Click to start using Google Alert right away - it's easy and free!
My Tech Posts on Twitter
Here we have another example of the danger of focusing on one entity to provide a product or service. Microsoft has the same issue. One security hole in IE can create all sorts of problems for the majority of the population.
Similarly, people have focused on Google as a search engine (for similar reasons - it is "user-friendly") and as a a result we are beginning to see the problems inherent in this approach.I have two eyes, I have two feet.
Oh Anonymous Coward, you charm the ladies with your sensuous trombone playing!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
..that the add that came up (for me) on this article was an add for Google AdWords. After what happened to the fractal website recently, maybe this is the start of a war: Slashdot now knows that Google too has the power to slashdot. That would truly be the war of the Two (server) Towers: Google googling Slashdot; Slashdot slashdotting Google. Oh, the humanity!
Those ads depend on people clicking on them. If the percentage drops below a certain level, the ads disappear.
Now I may not be an advertising expert, but how can advertising be designed to depend on what other people do?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
There's been a number of interesting attempts to manipulate Google results. Google is always struggling to determine which links into documents represent real interest in that document and which are merely shills. It's a never ending war between the search engines and those who try to manipulate them. Google has even been sued by companies who have seen a decline in their page rankings.
The company he was using to keep his google ratings up went out of business. It took him a while to find someone else, but in the mean time he nealy went out of business. He has never quite recovered from that.
are URLs that look like this:
Of course said page contains ads for something else or is just a redirect/popup trap.
Google really needs to use their mad skillz to counteract this. Their algorithm is being screwed by the same type of people who brought us BonziBuddy and all that other worthless shit on the web.
They came up with the best search engine - I'm sure they can stay on top. But I wonder if they've even noticed, given the massive amount of data they must deal with.
If you want to spend money on better placement, send it to the people who are providing the service -- Google -- and buy up ads.
I've paid for ads on google to try it out, and was pretty damned pleased.
The process was simple - you tell it what words to bring up your ad, how specific like "games" versus "pc games" versus "first person shooter pc games". The more generic, the greather the chance of getting clicked, but the greater the cost. The ad is unobtrusive - just a text link (not a gigantic banner that will offend everybody else).
You can specify how many ads to pay for in advance. So if you only have enough money for 1000 clicks, it stops at 1000 - and you can either renew, or just leave it be.
Overall, it's just simple. The article mentions the bed and breakfast "Honeymoon Haven" or whatever that was worried about the service - I'd tell her not to be worried at all.
And I think that's why Google is doing the best so far: it's simple. No huge Yahoo like directories that make little sense, or extra ads cluttering the way. It gives me what I want, and if I want more, I click on it.
Perfect? No - some sites are optimizing themselvers to annoyance, like entering "'resident evil' walkthrough" and getting in the top 10 links annoying search engines or porn sites adding words and linking to each other to build up their Google score. But for 90% of the time, it's "good enough".
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
so the google toolbar, which is pretty cool because of the simplicity in design of the p[opup blocker, now has been twisted into a major marketing tool. Thankfully I have an earlier version I can use to install on client machines.
no more downloading the most recent version from the website.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Google has become the man. Do you really want to sell out your business, just so the man puts you on top of searches?
Search engine optimization is like feng shui. You can influence the chi, but you can't control it. If $5000 could guarantee you #1 placement, it could guarantee your competitor #1 placement. In businesses where there is a lot of online competition, even if Google results were predictable, you'd still have a tough time.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
This study documents how Google can make a small business. And obviously a large business needs Google placement, to handle its scale of commerce. But how does a lackluster Google result break a small business? If your bizplan requires high Google placement, given the inherent, unmitigable risk in being ranked by another company. you've got a really risky bizplan. That is what is breaking your small business, not Google itself.
--
make install -not war
I have seen this first hand.... but to blame google is wrong.
The problem is these businesses chose to depend on google and only google for their web hits...all their marketing eggs in one basket, so to speak.
Two of our sites flat vanished from Google during the last change in the way sites are ranked. Ours had good keywords and descriptions too. Didn't matter at all.
I guess it's just part of the way things are done(tm) with computers. Every few months, everything breaks and you start over. Glad other industries don't work this way. We'd still be living in caves.
It's a wonderful way to run a business too: like running a neighborhood hardware store that teleports 500 miles every six weeks.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
It seems that Google is also less concerned with search quality then before -- just compare their quailty with some of the newer, less heard of, engines. This leads me to conclude that Google's putting their efforts primarily into approaches where they see very large margins, such as content-based (adsense) advertisements.
Is that www.google.com searches alone, or does it count searches on all the sites who use Google software for their searches?
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
The next logical step then will be to strive for the goth/underground/burnout market, by being *completely* unknown to Google. Your company name, URL, and even your line of business generate no results in Google. Nobody links to you. You just gotta know the URL.
I bet that's tougher than it sounds.
I run a retro candy website, www.zootcandy.com, and I get bombarded with ads and phonecalls from companies telling me they can improve my rankings. I use Overture, Findwhat, and Looksmart and they help quite a bit.
Using these services eats up your ad budget very fast but what else can you do? This is the way search engines make their money now and those free listing areas are getting muscled out whether you like it or not. It's only going to increase.
(Ok, technically their business is to sell as many AdWords as possible, but they do this by being the no. 1 search engine, and they are that because they provide the best search experience for the user.)
I love google... It is my home page in my browser. I use it 100 times a day. But sometimes the results don't cut it, or seem to be in a different direction than what I am looking for.
Does anyone have recommendations to some good alternative engines? I used to use altavista, askjeeves, hotbot... but I don't remember the last time I got really useful results from them (maybe cuz I haven't used them for a couple years). What about those apps that you can download that search numerous engines?
It is interesting (scary?) to see how much a business can be affected by the algorithms and voodoo of an entity such as google. What I find about myself as well, is that if I am looking for a store or business that provides a certain good or service, I always go to google (or mytelus, gag...) to search for it. I don't think I even go to any sort of specialty shops or businesses anymore unless I have found that they have a web site that doesn't repulse me. Anyone else find themselves falling into these sorts of habits?
java guy, tech blog...
80% of the market? Monopoly! Prosecute!
The Ezine Directory
This is what's changing the world. Everyone remembers those old IBM ads about global e-business or some other buzzword. Now we're seeing the reality: a relatively small business can greatly increase the scope of its market and compete with big boys. The trick has always been to overcome the power law effect and move up the curve. Google is a phenomenal equalizer in this respect: write a good ad, put a good site online, and (most importantly) have a well-run business that does its job well, and you can go somewhere because, externally, you can give the same or better impression to customers as your larger, less-savvy competitor. The .com boom and bust didn't disprove this plan, it only made it more clear that at the root of the business there has to actually be a business.
It's like the Cluetrain Manifesto is proving itself out after all.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Makes me very sad, as I love Google. Hate to see it get gamed so easily!
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Never happen!!!
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Stop complaining. Small businesses can pay $50,000/year or more just for their yellow pages ads. And they won't guarantee your ad will be the biggest or anywhere near the front of the list.
If Google works so well, it's worth dedicating company resources for managing your place on the list or paying for your adwords. Google is still a better advertising deal then most.
Being on a couple 'adult webmaster' boards, I can tell you, whenever google does a shift, EVERYONE freaks out.
There are always the people its good for, but it seems to screw with a lot of people over too. But hey...that's the business
In the information age with transportation systems as they are, ideally there should be increased "economies of scale" and business should move to those who provide the best value (whatever combination of cheap, service, support, quality and product is optimal), and the huge massive amount of duplication of effort will be eliminated.
Unfortunately that *entirely* rests on consumers making educated choices and migrating to a small subset of "best of breed" service/product providers.
The fact that they aren't, and that Google rankings and adwords has this effect - is entirely due to the fact that consumers are stupid.
Don't blame Google. Blame stupid consumers.
Use Linux on cheep pc farm
Simple interface
Hightlights cool stuff, like Fractals and Einstein's b-day with modified Google graphic and link to searches.
Images
News
Groups
Privately owned and free from evil influences (aside from those of ownership)
Cached stuff is way nice when sites are obnoxious or pages missing.
Google Bad:
Can crush your site like a grape if you're not ready for traffic
Selling out, selling words
Included lots of (subscription) news services without ability to exclude them (I know, it's free and I'm whining, but I think it's getting worse and I'm not about to subscribe to 200 news sites to see a picture of Jackson's boob)
Groups take too long to post messages and some groups not available.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If your business has anything to do with Gaston Julia or julia fractal, then Google's traffic can certainly break your business.
...So go ahead businesses, pay tribute to your new Google overlords.
I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
I love google. I use it every day. It is an oracle and a home for all of human knowledge. The greatest archive in history. Period.
However, all of this is only owned by one company.
Does anyone else see the danger here? 80% of the internet uses google for searches. Think about this. 80% of people use the same service owned by the same people.
I am wary.
Luckily, google has a track history of being a fantastic and fairly honest company. But how long until someone that works there becomes too greedy.
There is a serious danger in having so much power centralized to one service. I commend google for creating the greatest source of knowledge in human history.
I just worry that, maybe, we'd be better off if we had some more options, in case google turned sour.
Surly SOMEONE can compete with google.
no
I think the ideal type of business that is made for online sales is the type of business that meets a niche market. This fits in nicely with many niche communities (e.g. hobby sites, slashdot, etc) that exist online. If you depend on Google to bring people in, then your store is either too generic, or not advertising correctly.
For example, what do you think would be the most effective advertising for ThinkGeek.com:
1. A google addword for "xyz geek term" or
2. A banner add on slashdot
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
I think everyone, anyone and especially EFF and Groklaw need to remember what was stated in that report.
80% is a huge portion of any market and all related market research to determining this number should be held onto by interested parties. It may become very handy after longhorn is released... imagine the dent to the 80% figure embedded IE will have when 100% of it's users will be directed to MS's search serrvices.
So while this data may cause for a lot of rooting, tooting and backslapping today, in a couple years it could be the basis for yet another MS anti-trust suit.
One of our framed sites where I work mysteriously dropped from page 1 to page 20 or so in the Google rankings, though we can't think of anything that we've done that can be considered search engine spamming. We've fixed all the minor possibilities we can find though, and will just have to wait for the next re-index.
We're thinking of buying into Google ad-words. A large percentage of the people who go to our site buy our products.
I wouldn't even venture a guess as to the amount of web content that Google doesn't display, given its limitations.
It seems hard for a small buisness to fight for a good page rank with all those scripted sites flooding Google with irrelevant Linkexchange or other sites that get you nowhere near your desired information. This is especially true since Google gives those pages a higher rank that contain the keyword in the url (hence all the blabla?cheap+shoe+store) links).
Judging from my personal impression Google has become less useful lately...
just my 2cents
If that made any sense at all, the yellow pages of the phone book would already be regulated.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
There's obviously been an arms race developing for a long time between the people running queries and the people with sites that might be returned by queries. Has anyone thought about what the likely endgame is? To me it seems possible that good impartial search engines are just doomed. How can you write algorithms that automatically read pages and determine their relevance to particular subjects in the face of web-page creators who will do anything to get ranked highly?
And it's not enough for your ranking method to be a little bit obscure or hard-to-understand; any search engine now has to face the prospect that the economy is capable of supporting smart poeple to work full time on figuring out how to break your ranking algorithm.
It's not hard to imagine a future where any search engine is either manually maintained (like the various web directories) or completely advertiser-run.
--Bruce Fields
Google is popular because it works.
It seems to give good results, and seems reasonably fair.
The paid links are clearly identified.
If google started being unethical, or giving bad hits it would be less valuable.
Their only competative advantage is accurate results, they must keep it.
justover18.com continues to a lower ranking than barely18.com on booble.com.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Lookie what I got when I searched for Litigious bastards
Here is a paper describing my exchange with Overture on this issue. Summary of paper:
Since then I have determined by researching one of my own pay-per-click keywords is that Overture will filter out a client that has a cookie if it clicks more than once every 30 minutes.
That's funny.
Your lame saying here.
Steve Ballmer, if small buisness owner's have a couple hundred dollars left to advertise no Google then surely the MS licensing department hasn't been doing it's job. Look fora price hike in Office in the next couple days.
I don't really see how he can be spamming if he didn't give any url for his business, or even his name. Sounds like he just likes bragging.
The feature describes how the fortunes of small companies turned when their Google ranking rose or dropped.... [which has] spawned a whole Google-optimization industry where consultants can charge $5,000 per site for tweaking....
Fungible is defined as "[r]eturnable or negotiable in kind or by substitution, as a quantity of grain for an equal amount of the same kind of grain". In other words, it means "interchangeable".
Apparently the information on these web sites is fungible: Google can substitute one business for another, and as far as Google is concerned, the result is the same.
This is not to say that the businesses necessarily offer products that are fungible; but apparently, for certain obvious searches about those products, the sites return essentially the same information. And it's that information -- not the products -- that Google "sells".
So each competing business offers essentially the same information as far as Google is concerned. These businesses then hire consultants to multiply the number of other sites linking to their version of that fungible information, in hopes that Google will see the links and consider their web site the more authoritative and thus higher paged-ranked source for the fungible information.
The problem is that the information is fungible. rather than try to multiply the links to the same old information, differentiate your site by offering different information.
One easy way to offer different information is to offer a different (and presumably but not necessarily lower) price. Or --egads! -- differentiate your site by offering a better product. Or a bundle product.
Or even better, give Google what it wants: diverse information. Write an article about your product or service that addresses a need your customers have. Offer it for free, and attract people to your site. If Ace Hardware offers free e-books on hoe to make home repairs, Google will index it, and I'll, end up there. and maybe I'll stay and buy, rather than go back to Google and find competitor Home depot.
Or give away free instructions for making paper models of your product, like Yamaha does with its motorcycles. That got Yamaha featured on Slashdot -- and for free. Put up a whitepaper -- not the usual crap whitepapers that come down to "the only solution is our product, and by god it's a vague solution" -- but a real whitepaper of real use to professionals in your industry.
Sponsor an open-source project that use or features or facilitates the use of, your product. and then sponsor that project's web space, on your server next to your site.
We could come up with example after example, but the take home point is this: if the information you offer is fungible, expect sooner or later someone else will win the page rank lottery and outrank you. So make sure you offer something unique and uniquely useful.
That'll be $5000.00, please.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
It's how Google works. If a bunch of people all link to a site/page with the same words, then you search for those words, it will come up highly. It happens all the time.
I know it's just an idiom but I think it's fair to say a Google can help a business "make" it but it doesn't "break" it. The article is all about how fortunate you can be if you have top rank in Google but Google in no way is obligated to help anyone nor does it actually break anybody.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
...who think the slashbots are overreacting when they say Microsoft is about to start targetting Google for destruction as if it's priority number one...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Leave litigious out of it, and look what you get.
If your business' success is solely based on your web page's index on Google, then you don't have much of a business.
(I'm not talking about buying legit ads on Google.)
Aside from shopping sites and very random, hard to find things, I don't see where Google is so important when it comes to being broken.
Most businesses seem to use the web as an extension of their brick and mortar business. It's a place you visit when you need extended information on a company or a quick way to communicate with a corporate office.
Simply putting your site on your next batch of business cards will probably produce more relevant visits to your site than having every person who typed a word that happens to match with your advertising scheme with Google.
For instance, if I am going to do research on window curtains, I will probably hit up a few big brick and mortar store's websites, then go check out the products in person. Since the big corporations seem to be the only people running stores these days, it would seem that most people would know what is in their area without the assistance of the web (except for driving directions). Most folks would know Linens 'n Things, Bed Bath 'n Beyond, Riches, Target, Walmart, etc have such items and would not need to do a blanket search on Google for 'window curtains'.
Personally, when I do a search and see where a company obviously paid for their search location, I will rarely visit. I tend to assume they are just concerned about getting a bunch of hits for banners and redirection to sites I would have already visited on my own.
I know it's important to some web-only, small companies without a well-known name. But this is not something I would consider 'make or break' on a wide scale. It sounds more like a case of a small minority making a majority of noise over something they do not think is fair.
Let me see if I've got this right. Slashdot is carrying an article about USA Today running a story about Google and the businesses that want to be googled, which story is featured on Google's news page, and which article is running on the same day as another Slashdot article about an academic site that got slammed by hits from users that googled it, which academic site now has substituted a page pointing both to Google and to the Slashdot article.
Right. Ok. Never mind me. Just talk amongst yourselves.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If they want to pay for placement, that's what ads are for. If they want high rankings, they can damn well do it the same way people have always done it: get happy customers to link to them. A company that pays a googlespammer thousands of dollars in hopes of deceiving customers deserves to lose; googlespammers have made web searches utterly useless for broad ranges of topics.
Joe Computer #1: Hey, how do i get to my search engine?
Joe Computer #2: Just look it up on google.
Speaking from experience, people who rely on Google optimization as their only method of marketing are cheap and stupid, and their businesses deserve to fail. Hopefully their failure will wake them up to the reality of running a business - that real marketing doesn't come cheap or easy, and there are no shortcuts to developing good word of mouth for your business.
The people who think SEO is a marketing panacea are the same ones who name their businesses "AaaaBetterWebCompany" because it shows up first in the yellow pages. Do you know any big or even medium-sized businesses that have names like that? No? Think there's a reason for that?
"It rubs the loton on its skin, or else it gets the hose again"
dont quote a psychopath if you cant get it right!
I wondered about the "200 million hits/day" figure, which sounded kind of low to me. So I tried to find the original data citation. I may be lame, but I am having trouble finding it on searchenginewatch.com. Perhaps they got their data from hitwise.com (25 million tracked) or comScore.com (1.5 million tracked), in the Ratings & Reviews section. The USA today article makes it sound like google gets only 200 million searches a day! Anyone who isn't busy have time to look into this suspect figure? I think we may have another case of a reporter citing something he read in a newsletter without understanding what the numbers actually mean.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go irradiate something.
Search Engine Watch says that Google now performs an estimated 80% of the searches (200 million) on the Internet every day.
Something hasn't added up here yet. If Google gets 13% of so of search visits and we know who powers whom, how do we get to 80%?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
My blog comes up as the first result for my name. Why? probably because my name is added to the end of every post, and because i am linked by my friends. If one were so inclined all they would have to do it seems is get linked and reccomended by business partners to increase their ranking.
From a web site designer perspective, Google often seems to be a random traffic generator. I often find my sites scoring high for irrelevant keywords. There is really no good way, on the free side of the board, to say that my site fits this set of keywords and doesn't fit that set of keywords. I really dislike the idea that I have to change the content for the search engine.
This type of problem gets magnified when there is one primary search engine with one primary result set.
relies on other businesses.
Unless, of course, you provide your own power, water, paper, fuel, raw materials, construction, manufacturing, assembly, warehousing, transportation, sales, waste disposal, support, banking, and the needs of your employees.
Can you name one business that does all of these things, and does not purchase anything from anybody?
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
There's a catch-phrase that would get you in my circular file real quick.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when there are only a few dominant players in an industry. Auto shops are generally dependent on the decisions of auto manufacturers. Look at the hassles created by the little onboard computers. Mechanics have to pay big time to get diagnostic equipment. A lot of independent software firms were wiped out when MS managed to get a monopoly on the OS.
All the independent manufacturers who are dependent on Walmart have no choice about the their fate. Walmart controls the customer base.
In health care, the big insurance companies make or break private practices.
If you wish to ridicule everyone in the web design business because they are dependent on Google, I wish you would at least name a few industries where the small players on not dependent on the whims of an empowered elite.
Why is it that on occasion that the top 10 to 50 "hits" all show urls with different domain names but they all point to the same website? Why is it that there are so many fake search engines that get top spots on Google - many times with totally random words. I am starting to get tired of Google allowing this sort of gaming. Now, I just need to find a suitable replacement ....
I directed people to my cafepress site, http://cafeshops.com/ruechaos and someone used me as a refferer. Given that my site was relevant to the article, was it wrong to do so?
Those product lists contain prices, and Froogle, of course, can rank by price. So "search engine optimization" for Froogle consists of offering the lowest price. Once Froogle gets rolling, online retailing is going to be about price competition.
Google has no paid placement for
search results.
j
Perhaps depending on a company over which you have little control makes for a lousy business plan. Relying on Google to bring you customers isn't very different from sending out 250,000 e-mails (or snail mails) with the expectation that two or three per thousand might become customers.
If you instead offer a quality product or service and charge a decent price and do whatever else it might take to make your customers happy, you won't really care where your business is ranked by Google. Furthermore, if you please your customers and maintain a web site that's half useful, your Google rank will probably end up being pretty high.
For those of you too young to remember the days before Google, there were other search engines, such as Altavista (the first big one) and Yahoo. The reason Google became the most popular is that they do a very good job of ranking the interesting items first, which is important when there are 39000 hits for your query. The Search Engine Promotion business, when it's not just a scam sold by spammers, is mainly about doing artificial things to make Google's robots think your page would be interesting to humans; it's much better to _actually_ make your page interesting to actual humans, and hope Google's robots pick up on that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You are an idiot for not having bought ads when you were number one. Remember, the purpose of ads as far as google is concerned is to pay for their service. If their service is helping you earn money, then you ethically owe them for helping you. And by having ad words in place you would not have lost nearly as much buisness when the algorythm changed.
I hate to use the above tone, but the internet is not free. Google is not free. It just looks that way.
I must be one of the few people who rarely click on the paid advertising links on the right side of the search results. When I do click on them, I have found they often lead to questionable type web sites who I wouldn't want to give my credit card number to.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
system on slahdot. -a google, flamebait!
An interesting point being brought up by responses on this thread is the informational Google versus the business/products Google. We have 2 scenarios:
- Searching for "Apple" while looking for information about the company, who is on the board, company history.
- Searching for "Apple" while looking for an iPod.
This is an extremely bad example, but the point is I think the problem that Google is running into is that the line between information or selling products is becoming too fuzzy. But I would say that both searches are "legitimate". In the least, the blurring of this line only serves to dilute the search results.
Maybe a solution would be to move all product/purchase type searches to Froogle and have Google return ONLY informational sites instead of sites that sell products (which seems inline with their original intent).
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
That was just a subtle way of calling "BULLSHIT!" on the parent post. Hence, ontopic. And insightful.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Google can ban you for 30 days. During that limbo your site does not appear in the indes at all. If you ask why you get a terse "website removed at webmasters request" and even most google staffers aren't told why they were removed.
Need Mercedes parts ?
have a very relevant website that lots of people visit and link to.
I run a health related website that is #2 for a single keyword and I've not spent a penny, but I have spent years being a valuable resource to the people who have an interest in the subject matter.
The key, I'll say it again, is relevance.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
You've just explained, to anybody that has figured out what google wants, why you're doing badly.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I keep hearing this complaint but I can honestly say that by introducing a couple of keywords to remove you can find what you're looking for withing seconds. At least I've never had a problem; I can't rememeber the last time I actually coudln't find what I was looking for on Google.
Need Mercedes parts ?
We were listed as the top or one of the top companies for a few keywords that we specialize in, and recently Google's new shift in indexing has plummeted us to an unknown location for ALL of the keywords we used to get top rankings for.
When 80-90% of our business comes from clients who found us on Google, we're scrambling to figure out how to get that top listing again. It's the difference between our small 5 person company thirving or dying, and that's not just speculation, it's the way of our life.
The question on a lot of small businesses's mind who are in the same predicament is most likely: "What went wrong?"
I'm not directly blaming Google, there were most likely steps that we could have taken, but Google is literally like hacking a black box. Right when you think you may have figured out how things work, it all dances around on the insides and changes the game again.
Simply by being there for me when I needed information pronto, whether via a traditional query or by using the "Google Answers" feature.
It is funny that Google has a near monopoly based on a superior product and the ppl who are complaining typically use MS which is a company that has aquire a monopoly through illegal means. MS has actually destroyed far more companies just with a single update than Google has.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Since it has been made public that Microsoft is after Google, it is possible it'll start raining articles like these. A few drops at first, with scattered hailstormz (sic). A pity we'll have to detect ourselves the more funded arguments on the benefits and drawbacks of Google's success.
Propaganda and antipropaganda are subtle weapons.
Given M$ weapons of mass distraction, Google will need to be very good to survive.
--------
* Sigh *
Seriously, though, the main plan would be AdWords. They are ridiculously cheap for what you get back, we are in a small geographic market with a product that you can't exactly FedEx, (Adwords can be limited by country, limiting inappropriate exposure) and people seem quite happy to click on the ads if they are actually trying to buy something and the ad matches what they want. And those are precisely the sort of clicks we want. So we work on the ad language, trying out a few different campaigns and letting Darwin sort out which works best.
Beyond that, we just try to use appropriate language on the website, targeted more to the user but with Google in the back of our heads, taking care to use titles and header tags as they should be used. Google generally seems to appreciate this.
The best way to get a high rank on google is to be relevant and have some decent, non-deceptive meta tags. You don't need to hire anyone to do that. A search on google for word97 and c# brings up my homepage first. My homepage is about getting c# to play nice with word97(none of the c# example code microsoft gives out works with word97, although the documentation says it does).
My webpage became the top listing for this search within a week of my writing this homepage. It is ugly (made in 3:00 am after a programming binge) and has few links, but actually relevant to the search query. IMO this is an example of how google is doing their job very well.
In short, the whole paying someone for better google placement thing is bogus in that it is unnecessary if your site is actually relevant to a given search query. People like the sellers of porn who add every concievable word into their metatags in attempt to get undue hits are the only people who can benefit from such a service.
Is this a new form of censorship, where we are n0t given all the information because some educated people did not pay to have it appear?
[Please sign here]
With most SEO companies, you will have to settle to keyword combinations, instead of 1-word searches, and usually you will only get results fro things -NO-ONE-USES- as a search thing.
.... what if Buses disappear? search engines will stay for a long time, and people will use whatever is free and returns relevant results ....
.. .. ..
Here is the simple rule to follow: build content, do not spam, choose keywords and description that describes your site, do not link to banner farms and similar crap.
I just started optimizing my sites, and yes I base part of my business on being listed on google, google ads, inktomi (msn) and other places...
and it works, and it is an acceptable business model.... as some people base their business on advertising on let's say Buses
I think if you follow google (or other's) guidelines and optimize with a brain, you can make $$ without scam/spam/dirty tricks
but that is only my opinion... and experience
I did some work on a web-site, and one of our major requirements was that we had to maintain our google ranking while we migrated. We had some heavy optimisations in place, even changing the way our application worked, to optimize our google raking.
Turns out a very large fraction of our traffic was through google. I guess in the future I am going to be seeing (and building) a lot more of web-sites optimized for google.
more about me
Candle trucks anyone?? ;)
There was a discussion a few weeks ago here where the consens was: "Lets push SCO up in google" :)
Seems like they were successful
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Auto shops repair the cars that the manufacturers design and build.
All the independent manufacturers who are dependent on Walmart have no choice about the their fate.
WalMart buys products from the independent manufactuers.
In health care, the big insurance companies make or break private practices.
Insurance companies pay the bills.
In each of those cases, there is a direct link to another business. In the case of Google and the websites that they rank, the relationship is quite tenuous. In the context of this thread, the parent to your post is correct - by having to rely on Google's pageranking system so much that it can make or break your business (particularly break), it reveals a weakness in the business model. It's gaming the system, except that the system doesn't reveal exactly how it works, so that rather than putting effort into designing a business and web site that maintains a high page rank by virtue of its "real" utility and popularity, the effort ends up going into tricking the system into believing that the web site is more valuable than it actually is.
The examples you gave are more symbiotic than parasitic. The business model suggested by the parent to your post is more parasitic than symbiotic.
The auto shops are symbiotic because if cars from a particular manufacturer can't be repaired anywhere but at the dealer, new car sales may begin to slump.
WalMart's suppliers are symbiotic because obviously both WalMart and its suppliers make money from the goods that they sell.
Even the insurance company and the doctor are symbiotic - if enough doctors don't accept an insurance company's payments, then the insurance company will have a hard time finding customers.
Can the big guys exert leverage? Of course. But the big guys have to deal with a lot of little guys...and the little guys have the ability to work together for their own good.
What might be more accurate would be a medical practice that invents patient cases in order to fraudulently bill Medicare. They rely on those fraudulent billings to stay in business. They are gaming the system. If Medicare doesn't catch on, but changes the way that the paperwork is handled, the practice can changethe way they bill, continuing their flawed business model. They are completely dependent upon Medicare - if the system changes enough, then the practice is done for. And, of course, if they get caught, they go to jail (and the practice is out of business). That's the sort of parasitic behavior that businesses who game Google are displaying...of course, gaming Google isn't illegal. Who knows, maybe it isn't even unethical. But I don't think that it's a smart business model, either.
-h-
How can it be that my site www.babypool.com gets completely dropped off google? Yes. my traffic has been down. I have now way to know how about fixing the problem. I have no recourse. Build a new site?
for a two person business in Cleveland. Don't yell at me, I needed the money and have done other, better things with my life since.
;-)
Immediately, my client jumped to the top of the rankings, #1 most of the time, #3 at the worst, and this is still true almost two years later. Granted, theirs is a niche market, so they should probably be on the second or third page of results, but c'mon now google, wise up to my stupid trick and dump this chump off the front page already!
Now, just waiting for someone from google to get in this conversation an offer me a job
Google's basic objective is to find sites that are interesting to humans. They implement this by using robots with some algorithms about what kinds of features are interesting to humans. Sometimes people do things that look interesting to robots without actually being all that interesting to humans (either by trickery, or just by accident - blogging got lots of semi-artificial extra recognition because of this.) I don't view correcting this as "punishment" - just "education for robots".
There was a guy called The Search King who sued Google because they derated all his tricky methods. He lost. Basically, he'd built a big link farm so he could do thousands of links to his customers' sites. (Virtual machines are lots of fun for this sort of thing :-) For the most part, his customers' sites weren't actually interesting - that's why they were willing to pay for his help, and unfortunately he didn't help them by showing them how to make their sites interesting to humans, only to robots.
Sometimes trickery _can_ be interesting to humans - the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Not Found" hack and "Miserable Failure" pointing to George Bush hack were both fun. They don't deserve to be spanked for it, though after a while the Googlemeisters will probably decide they've had their 15 minutes of fame and crank down their methodology's ratings a bit.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Anyone other than me noticed a huge swarming of googlebots in the last 2 months or so? I think I've got upwards of 100 unique visits from googlebots on a site that doesn't really get a whole lot of traffic (comparatively). It's kinda annoying actually. How often does google have to survey the site per month?
GoogleCash
Are you free and clear on that? It seems many companies would have patented processes like that.
Saying Google is too powerful and should be forced to carry politically correct content is somewhat like saying CNN is too powerful and should be forced to carry politically correct news, except that the Internet has far fewer limitations on capacity than cable TV and has a much lower cost for getting into the business. It's not only Wrong, but it would degrade the quality of the site, and people would go leave. By contrast, if you offer a competing channel (like Fox News or PBS or politically-correct-search-engine.gov), then people can make a choice between your favorite site and their current one.
Also, while the Search Engine Watch site says 80% of searches are Google, I've recently seen some discussion that Google is about 30-40% of the market, Yahoo's pretty close, and there are some others out there with non-trivial readership levels.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And I'm ranked just above WinDrivers.com on the first page.
I didn't pay for that. I just have a massive collection of drivers. My site consumes an 80GB harddrive and about 50% of that is drivers.
WinDrivers.com used to charge $50 a year for access to their collection which I remember because I thought it was so outragous. Now they charge $29.95 a year. Which is 5 cents less than I charge. However they still charge $5 for a day pass where I charge $1.
If you're looking for a specific file that Windows told you're missing and you type it in Google, my site will be top ranked if I have it. Sites like WinDrivers.com tend to ZIP up their files. I let them all hang out.
I'm also highly ranked on DirectX related things because I have practically every version of the SDK. And likewise, all the files are available indiviually. So looking for a specific file will result in my site comming up.
It's content that gets a site ranked high as well as the domain name, file name, and directory name.
I'm currently in the process of revamping the site which will probably kill me on Google for a bit as it reindexes everything but that doesn't take long.
You don't need to pay $5000 to get highly ranked. You just need some sense and a well designed web-site with stuff people would be looking for.
Slashdot isn't bad advertising either. Recycled Russian Brides was probably the most effective sig ad. I had a front page story once and a number of times I've written articles which have been posted on a major game development web-site. Free advertising in exchange for making something useful.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Although this has not been widely noticed, the internet is changing stock photography (where you look for an existing photograph to use). Where people went to large stock agencies to find images, many now rely on web searches. This has it made possible for this photographer to generate decent sales without doing anything outside cyberspace. An yes, most of the traffic is from google or its partners. This is just my area of specialty, but I am sure there are many other businesses that have been affected the same way.
Google now performs an estimated 80% of the searches (200 million)
Doesn't that seem fairly low? I run about 15+ Google searches a day!
You'll have to do your own search, because Overture claims to pay attention to REFERER variables as well as cookies. But it's interesting to see that somebody's done some experimentation with it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is an earlier post, parent has a history of posting others' arguments very soon after they have posted them.
--
It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
What are you, some kind of shouting nitwit? The hole in this story's lead logic is very obvious, although it eluded the submitter, the poster, and the article's author, as well as the posts readable prior to my starting to post. So those of us posting in agreement wrote very similar short entries, because we all happen to be right.
But enough niceties, you illiterate, inchronate (!) yammerer. I posted over 20 minutes before the post you cite as prior:
break yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
by Doc Ruby (173196) on Thu Feb 05, '04 01:29 PM (#8191893)
vs.
Make or break? (Score:4, Interesting)
by FreshFunk510 (526493) on Thu Feb 05, '04 01:50 PM (#8192175)
Where do you get off calling me names, when your inane moderation pretense is so obvious in your own user ID? How about a single example of my "posting others' arguments"? You libelous idiot, my only joy in Slashdot is in expressing my view, getting it out of my system, in an audience of educated readers. It's bad enough that so many responses express only the shortcircuited spinal reflexes so cruelly demonstrated in your post. But now I have to waste perfectly good writing on an otherwise unnecessary defense from your slander.
While I'm charitably replying to you, a mere shout in the dark, here's some adult advice to a child for whom there might still be hope that you won't keep pissing our pool:
1> Read the posts. If you're confused about sequence, look at either the timestamp or the "cid" number in the header.
2> If you have something bad to say, back it up with facts and references. You'll soon acquire the discipline to keep your mouth shut when you're wrong, not sure, or just look stupid shooting off your mouth.
3> Step away from the capslock. Come down off the ledge, put down the knife. It's going to be OK, it's just Slashdot, and mommy's got your nice happy pills.
FWIW, now that I've set you straight, don't go flaming FreshFunk510 for "copying" me. He seems like a decent poster, who can come up with simple rejoinders to the faulty logic of stories, like this make/break one, on his own - just like me. If you actually read our posts for a while, you might just climb out of the slime and learn to think, too.
--
make install -not war
die
Not at all. Content and structure still rule.
A properly constructed HTML page with tightly focused subject matter, descriptive headings (that use the HTML heading styles, not FONT size) and well-chosen heading text will rank higher than one full of tricks and no content.
If the content is good enough to start getting links from widely distributed sites, and especially "heavy hitters" like universities and large corporations, it ranks even better.
But that solution - good content and clean HTML - is so simple that most people refuse to believe it will work.
Doc Ruby is suspected to be a bot written in perl by Sexual Asspussy - to always have the last word.
If you are not a bot please take some advice:
1. Sit up straight, close your eyes and breath deeply and slowely for 2 minutes. Listen to the air flowing in and out and your heart beating, let your mind feel light. Relax until you feel no pressure, no stress, no thought.
2. Go down to the park and take a walk in the bright daylight and fresh air. See the ducks and birds and beauty in nature.
3. Go home and have a long relaxing sleep.
4. When you wake remember that you are an intelligent guy and on any day you can achieve anything out truely want to (or at least get a great foothold to spring from the next day).
--
It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
I promise to stop replying when you stop spewing crap at me. Especially if you're going to ape my style, your hollow words won't echo emptily long before I easily drop some science on you. Even if you, MMGT, are two far gone to benefit, more, later, and better words of mine can be found following your slimetrail in replies across other blathering posts in your post history. The humor of skewering you in this thread has run out, but there's lots of laughs in the other threads, you posterboy for mockery.
--
make install -not war
OK MMGT, wading through your post history muck is too revolting for my sensitive palate, even if it confirms my suspicions of your bestial nature. You can have the last word - it suits you.
--
make install -not war
'``funny` ` ```.-"`````"-. '' ' 8'` MMGT & doc ruby sucks the fun .-.``,| ' '5'` MMGT & doc ruby sucks teh fun .... )`\___\__|IIIII|__/___ ____ ____ _____ funny doc ruby****
|``smile` ` ``/```funny```\ ' ' 7'` MMGT & doc ruby sucks teh fun
'``funny` ` `|````smile````| ' '6'` MMGT & doc ruby sucks teh fun
|``smile` ` `|,``.-.
'``funny` ` `| )(__/ \__)( | ' '4'` MMGT & doc ruby sucks teh fun
|``smile` ` `|/````/ \````\| ' '3'` MMGT & doc ruby sucks teh fun
'````(@_` ` `(_````^ ^````_) ' '2'` MMGT & doc ruby sucks teh fun
|'
' ( )@8@{ {____|-\IIIII/-|____ ____ ____ _____> and time to relax
| ````` )_/````\``RUBY```/ ' ' ' ' 'MMGT & doc ruby sucks teh fun
'doc (@`` ruby ``---`---`` ` ' ' '` have a nice day Mr Ruby&SMILE
--
It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
If you're basing the entire success or failure of your business based on hits from a single search engine then you must have feces where your brain should be.
My last college job before graduating and working full time was in a company whose large chunk of sales depended on being easily found for searches on product descriptions. It was my job, to among other things, make sure our rating was as high as possible on Google. I had to become a SEO Expert.
We had a big corelation between the number of internet sales and our google search position for that product type. While going from #3 to #2 for some product may not have been a big deal, being on page 2 of the results for any particular product means we sold virtually none of it.
Google is fairly straight forward in the way it assigns rank. There is the cross-link counter. Basically the more sites link to you the higher "respect" level you get overall. That means that if you and a competitor have the same amount of keyword frequency and whatever, if your site is more "respected" you will be listed higher. This is pretty hard for small businesses. Who's going to link to you?
Having the right domain name helps. If I want to find some general type of product, chances are if the domain name matches the search term, that's gonna rank highly. Check out a google for "car parts" Carparts.com is number one. Try this for any general kind of term.
Why is this important? Because if it makes it more likely the domain specializes in what you're looking for. If you're really looking for car parts, carparts.com is probably better for you than allkindsofmetalthings.com
content is king...
the more content you have and the better organized it is, the better you will do on google.
For example, let's say you sell Tires, Bumpers, and Headlights. 3 categories. In each category you got 300 products. If you are smart, each of those 900 product pages will link back to the categories with the words "Tires" "Bumbers" etc as link text. As far as google knows, this means there are 900 pages linking to your Tires page with the word "tires".. So that page must really be about tires. Of course its even better if someone from another domain links to you saying "tires"
Using this kind of web design and organization, you can give google hints as to which words you really want to be found for. It's not spamming, because your page really IS about tires (or whatever), and what you're doing is organizing your content efficiently.
sorry to digress (I thought it was cool. during my work there, we became number 1 for some of the search terms we really wanted)
The bottom line is that yes, if you want to make a living selling on line, you must be found. Google is by far the best one to focus your energies on because a lot of people use it and a lot of other engine (though fewer now) use it for their searches as well.
In our experience google text ads when placed correctly (ie for the right kind of categories, rather than the stupid find LINUX WIRELESS HOWTO on Ebay text ads) were worth the money.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
http://www.google.com/search?q=linux
No IP addy's there.
What they are talking about is HTTP_REFERER [sic] logs. Still gets logged if you POST or GET. If you connect to me, tell me what you want, and who you are, I am capable of logging it. Tough.
Nothing to do with Google or search.
Your second link includes the quote:
"Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address"
So, yes, Google, Slashdot, and every site you visit more likely than not stores such "fascinating" details about you as your browser version, IP address, time of visit, pages viewed, etc.
And?
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
My company advertises with and appears on lots of search sites and listing pages. Despite being listed in dozens of locations, Google still creates 35% or more of our web traffic. We're not putting all our eggs in one basket at all, but the sheer popularity of Google makes it comprise over a third of our online presence.
We used to appear in the first few search result pages or so before they altered their ranking system, and now we're well out of the top 60 and scrambling to figure out the new formula.
The point isn't so much that Google is going to "break us", but every time they change the ranking algorithms, they cut out a large chunk of our sales leads. It's their business, and I understand why they have to make changes and try to prevent system gaming, but when you spend several thousand dollars a month on AdWords and remain almost impossible to locate with in the regular search engine using the same terms that brought you up first a week ago, it's a bit of a slap in the face.
Drew
Google AdWords is really helping make my small business. AdWords is excellent, though it has a problem. At one point I had sixteen different ads, one for each type: INTJ, INTP, etc. The clickthrough rate was low. I then learned that I can increase the clickthrough rate significantly by having "jobs" and "careers" as negative matches, and now my clickthrough rate is way above Google's required minimum. But Google is still disabling ads because of their history. I spoke with Google about this, but they didn't offer a solution, so now I'm going back twice a day to re-enable the keywords, and I'll have to do this until Google's system figures out that the clickthrough rate is good for these ads.
Thought not. Nor do Google.
I'm not particularly defending Google here, I'm just pointing out that they have a business, and you have a business. Neither of you are in the habit of publishing the business secrets which make you better than the rest.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
If Google has such an impact on business, can it affect U.S. policy? Is anyone else fed up with the hypocrisy of the FCC outrage over Janet Jackson during the superbowl while dozens of murders are shown on prime-time tv each night? What is morally wrong about a woman's breast?
Please link 'FCC policy' to http://www.breastfeeding.com on your website. Such as:
FCC policy (because I'm fed up with the hypocrisy)
will have to look into this
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
When I first started advertising on google AdWords, I had trouble keeping the click through rate above 0.5%. My account was slowed a few times before I just decided 'screw it, i'm leaving it alone. And it worked!
I then added a bunch of ads, and found which ones people clicked on the most. I also added as many keywords as I could, and let google decide which ones they would drop.
So it can work if you are patient.
Also, the AdSense program is nice if you want to get a tiny bit of money back from your advertising.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
...on those damned "affiliate" sites. You know -- the ones that have made searching for actual information on stuff like history and science all but impossible without wading through dozens of virtually identical copies of Amazon web pages. This sort of thing seems easy to filter out, so I wonder why Google hasn't done so. Oh, the howls that will erupt when Google finally gets around to pulling the rug out from all of these free riders....
Make cheese not war 8:)
Textbook Definition of "add":
v. tr.
1. To combine (a column of figures, for example) to form a sum.
2. To join or unite so as to increase in size, quantity, quality, or scope: added 12 inches to the deck; flowers that added beauty to the dinner table.
3. To say or write further.
v. intr.
1. To find a sum in arithmetic.
2.1. To constitute an addition: an exploit that will add to her reputation.
2.2. To create or make an addition: gradually added to my meager savings.
Note, "advertisement" is not part of the definition. "Ad" is a marketing slang for "advertisement", "add" is a different word entirely.
Security is inversely proportional to the commitment of one desiring to circumvent it.
If you are upset about this sort of thing, do something about it! Go to Google's Spam Report Page and rat on the spammer.
Security is inversely proportional to the commitment of one desiring to circumvent it.
Go to the Spam Reporting Page
Security is inversely proportional to the commitment of one desiring to circumvent it.
reading the article again your right. Try checking your cookie log and look for the google one. I think the googlewatch site was making a point about *cookies with long expiry dates*.
looking at the cookie on my machine it had an expiry date of 8FEB2038 attatched was the following data ID=36accc993aa66c41:LD=en:NR=100:CR=2:TM=107394243 5:LM=1075939002:S=swKwossf4gh4rD50
Now this is most likely the prefs cookie I set while I was mucking around with some google hacks.
this is the type of problem I guess I was trying point out. One should not be overtly alarmed - but wary.
browser version, IP address, time of visit, pages viewed, etc. And?why your searchs of course. this information is gold - advertising, law enforcement etc
MBTI is ISTP
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup