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Google Delists BMW-Germany
Raenex writes "The car maker BMW has had its German website bmw.de delisted from Google. The delisting was punishment for using deceptive means to boost page ranking, which has now been set to zero for BMW. Matt Cutts, a Google employee who works to stop unethical search manipulation, originally reported the delisting in his blog and suggests that camera maker Ricoh is not far behind."
Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to know, and so he didn't do these things that Google delists you on. Instead it took a few thousand intelligent people pointing out that he was a miserable failture to get him in his proper place for that particular search.
Google comes up with the PageRank system, basically counting the number of links to a particular page from all the other pages on the Internet, and they are shocked (shocked!) to find that the system is being abused.
From Google's Technology Page: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.
Democratic? Call this Troll-bait, but how is the Internet democratic? I get a million friends to put a link to some worthless page on all our sites and suddenly the PageRank for that site jumps. And how democratic is it when Google "decides" that someone has violated the spirit of the system and shuts them out? More like autocratic.
Frankly Google is hoist upon its own petard for this one -- you can't come up with some system and then be scandalized to find that people are going to try and abuse it. Insurance companies, public aid programs, and computer voting companies could tell you that!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
yes .. the "dont do things that might decrease google's profits" law ..
Were this action by google untainted by 'self-interest' , then maybe it has a point ..
And while they're about it, why NOT punish the 2billion of us who might have need to have BMW come up fast? I mean, we're only peons in google's game of world domination!
Did anyone see any ref ANYWHERE to any requirement that any site not use any materials at hand to 'up' their search standing?? ive never seen such a thing!
and who would MAKE such a rule? Google 's job is to search and report what it finds, not to act as the earth's police!
Ive communicated with google on other matters, to find it totally disregarding legitimate user-privacy concerns. So who polices google itself??
Time to trim this monster before its out of control ..or is it already?
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
He didn't in the original post, but I had a feeling that he was the kind to poke along, holding up five or six cars behind him. Notice that in the next message, he *did* mention his annoyance at those pesky people that tailgate him while he's in the left lane.
As for his statements that the laws of physics apply, of course they do. It's a big game of chicken. The guy in the car behind him is counting on the fact that the fellow won't hit his brakes and cause an accident, and in virtually every case, they're right. Subcounsciously, they see virtually no potential detriment, and a possible payout in the form of them moving over. That makes the behaviour potentially beneficial to them (at least in their eyes), and just like pulling the lever on a slot machine in vegas, they take the gamble.
If he really wants them to stop, he needs to help them see that there is a potential detriment, and that there isn't a potential payout. People are actually extremely efficient at subconsciously evaluating those sorts of things. Their perspective on how likely a detriment or payout is may not reflect reality, but rest assured, if they see from their perspective that there is no potential benefit, they'll stop doing it.
One of the more fun ways to assist them in having that epiphany is not to hit your brakes, but to lightly apply your parking brake - your brake lights don't come on at all, and all of the sudden the fellow behind you realizes that he's about two inches off of your bumper. He'll hit his brakes like it was the end of the world, and you get to see his car sliding back and forth with all four tires locked up. Thinking back to the times I've done that almost brings a tear of joy to my eye.
For the record, if traffic in my lane is moving faster than me, I get over, plain and simple - and if someone is driving slow in the left lane, I don't tailgate them, because it is dangerous, and because it doesn't do any good. Just like I don't appreciate others bothering me, I try not to bother them. But sometimes, you get someone that just can't be bothered to pass you, even if you're all the way to the right. And every once in a while when that happens, I do get a very evil enjoyment out of things like that.
"Oh, that's so dangerous!", you say. Yes, it is. If that's not your style, I've seen people deter tailgaters quite effectively by just throwing a handful of dog kibble out of the window.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
No, sorry, this is fraud pure and simple: deliberately deceiving someone (in this case Google, about the content of a page) in order to achieve financial gain (in this case, more customers). I agree that it is OK to show differently tailored pages to different users, but only if this is not done in order to deceive.
BMW should be very grateful that Google just delisted them and didn't report them to the German prosecutors and financial authorities. Because you're right, this is criminal behaviour, and therefore is a matter for the police.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.