Slashdot Mirror
Is Google Breaking Their Own Rules?
flood6 writes "Threadwatch is carrying a story about Google getting caught doing things they ban other websites for. Here is a page as viewed by the public and the same page as viewed by a search engine (their cache)." Note that the titles in the cache are employing classic keyword stuffing, presumably to improve rankings.
For now, the implications are simple - If Google can do this on it's own pages, why can ordinary webmasters not? Google's keyword stuffed, cloaked title would be hard to describe as anything other than an SEO tactic not so much frowned upon, but full on hated by the Search giant itself.
Why? Because it's their site and they are in no need to follow their own rules. They aren't going to ban themselves but they will ban you. If you want to be listed on *the* search engine then follow their rules. If you don't care if anyone finds you then you can modify your page during crawler indexing and other sites can pick you up.
Or it could just be lousy technical writing and lousy editing. Sure, the word is repetitive, but never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
But, you, they're allowed to. They're their own rules. They can make rules, and change rules, and ignore rules as they see fit.
Don't like it? Find another search engine (no longer as hard or as painful as it used to be).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
insightful interesting insightful interesting insightful interesting.
They look the same to me
Congress is the only one around here who gets to pass laws in the hypocritical fashion, e.g. labor laws.
You're not trying to imply Google is leveraging itself into the government, are you? That's ++L++R territory!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
just for fun, insert 'Microsoft' in this discussion everytime someone writes 'Google' and see if you feel the same way.
always mosh clockwise
Using their own site to promote themselves. Pretty sure that's ok. They ARE offering this service to the entire world for free. What would the internet be without Google?
If they write the software, they can automatically rank their own pages however they wish. It's not hard to check what site the page came from.
Uh, Google can do whatever they want to manipulate their own search engine. It's, like, one of the perks of private ownership. Y'know, this capitalism thing and all that. Doh!
Until there is a free and open search engine, you are beholden to whatever these firms wish to do.
I want to get spam. As a citizen of the united states it is my right to receive spam. Who are you to deny this right of me? I hope George Washignton Bush will protect my right and fight the terrorists who want to stop spam getting to me.
Telemarketers too.
Google's: 0
People who post insignificant stories about google's evilness: +1
google -don't be evel, wait till you go public!
The keywords Google added to their title are limited in number and relevant to the actual page. This is rather different from the practice of a lot of SEOs of stuffing with several dozens of keywords and stuffing keywords that have nothing to do with the content of the page itself. And I notice that a lot of the SEOs squawking about this issue are among the worst offenders for high-volume irrelevant-keyword stuffing. Something to think about.
News at 11 ! Google is promoting themselves on their own website!
Tools -> Chrange browser Identification -> Other -> Googlebot.
Nope... no change here.
Isn't it possible that the TITLE entry in the google cache database got corrupted for this page?
...this means when I search google.....for things related to google, google pages will make it higher in the search results?!?!
I feel so betrayed!
A lot of it undeserved. While they have a perfectly adequate prosduct (in the form of a search engine) and some pretty lousy products (GMail and Google groups) the fact remains that their only purpose is to make money.
And do that they will. By hook or by crook. Only when they get found out will they change their policy and backtrack. If they can get away withtheir shady tactics they will. They were hoping to add adds to peoples email with GMail, of all things. Did they think we wouldn't care about our privacy? And what about the cookies? Why do they need a cookie that doesn't expire for several decades? Do they think we might never use google, and then in 2018 we suddenly want to find a sitre about marsupials using exactly the same machine, and get upset that links are not opened in a new window?
Is it just irony that the example is on a "Adwords" page.
Are there other examples out there?
In Soviet Russia, asses suck this joke.
just in order to have high rankings on the other search engines...
nuff said.
Are they suggesting that google has to resort to keyword stuffing on cached pages to get a higher ranking on their own search engine? Is it me or is this unbelievably stupid? Surely, if they wanted too, they could just have their own pages rank top of whatever searchs they wanted- keywords or no keywords? Just some find of google flag in the ranking algorithm and they'd be done.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
It's also done globally as the article pointed out. Sneaky sneaky google.
(This still isn't evil by googles definition because "Evil is what Sergey says is evil." and this tactic propably adds some additional millions of dollars to Sergeys pocket)
My quality social news site.com.
Google doesn't need to stuff keywords for their own site - they could make their own Adwords page the only thing you ever see if you search for "traffic estimator." And why should Google care about stuffing keywords for Yahoo or Microsoft's earch engines? They don't control what you do for other search engines, either (if Google knew that your site only keyword-stuffed for MSN and Yahoo crawlers, would they care? No, they'd probably high-five you for screwing with their competitors' relevancy). There's no hypocrtical behavior here.
I see folk getting their panties in a twist shouting "mountain!" while pointing at a mole hill.
Kind of like how Microsoft should be able to package it's own internet browser along with it's own OS? capitalism...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Their next step is to put on bottom of google.com front page, in font size 1, white foreground on white background:
"britney spears
brittany spears
brittney spears
britany spears
britny spears
briteny spears
britteny spears
briney spears
brittny spears
brintey spears
britanny spears
britiny spears
britnet spears
britiney spears
britaney spears
britnay spears
brithney spears
brtiney spears
birtney spears
brintney spears
briteney spears
bitney spears
brinty spears
brittaney spears
brittnay spears
britey spears
brittiny spears
brtney spears
bretney spears
britneys spears
britne spears
brytney spears
breatney spears
britiany spears
britnney spears
britnry spears
breatny spears
brittiney spears
britty spears
brotney spears
brutney spears
britteney spears
briyney spears
bittany spears
bridney spears
britainy spears
britmey spears
brietney spears
brithny spears
britni spears
brittant spears
bittney spears
brithey spears
brittiany spears
btitney spears
brietny spears
brinety spears
brintny spears
britnie spears"
The title of the page is "traffic, estimator, traffic estimates, traffic tool, estimate traffic Google Adwords Support:..."
You can't seriously attribute that to lousy technical writing or editing?
It's Google's site so I don't see why they can't up their pages in rankings. They should have just used a transparent mechanism for doing it instead of using the techniques they ban others from using. That's where they haven't been smart - just be honest and treat certain Google pages like advertised links.
It's the year of Linux! To celebrate I have x free hotmail accounts to give away
Google's business model DOES NOT rely on trapping users and forcing - practically blackmailing - it's victims to make exorbant payments for upgrades, Google DOES NOT have a death grip monopoly on the consumer Search Engine market, and the page in question does not further any political, social, business, economic, or other goals.
Is it shifty and underhanded? Indeed, but Google has had a history of being a benign company, and as such do not deserve the same treatment as an actively malicious company.
By the same logic which you have applied here, what would you be feeling if the names "Mother Teresa" and "Osama Bin Laden" were transposed?
Is this some kind of witchhunt to try to paint google as evil? Much of this trashtalk started with MSN search relaunch wich makes me suspicious,
Wake me up when there is something worth looking at, this is just silly.
HTTP/1.1 400
Searching for "search engine" only brings up google in 5th place. They're certainly doing a shoddy job of being unfair.
If it was MS (if you use msn search or whatever their search engine is) made their products come out on top using such tactics then everyone would be trying to join the lynch mob. However if google does it its fine.
What I do find interesting is that they needed the keywords, and didn't just raise their rank artificially. Does the google algorithm not have such a feature in it (or not have it easily accessible)? Potentially it does but google chose to not use it. In either case this is nicer than what I'd see other companies doing in such a case, since I doubt they'd bother with keywords on their own search engine.
Hey, they may tell your not to, but how many of us listen? As long as there are search engines, there will be people stuffing it.
+-+-+-The folowing statement is true. The previous statement is false.-+-+-+
I don't get it. The two pages look the same to me.
Is it the highlighting? They always do that for pages that you find in the cache.
Check out Yahoo's search results compared to Google's search results.
It's only their own results that they're messing with, which although sneaky is within their rights (though I thought they promised to index pages without bias, after all they don't filter out fascist or illegal pages).
You'd think they had better ways to fiddle their own results than spoofing pages when they see their own bot.
And since when do they keep caches of their own pages?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I think this is actually handy. Google is simply altering the title "with the keywords you searched for". So that you can see the Google cache page in your title bar without seeing "Google cache", blah.
I don't see this as anything sneaky just something to help people. Why would Google want to alter the page rank of a cached page anyways?
Seems like a post to grab some hits on http://www.threadwatch.org/
Lame
An open-source web search engine. The project has been around for a couple of years and it's backed by Apache.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
Has anyone actually checked to see if they actually have lifted the rules for their own pages? I mean really, just because they did this on their own pages, does it mean they aren't getting the same mark down as everyone else? Does google really need to worry about any of their pages loosing a foothold in their own searches, they are LISTED ON THE FRONT PAGE! If I were google, I'm not sure I would worry about search position for a page I have linked on the front page of the search engine. :o)
Revolutionary Discontent
You pop caught you smoking, and he said, "No way!"
That hypocrite smokes two packs a day.
Google bans google webpages from google search engine.
That's a good question. So why do they?
My quality social news site.com.
Google is promoting their own site within their site. Does google use these tactics if OTHER sites robots crawl their site? I guess that would be the question. Repesenting yourself in your own search engine is different than a 3rd party using lame tactics to represent themself in your search engine.
The Spleen is a evil perverter of little boys.
the intraweb...
That should be, "Are Google Breaking Their Own Rules," not "Is Google..."
Subject-verb agreement: It's not just for pedants anymore!
The original article said:
But now, the links point to a different page. It is no longer about "Google AdWords Support: How do I use the Traffic Estimator?". Now the page is, "Why do traffic estimates for my Ad Group differ from those given by the standalone tool?" It's a completely different page on a completely different topic. And for this page, there is no difference between the cached and direct views.
That's why people are scratching their heads.
I don't know whether Google did this to cover up their actions when they got caught, or whether it was a simple and routine rebuild of their help database which caused page numbers to change so that the links no longer point to where they did before.
Begin using other engines and break the homogenization of the search engine market. We are better off with competition and multiple viable search services.
What I find amusing and disturbing is how Google accepts any crazy left-wing website for its Google News page (see Democratic Underground), but often refuses conservative sites like LGF and Powerline for various bizarre reasons (for instance, Google claims the sites they list in Google News must have a staff of more than one person...yet they list several left-wing websites that are one-person blogs). See here and here.
They also refused gun ads in their results, but allowed all those phoney Internet pharmacies to advertise, where any kid wanting to get doped up could get some shipped in the mail.
Just saying. If you want more information, see here. To be perfectly fair, there are plenty of sites claiming Google News is conservative-biased. You can make up your own mind.
So maybe this is just a case of them trying to do something to make their support work better?
Duh...a company tries to promote itself...there is a new concept...this should be front page news!
My comments may be crap...but they are my crap...and I am brave enough to stand by them...Never post as AC!
The "stuffed keywords" are a result of the Google caching system, which does similar things to all pages, not just Google's.
And anyway, this would be against Google's "rules" if they had done that on the actual web page, not the cache of it; the cached pages aren't what is being searched, it doesn't have any effect on page ranking.
Is you misusing their own grammar?
I am not sure that it is true. But leaving that aside, Google does not have a monopoly esp one that is forced or supported by illegal methods. They are large, but they do not really control the industry. Yahoo carries a lot more weight than others credit them for. When Google fails to pick up something relavent then I go to Yahoo.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes! It is obvious that the corporate overlords at Google cannot be trusted to act in a fully altruistic fashion, and may even do things that lead to profit.
Accordingly the Central Committee of Slashdot Readers (CCSR) demands that Google be nationalised and all assets seized so that it can be used for the greater good of all humanity.
Oh yeah, and Open Source too.....
Three Squirrels
I'm I the only one to notice the grammatical blunder in the topic for this news item?
What other people think of me is none of my business
...The new GoogleAppleSlashdot drinking game!
:-p
The rules are simple. Every day that Slashdot has a story about Google AND Apple, drink yourself silly! Chug in the instance of a Google and Apple story in a row! (Much like right now)
Don't sober up until 24 hours elapse without a GoogleApple story
(Try it yourself if you don't believe me)
What that says is "Prevent any user agent from indexing anything below the root hierarchy, unless it's Googlebot, and then only allow the root level and /support/"
So, no other search engines should ever be seeing this page. Basically, Google is using their own search engine to also index their own support information. And this is a problem because.... why?
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
"I'm a Google fanboy, so I blindly accept and justify it when they're a hypocrite."
Now. Not only did WalMart come down on those folk like a million-pound shithammer and trumpeted it to the press (who covered it more than the previous story), they are still systematically overcharging their customers.
The public has plenty of tolerance for hypocritical behavior. Sometimes I think that tolerance is the only thing keeping us from rioting in the streets.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Has Google responded? Did the author of the article bother to get Google's response before writing the article?
After all, they're not censoring this from their pages
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
"Well, Microsoft has been identified as a monopolist, so they have to play by a different set of rules."
I see people trot out this line every single time someone suggests that Microsoft be allowed something resembling the rights of other corporations. It's a broad, sweeping statement which essentially says that since Microsoft was designated a monopolist, the government can arbitrarily restrict their practices as they see fit, with barely adequate explanations.
It's also completely irrational. Yes, Microsoft was identified as a monopolist. The result? They've had to change some of their practices and submit themselves to an increased level of oversight from various government institutions. It does not mean that they have given up all normal, reasonable corporate rights that are in the possession of every other company. The vitriolic hatred for Microsoft on Slashdot makes some people think that any restriction on Microsoft is a good one - that they should be hampered in the course of normal business as much as possible, and screw any idea of fairness. Some might say that this was only justice, since Microsoft presumably didn't allow fairness to competitors and that's why they were convicted. Well, it may fit your personal sense of justice, but legally it's not. The legal system has already meted out its brand of justice, which, materially, is the only one that matters. And the legal system didn't say that Microsoft must be obstructed in business whenever possible, at every turn. They still retain the right to play by established legal rules - and, being a paranoid, highly successful company, they're going to exploit those wherever they can. You might not like it, but it's their right.
The coolest voice ever.
Wal-Mart employees are allowed to go in the doors marked "employees only".
Do you have ESP?
"I'm a Google fanboy and will accept and justify it when they're hypocritical. I'll blame the criticism on them being popular."
For the same reason that your boss gets to criticize your performance but not the other way around :)
In Gmail, you cannot see external images unless you explicitly specify by clicking a button. But I recently got an email from google recruiter who had the google image logo in his sig and it showed up in the email, even though the "display external images" flag was off..
Maybe its a bug.. maybe by "external images", they mean non-google hosted images, but I'd think that would be a little unfair..
where is http://google.slashdot.org/ .. how many more days till we get it?
"Well, Microsoft has been identified as a monopolist, so they have to play by a different set of rules."
I see people trot out this line every single time someone suggests that Microsoft be allowed something resembling the rights of other corporations. It's a broad, sweeping statement which essentially says that since Microsoft was designated a monopolist, the government can arbitrarily restrict their practices as they see fit, with barely adequate explanations. It's also completely irrational. Yes, Microsoft was identified as a monopolist. The result? They've had to change some of their practices and submit themselves to an increased level of oversight from various government institutions. It does not mean that they have given up all normal, reasonable corporate rights that are in the possession of every other company. The vitriolic hatred for Microsoft on Slashdot makes some people think that any restriction on Microsoft is a good one - that they should be hampered in the course of normal business as much as possible, and screw any idea of fairness. Some might say that this was only justice, since Microsoft presumably didn't allow fairness to competitors and that's why they were convicted. Well, it may fit your personal sense of justice, but legally it's not. The legal system has already meted out its brand of justice, which, materially, is the only one that matters. And the legal system didn't say that Microsoft must be obstructed in business whenever possible, at every turn. They still retain the right to play by established legal rules - and, being a paranoid, highly successful company, they're going to exploit those wherever they can. You might not like it, but it's their right.
The coolest voice ever.
I get this page
k ey wordEstimateDemo.php.txt
http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/samples/php/
Which is only nine
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
They are serving different content if the user agent is googlebot:
-snip-
-snip-They wouldn't be obvious enough to do this. There's probably an explanation, like they were re-organizing their pages or something. This also isn't as bad as other sites do--feeding the search engines an entirely different page--but is only adding keywords to the title. (Neither page had a keyword meta tag, oddly enough.)
Tired of free iPod sigs? Subscribe to my blacklist
So far, I've only seen this one example. Are there others? One page really doesn't make for a very good conspiracy. It would look worse for Google if all their pages do this.
I would have thought this was just an oversight that was corrected since the cache was taken, but others have pointed out that it still exists if you change your User-Agent to Googlebot 2.0
So is this on all of their pages or is it only on the one that is about why their bot won't index pages for keyword stuffing? Did anyone take time from bashing/defending google to think that it may just be a joke?
The debate wether it's 'evil' or not is relevant. It's part of the news. We should know what companies do so we can form our opinion on it.
:)
This discussion isn't about wether it's legal or not. Of course they're allowed to do it. But it's definately noteworthy to help us updating our opinion about companies.
I think we're stuck in the times old Microsoft battle thinking since these often do go about legal issues.
Now go on and debate wether you think it's evil or not and why you think it is
Obsequiously, your humble and obedient servant.
Cowardly anonymous.
Can we not use the term wiki for everything? That term means nothing more than a crappy web pages edited by who knows who that all like alike.
More to the point: ignorning the fact that this is google sending keywords to google; ignoring the fact that this their site and they can do whatever they want; ignoring the fact that people are using words like "evil" to describe something that affects exactly no one; ...
The key point here is relevancy. The keywords are relevant and accurate. You might say that this breaks Google's style guidelines, and that's a good reason for them to bug-fix it. But, I fail to see how this is some great transgression on Google's part. This is USEFUL INFORMATION that they are putting in the title. Ugly, sure. I hate when eBay does the same thing. It's still not keyword spam, and it's still not cloaking. Cloaking is when you pretend to the search engine that you're a different kind of site so that you get ranked in with that kind of site. It's not putting keywords in ugly user-visible places when they are relevant.
Please return to your useless ranting about Microsoft or something.
I believe this precedent has already been set by our parents...
Error encountered in IAWebSig.clsSig.Create: Last Procedure: sPrc_Ins_tblSig
Yes, I agree that this is an odd situation, especialy knowing googles stand on this. But, what, if any, reason would google want to stack the rank on their own site? I could maybe see if this was to increase ranking with other search engines, but why? Until such time as Google decides to let us know their reason, if any, I will hold my disappointment. After all, google has made all our lives a little easier......for free!
Long answer: the title of the accused page includes words that were used in the search query. You searched for the words "traffic estimate". You got a page about traffic estimates. Google used those words, as well as similar words, to find you a page. It's called stemming. It's how search engines work.
So you get a page in the cache where their title includes words used in the search. These words don't actually appear in the normal page. You also got a blurb at the top of the page saying "This is Google's cache..." That doesn't appear on the normal page either. So what the hell are you trolling about?
You may just have won non-story-of-the-week.
Presumably someone at Google has seen this article by now. Before you change your default search engine over to Yahoo, stop using gmail, or remove Google Desktop Search from your boxen, give them a few days to respond to this. I'm guessing that Google will fix this issue.
Disclosure: I don't work for Google, any subsidiary, or any affiliated company. Being paranoid, I don't use Google Desktop Search. I have (and use) a gmail account, and I actually like Google as a company.
I don't understand why people insist on such scrutiny of google. We use it all the time, and for all of its history it has attempted nothing insidious or evil. Hell, look at the comapny motto - Don't be evil.
The company has values (probably the largest company with anything resmbling nerd values) and stays on the proper side of them. They step on a few feet sure, that's what happens when you are the place people go to find things, and most ignore the rest. But the fact of the matter is, if you don't like what their tools do, don't use them. They are dedicated to search and improving the user's experience of searching (for almost anything). So why make things harder for such a large innovator in the field?
If you search for: google adwords traffic estimates differ on Google, you get this page as the first result, showing this title: "traffic estimator, traffic estimates, traffic tool, estimate ..."
It's not what they would want as a title if they were intentionally keyword stuffing and cloaking the page.
I read the paragraph and I don't think that they did anything that was specifically stuffing. Rather they were trying to be consistent and concise. Maybe I'm missed something but sometimes you will have a lot of words repeated frequently in order to express an idea.
This is especially true if you are talking about a noun representing a complex idea. Think about how many times you find the words Thread, Socket, Interface in a technical article on networking code examples...
I support the idea of getting engines to compete against each other to force them to continue to innovate, but from what I've seen google just wins hands down.
When I bring up their page, I get the results I want, on the first try, without being irritated by clunky pages full of flashy advertising. None of the other major engines do that nearly as well. I keep hearing about other engines that promise better results, but the best I've seen is "as good", which isn't enough to outweigh the goodwill Google has built up by being the first engine to be fun to use.
Google continues to innovate: froogle, maps, calculator... Whether they're driven by competition or by an open-source-esque drive to be the best, they keep coming up with new and useful ideas. I love ad-words, which is a way to keep other web sites free with unobtrusive and relevant advertising without requiring a major marketing effort at each site. So I'm not going to use a different engine just to support some abstract idea of the value of competition.
Unless, that is, you've got a strong recommendation. In which case, fire away.
Just because some webmaster somewhere got their panties in a twist by not being allowed to scam people into looking at their worthless site doesn't make this a bad thing. It WOULD be bad if the different site that Google presented users with was selling worthless shit like herbal Viagra and c1al1S. Even if this is a "principle of the thing" sort of matter, I'm certain that Google will make the appropriate changes. I challenege any webmasters out there with a failed business/PR model that relies on cloaking to do the same.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
This is keyword search in cache. It's just highlighting words you searched for.
% telnet adwords.google.co.uk 80
GET
Host: adwords.google.co.uk
User-Agent: Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)
This will let you see the webpage as intended for the Googlebot! For best results, I recommend you set your browser's user-agent to "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"
--Jesse
Glazed Lists - list transformation engine
Wow. I didn't know that search engines were as important as world politics.
Well, the web (and the Internet as a whole) is becoming the defacto repository of world knowledge. It arguably shapes our thoughts, opinions, and yes, politics as much as television or radio, perhaps more. It is the library of the 21st century (though one hopes the brick-and-mortor variety remain, if for no other reason than as a hardcopy backup, and a more authoritative source).
So, in effect, s/he who controls how that information is indexed and accessed has a significant impact on how the masses think, how their opinions are shaped, and what policies they support or reject. This could even shape the outcome of elections, wars, global social movements, the economies they effect, and the millions, perhaps billions, of lives that are thus affected.
Are we there yet? Some would argue yes, though I would personally say "almost but not quite." Will we be there in 5-10 years? Probably, though software patents may throw everything on its ear. 50 years? Assuming no catastrophic fall of civilization, absolutely, software patents and the forthcoming glacial progress in information technology notwithstanding.
Given that, comparing the policies of the gatekeepers of knowledge, be they software monopolists that control what you are allowed to do with your computer, or indexing agencies/search engines that impact how you find and access information (you can't get it if you can't find it), I'd say comparing them to world political figures is apropos. Indeed, I'd say the Osama bin Laden / Mother Teresa comparison (Microsoft / Google) is more than apropos, as these are both famous people who have had in impact, at least one of which fancies himself a world leader though he is in fact not, but neither of which run the world the way Geoge W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Mr. Putin arguably do. Neither Microsoft ("bin Laden") nor Google ("Mother Teresa") run the Internet, but both affect it greatly, and both aspire to affect it even more so. One in particular aspires to dominate it completely, and to encode in our hardware and operating system what we are and are not allowed to do with our computers and the inforamation they access.
I'd say the comparision was rather inspired on a great many levels, actually.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yup. Looks to me like they're using the technique internally to file things orderly, since they're generating content that directly populates the database. The nice, handy newline between the keywords and the actual title in the HTML source also makes it trivial for scripts to strip it out later. If they were trying to hide something, they'd teach their cacher to delete the "secret" keywords.
In contrast, for ad hoc "discovered" content, such as what a web spider crawling the rest of the web might find, such practices are hardly benign. Google can trust its own vision of how it wants its database to look, but not the intentions Mr. XXX HardCore Anal Sluts, or the guy that has Ad0be Ph0t0sh0p for 75% off, or worse yet, the guy who wants to "verify your account-holder information"...
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
Dear /. editors,
re: "Is Google Breaking Their Own Rules?"
A company (or a search engine) is not a "their." The proper pronoun is "it."
Is Google Breaking its Own Rules?
Thank you,
The Grammar Police
i did a quick test, and it's a bunk article. when i did a search i got the current and not cached page only one google page down the line. Nothing seemed odd about it. probly just a UK "problem."
Do you really think it would be difficult at all for Google to just manually tweak their search database to make their pages on traffic come up first given the appropriate searches?
If they went that way, how easy do you think it would be to spot? Is it not better that they are doing this in a relatively open manner? Is it not their database that they are manipulating? Has anyone tried the user agent strings for other spiders?
If you think Google's cheating, there are many other choices out there[1] for you.
Way to go Threadwatch, you just indicted, tried, and sentenced Google to the bowels of Microsoft over *one* measly example of self-promotion. One stinking example of milking their own Adwords-ranking on -- and get this -- a site that lo-and-behold provides support information on traffic estimates and keyword submission.
Apparently you only refer to *irony* as those wedge-shaped burns on the back of your trousers.
and now back to the fallout shelter...
It is interesting to note that they chose the title tag to put-in the keywords. This could mean the ranking algorithm attaches more significance to the content within the title tag.
But, it could also be the case that they don't want to make the cached page have a cluterred look by putting in the words on the page itself.
On a orthogonal note, I am wondering if Google indexes white text on white background. If that is the case, just one page could then serve the evil purpose.
Ironically enough I just got this down the wire... Google is changing web content dynamically. I didn't read it too closely yet, but if you are talking about making people use bundled products, often with them being unaware of it, this fits the bill nicely.
Don't be evil? Indeed...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I told ya so...Google is just plain evil...switch to http://search.msn.com
The trust Google has comes from doing stuff like this zero times. One is not zero.
Google suddenly becomes evil right after http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/03/185023 0&tid=217&tid=109/ they get one of Microsoft's chief engineers...
Coincidence? You be the judge
It's not a case of showing different results to other search engines. It's a case of showing different results to just themselves only. It doesn't affect Yahoo or MSN search - they still see the same page everyone else does.
Google's complaint with other websites is, basicly, "When we hit your site, please show us the same thing you show everyone else." Thus they aren't breaking their own rule, because they ARE doing that to the other search engines out there. They are only 'lying' to themselves.
Let's say MSN did the same thing, and rendered keyword-stuffed results for their own searches on their own sites, but still showed the same page to all external visitors, treating google no differently than an interactive user. Then it wouldn't harm Google's search in the slightest (and in fact google's search would end up being better than MSN's search on their own site because it wouldn't be tainted by the keyword stuffing). Similarly, what google did doesn't harm the other search engines in the slightest, and in fact makes them a tiny sliver more accurate than google is.
No, this is not the same thing that they are complaining about. They don't mind in the slightest if other search engines lie to themselves, so long as they don't lie to google, and google can lie to itself so long as it doesn't lie to other search engines.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I don't know, but apparently our editors isn't editing. Guess that's because our children isn't learning though.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
I really don't see any clear evidence of "keyword stuffing" on that particular webpage. And I don't quite see why Google would be interested in stuffing a page like that - they can manipulate traffic to any webpage they wish, including their own. It honestly looks like a fairly normal webpage to me, but that's just my opinion. Google Advisor
I can't believe this is even being discussed. Don't people have anything of substance to complain about?
Let's start here: Google is based on pagerank, which is based on what YOU and everyone else links to! It is a popularity ranking system in the purest sense! Repost once you have reviewed the absolute basic thirty second summary of how pagerank works.
Did you miss the point where Google became a corporation, whose goal (like all corporations) was to make assloads of money?
Some corporations make assloads of money by increasing their goodwill. Being a good corporate citizen adds monetary value to the trademarks that a company owns.
Why don't you repost when you have a basic first-grade grasp of reading comprehension. Nowhere did I say Google was doing it right. Actually, I specifically mentioned where Google did it WRONG (hint: read the post again, and keep an eye out for the word "Googlebombing.")
I said letting every asshat on the internet get his hands directly into the search results was a bad idea.
That are the most ugly headlines to torture the English grammars with incorrect singulars/plural I are seeing in a long whiles.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
A link to this article will come up under news results!
results
Sounds like a really evil company to me!
-Mikey P
Nothing like full disclosure - for an honest and ethical businesses. I wonder when Google will put up a disclosure statement on every page header - about it making $250 million a year profit from advertisers in Google. Just take 35 words to do a good - easy to read disclosure statement.
I just tried to fake the useragent in Mozilla Firefox by adding this pref to about:conifg or prefs.js file: :) /support/bin/answer.py?answer=9653&topic=65" -O - -U Googlebot .uk and /support)
user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Googlebot");
Then I loaded the same page, and as I thought the title of the page changed to include those keyword stuffings.
Or you could just do a:
$ wget "https://adwords.google.co.uk
(minus the extra space between
to get the same effect
No, Yahoo dumped Google last year.
I'm afraid I don't see the subtle difference. What?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
When I read Microsoft's history, what I see is littany of cut throat, semi-legal, unethical conduct. If corporations were really people, Microsoft would be a top hat wearing, handlebar mustached, sterotypical Dirk Dastardly, doing their best to stay the top dog, not through the quality of their work but by sabatoging everyone elses.
When I read Google's history, what I see is a list of free services provided to the public which are paid for through advertising (notably, unobstrusive, targeted adverstising.) If Google was a person, they might not be the sterotypical hero of the story, but they most certainly would NOT be a villian.
In short, Google's deserved their accolades. Microsoft deserves their heckling. Get over the fact that Google is a corporation. Not ever company is evil, not every action one performs is designed to accomplish some secret plan to take over the world.
It would simply provide a mechanism to respond when unacceptable modifications had already been made.
The only way to *prevent* unacceptable modifications is to tightly control access. i.e. - not open source
If google really wanted to boost their own pagerankings, why go to the trouble of making keywords for specific pages? Wouldn't it be easier to tweak the algorithm so that google pages automatically get a certain number of points (or however they do it) bonus?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
rifk!1
amazing, i absolutely cannot believe this made slashdot news. of course google wants the search feature on their faq to be as effective as possible.
gg, g g.
-- lol pwned
you got owned, just deal with it.
you, sir, bring up a good point
Can it be true?
Why are people getting so fired up? This is dynamic representation of a cached entry. The title changed because the content slightly changed (when you view a cached entry, google adds a box on top and highlights some search words).
Google is their toy... they can play with it however they want.
If other search engines decide not to spider Google, that's their choice.
Hey dude, I can't find that tape anywhere on this site..
..
Can you help me find it? Do I need a password?
Please
* Keyword stuffing may put this page a little higher in search results, but the kind of people who would search for "traffic estimator" are unlikely to click on an obviously keyword-stuffed search result.
* This undermines Google's reputation as having unbiased search results.
The shareholder is always right.
No matter who you are, Google is better than you. So hush up.
For example, searching for 'bob' returns a link to Bob the builder [www.bobthebuilder.org], which actually links to/ www.bobthebuilder.org/&e=9901
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=U&start=3&q=http:/
I remember last time there was big news about Google - when the gmail security problem occured - they simply responded to email them first. Has it occured to anyone this might be a bug?
Whoever has lots of bread, doesn't have to eat shit.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I wish I had all that time to try and 'prove' Google is 'cheating' omg
"Is Google Breaking Their Own Rules?"
Is Slashdot editors illiterate?
(Clue)
We inadvertently showed additional information on product support pages to both Google's site search crawler and Google's main web crawler. The additional information shown on the product support pages was intended only for the site search crawler, not the main web crawler. They're in the process of changing it so that the pages show only same the information that users get.
You proved yourself to be functionally illiterate, and I got "owned?"
Lemme know when you come back to the planet with the blue sky.
Google may or may not be guilty of hypocrisy in other areas - I don't know.
/., there is very little point to the amount of ranting this has generated - the whole article should be mark -5; Troll.
But this complaint is about google setting the title in the CACHED copy to the keywords?!?
That is to say, they're manipulating keywords in a system that no one spiders for keywords. Basically an internal system that they incidentally let the public use as well.
Even for
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
In British English, groups like corporations are plural; in US English they're singular.
I should buy some cement.
So they are manipulating *THEIR OWN* spider? Oh my god call the NSA! The CIA! The FBI!.
You want to make a case, try it with the UA that Yahoo/MSN/others, and if it gives the extra keywords there, then maybe I'd care. Even then not really, since they are a total of 4 (*FOUR*) keystrings in there, and all seem likely variations of the same concept, which is accurate for the page they appear on.
I've seen less seemly pages with hundreds of them in there, with repeats of the same word over and over, and with words that werent even remotely related to the content on the page.
"editing" --> "edited". (I should have used preview.)
You criticize the parent for using "<i>" instead of "<em>", but you don't turn your URL into a link? As the other AC wrote, it's only six more characters: "<URL:" and ">". (However, since you seem to be a pedantic person about HTML, you would probably need more: "<a href="" and "">linky-poo</a>".)
Search for "asian teen watersports":
...
Google: "about 603,000"
Clusty: "at least 6,871,231"
I'm going to have to investigate this further. I may not be back for a while
on Mar. 7, it was written: "To see the ranking impact in real-life, try a search for traffic estimator on Google, and you'll see the US version page in the top results (it's first for me)." FIRST. Today, the page in question isn't even on the first page of results.
they have done so far is Google Groups2 - it looks totally awfull if you dare change font size, they try to reformat the text etc - and while it probably looked cool on the screen of the guy who did this, it looks like crap on mine (and they don't seem to care) - now the old groups looked fine... oh well.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Did it ever occur to you guys that if they wanted to artifitially raise one of their pages, they'd just have to ask the engineers to go to the database and manually change their ranking? They definitly wouldn't have to resort to tricks done by everyone else.
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8