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Is Google Breaking Their Own Rules?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the more-than-a-little-fishy dept.

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.

11 of 552 comments (clear)

  1. So what? by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:So what? by pbranes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely. People tend to forget that google is a corporation. They can do whatever they want with their search engine. Their goal in life is to keep you looking at their pages and using their> search engine so that they can show you more ads! Its all about money. Google is not making a search engine out of the goodness of their heart.

    2. Re:So what? by gowen · · Score: 5, Insightful
      If Google can do this on it's own pages, why can ordinary webmasters not?
      Quite. In fact, other webmasters can do it, as much as they like. Google aren't the web police... you won't be arrested or have your DNS removed. You won't rank highly on Google, but that reward is in Google's gift... and you have no right to dictate what they do.
      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    3. Re:So what? by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely. People tend to forget that google is a corporation. They can do whatever they want with their search engine...Google is not making a search engine out of the goodness of their heart.

      Right. Other people tend to forget that Google is not immune from oversight and criticism because they are a private corporation, and it is fully justified to call them on their activities if and when they pursue questionable avenues. No one, at least to my knowledge, is calling for government intervention, but are merely spreading the word of potentially hypocritical activities. As a user of search engines I want to hear this public criticism as it may eventually make me switch to whatever the new search engine is.

      As a sidenote, I find it remarkable how defensive the general Slashdot community is about Google. Let's try your post in a slightly different light and see what you think about it.

      Absolutely. People tend to forget that Microsoft is a corporation. They can do whatever they want with their software. Their goal in life is to keep you buying their goods and using their software so that they can lock you in and sell you more! Its all about money. Google is not making software out of the goodness of their heart.

    4. Re:So what? by ciroknight · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The reason this doesn't work is because Google can't "pay themselves" to use AdWords to pimp...AdWords. Besides, they own the company and make the rules. And maybe they should follow their own rules, but they most certainly don't have to. Besides, they don't block out competitor's results, they simply bring theirs to the top (Think: on-site searching, THEN offsite).

      I don't see Google in the wrong here.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    5. Re:So what? by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely. People tend to forget that Microsoft is a corporation. They can do whatever they want with their software. Their goal in life is to keep you buying their goods and using their software so that they can lock you in and sell you more! Its all about money. Google is not making software out of the goodness of their heart.

      Honestly, if I were using Microsoft's search engine to search for information contained on Microsoft's own site I would certainly hope that they made the most relevant results show first.

      We aren't talking about Google and Microsoft dominating the world. We are talking about Google forcing high rankings on their own content on their own search engine.

    6. Re:So what? by FatRatBastard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Someone sue Ford then since their website is promoting their products over the likes of GM, Toyota, etc.

  2. Only one long term solution: by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 5, Insightful
    WikiSearch (or something like it). Long term we need an open peer-reviewed crawling and serving mechanism as bad as we need free OSs and browsers. How this is developed or funded I am not sure, maybe it will be the next breakthrough in P2P that obviates the need for the massive datacenter.

    Until there is a free and open search engine, you are beholden to whatever these firms wish to do.

  3. Re:No, wait by poptix_work · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  4. Re:One thing I'd point out by HaloZero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. Re:Could be keyword stuffing... by Joe+Mucchiello · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Next check the robots.txt of their site. First item is Disallow: /search? The evil URL in question is starts with /search? Thus google does not want that page crawled by other websites. How does one stuff keywords on a page they don't want indexed?