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Google's Next Challenge, Spam Results

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the eggs-bacon-sausage-and dept.

krou writes "The Guardian's tech blog is running an interesting piece on Google's next big challenge, which is dealing with the spammers it helped create. 'Google is the 900-pound gorilla of search, with around 90% of the market (excluding China and Russia), and there's an entire industry which has grown up specifically around tickling the gorilla to make it happy and enrich the ticklers.' They quote Paul Kedrosky who notes that 'Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons — churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you're done. On the web, no-one knows you're a content-grinder.' Whether searching for reviews, products, businesses, or even conducting academic research, scraper sites are ranking higher than original content. The article speculates that Google may try fix the problem but, from Google's perspective, most of these type of sites use AdSense ads, and generate revenue for Google (89% of clicks come from the first page of results), so Google may not have an incentive to change things too much. Alternatively, people could stop using Google, 'because its search is damn well broken... The question is whether it would be visible enough — that is, whether enough people would do it — that it would show up on Google's radar and be made a priority.'"

10 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Broken? by afidel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Compared to what exactly? I find Bing's results to be far more broken so that rules out Bing and Yahoo. What's left?

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    1. Re:Broken? by beerbear · · Score: 4, Informative

      Duck Duck Go

      --
      Hold my beer and watch this!
  2. Mixed metaphor alert by wjousts · · Score: 4, Funny

    So which is it? Is Google a gorilla or a snake? Make your mind up!

    1. Re:Mixed metaphor alert by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Funny

      You want them to fix the summary? I'm afraid that train has sailed.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re:Mixed metaphor alert by Combatso · · Score: 4, Funny

      I am tired of all the motherf*cking spam results on this motherf*cking search engine!

  3. What scrapers? by savanik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't have this problem - when I search for things on Google, I get relevant results from real pages. Either I regularly search for things that nobody scrapes, or there's actually some skill involved in getting relevant results that most people can't be bothered with.

    The biggest problem I've had of late searching on Google is trying to find reviews of hardware and getting ninety billion pages trying to sell it to me with 'Be the first person to review this product!" I need to find a different keyword on that.

    1. Re:What scrapers? by Eil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Try doing any programming or system administration related search and *not* have at least one of the first five results populated with the following worthless domains:

      - experts-exchange.com
      - ehow.com
      - about.com
      - scribd.com
      - ittoolbox.com

      These sites don't necessarily scrape and repost content, but the content they do provide is invariably worthless or too difficult to navigate in order to be worth my time. In fact, I really don't mind mailing list, wikipedia, and StackOverflow scrapers because at least they provide useful content as long as you block all the ads and javascript by default.

      Spammers have gotten pretty darn good at figuring out how to game Google and Google's countermeasures are increasingly ineffective. What Google really needs to do is place some control over the results returned in the user's hand. I would pay actual money to Google if they would let me customize search results as follows:

      - A way to mark results as useful or not for the query entered, and refine later searches based on those
      - Blacklist certain domains from showing up in my results, ever.
      - Add content qualification (for example, prefer sites that have a certain text-to-graphics ratio)

  4. Re:Playing the game changes the game by Atzanteol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Believe it or not it's easier to be a good ad company if you're also a good search company. One doesn't have to suffer to the benefit of the other. It's easier to sell a product if it's a good product.

    --
    "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

    - Charles Darwin
  5. Re:People change.... only for something better by eddy · · Score: 5, Informative

    People wont change while theres nothing better to change to...

    I see some nerds switching to http://duckduckgo.com/

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  6. Re:You're wrong. by wjousts · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good enough only involves being better than the competition. Which they were.