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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.
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?
Until there is a free and open search engine, you are beholden to whatever these firms wish to do.
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.
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.
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.
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
They're stuffing results for the internal search here: https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en_US
All I see is people talking about how "dumb" they were to use such "obvious" cloaking techniques. Hello people, they were teaching their own search that is to be used on the adwords site. You don't tune your own internal search pages to help people find what they're looking for?
Sounds like a lot of people upset over nothing.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
It's still dishonest; if they had nothing to hide the public page would look the same as the search engine page.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm glad someone else did, I wasn't quite sure how to word it.
Adding keywords like 'traffic monitor' and such to a page about traffic monitoring is very different than stuffing 'PARIS-HILTON-XXX-TAPE-FULL' into a page about home equity loans.
Google doing this in-house also gives them tighter control over what is stuffed where. Of course, this could be used to ensure quality hits, or simply elevate pages THEY want to the tops of the ranks. Searchola anyone?
Anyone else notice how there seems to be alternating instances of Google-scandal articles and Google-innovations every single day? Tomorrow we'll find out that they've made the internet obsolete, and in doing so, they've skewered a number of kittens on spikes. Oh the horror!
Informatus Technologicus
Criticism of something is now a "witchhunt?"
No, it's called objectively examining your beliefs in order to make sure they're valid. If they are, there's no problem.
Unconditional praise all the time would be truly evil. Google controls a lot of the web.
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.
In case it's not inherently obvious, that means no other search engines will even see the page. So that means that Google's results are being skewed by.... (wait for it) Google.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
"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'm a Google fanboy and will accept and justify it when they're hypocritical. I'll blame the criticism on them being popular."
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.
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.
NO! This must be a conspiracy by Google to destroy all other search engines by polluting them, while boosting their own pages. There's no other possible explanation! *sigh*
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.