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Defused Googlebombs May Backfire
linguista submits for us today an article on the Guardian site, which theorizes Google's bomb defusing may backfire on the company. Article author Nicholas Carr calls out Google for tweaking search results based on the company public image. As he notes, the Google blog entry announcing the end to bombing didn't cite a desire for better queries as the reason behind the change. Instead "... we've seen more people assume that they are Google's opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Googlebombed queries. That's not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that misperception." While the general image of Google is still that it 'does no evil', it's worth noting that the search engine is not solely a link popularity contest. The results you get from Google are tweaked by a number of factors, and at the end of the day the company has complete control over what rises to the top.
Google should know what I'm looking for, and by and large it succeeds.
You have no idea how completely ignorant and idiotic that statement is do you? You expect a computer to understand your personal ontology for concepts and terminology? How about its ability to understand what you consider the most important term of your query?
Lets say you put in a three word term to search for something. Lets say "Spicy Spaghetti Sauce". One person may feel that spicy is the most important aspect of his search. Another person may feel consistency that is proper for spaghetti is the most important search focus. Another person may feel that any pasta sauce will do. Please, tell me how Google is supposed to be able to tell the difference? One method of doing this is to assign a value to the terms in order of their appearance. So person who cares about Spaghetti first should theoretically input "Spaghetti Spicy Sauce", the problem with that is people don't think like that.
Your "Divine Map" is not the standard definition of relationships between ideas. If Google returns results you think are relevant, great. If not, the problem is with you - not Google.
Here's another issue. Google doesn't know everything about everything. So this "sad bunch of geeks" that are out "manipulating" the search results are actually the backbone of google's original ontological analysis. If there is a huge spike in term to concept linkage, Google (in theory) recognizes it and begins to retroactively evaluate their previously indexed relationships. This is helpful for keeping constantly evolving social language connected to the correct information on the web.
Second, traffic patterns. You can try to make your porn site the first link on Google for "baby wipes" all day. But if every person who clicks that link clicks back out immediately - then the term is irrelevant. Google recognizes this. And their automated algo deals with it.
Going back to your original gripe, "baby wipes" may be a very relevant term for some very special porn (think adult babies). Now who is right? You? The Mob? The people who are bitching about "google not knowing what they want"?