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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.

23 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 AndyMan1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I prefer the other golden rule: He who smelt it, dealt it.

    5. 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
    6. Re:So what? by Dr.+Zed · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I don't think Google should give preference to their own pages in their search engine.

      The page was a google cache page. Have you ever been served a google cache page as part of a Google search? I am fairly certain I haven't so I don't believe that this page would be a 'preference' in their search engine.

      Second, does anyone have ANY evidence that this page only has the keywords in the title BECAUSE it is cached. This could very easily be what the page WAS when it was cached, and someone changed the title at some point.

      The whole article sounds like FUD to me.

      By the way, to quickly get to a Google cache, try this bookmarklet:
      NAME:
      ::Google Cache for this page
      LOCATION:
      javascript:document.location.href= 'http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:' +document.location.href.replace(/http:\/\//,'')

    7. 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.

    8. 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. first cache? by farquharsoncraig · · Score: 5, Funny

    insightful interesting insightful interesting insightful interesting.

  3. 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.

  4. One thing I'd point out by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. 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 JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Informative
    It's the fact that the title is different when a search engine views it versus when a person views it. Feeding different information to a search engine (with more keywords) is currently frowned upon, as people have abused it.

    Check the *title* of the two links. One has a comma separated list of keywords.

    --
    Evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  6. Stop the presses by klubkid79 · · Score: 5, Funny

    News at 11 ! Google is promoting themselves on their own website!

  7. so.... by jotux · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...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!

  8. Brittant Spears by Juiblex · · Score: 5, Funny

    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"

    1. Re:Brittant Spears by Juiblex · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually they really did it... I got the list from Google itself =p

      http://labs.google.com/britney.html

  9. Google hasn't done a very good job... by PsychicX · · Score: 5, Funny

    Searching for "search engine" only brings up google in 5th place. They're certainly doing a shoddy job of being unfair.

  10. 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.
  11. 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?

  12. Re:No, wait by Xzzy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like a lot of people upset over nothing.

    Welcome to the internet!

  13. Agreed. by Mr+Z · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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"...

    --Joe
    --
    Program Intellivision!