You're funny. I don't understand the internet. Um, I've been using it since 1994. That long enough for you? Been writing about search since before there was a Google. And trolled? What on earth are you talking about. I wrote a story for my readers, on my site. Someone submits it over here. Didn't ask for that to happen. Didn't encourage it. Don't even know it had happened. And that's trolling Slashdot?
What the hell I want them to do was explained in the article:
"It shouldn’t be that hard for Google to police what shows up in response to what it publishes on Google Trends. Spam sites ought to be nabbed. AdSense sites ought to be shut down. News publishers abusing the very lucky position they have of being in Google News, by routinely tapping into Google Trends topics that aren’t relevant to their publications, should get the boot."
These aren't unreasonable things. These are things Google should be doing already, to ensure the quality of its results. It's failing to do that. That's the point of the article, to highlight how badly they're doing.
Spend some time on Google Trends, go to the news results that come up and start looking more closely at the "stories" you get. You'll see huge amounts of junk -- outright gibberish. That's not what the world's most popular search engine should be returning.
The point was in the opening paragraph of the story. Google's CEO complains that the web is full of garbage. But his own company helps generate that garbage by publishing breaking, popular topics and then failing to police the results that show up, which is handy because most of that garbage also carries ads from Google, which earns Google money.
Bing publishes trends like Google. So do many other search engines. But they don't have near the network of earning off the garbage that those trends generate, as Google does. And they don't have a CEO who complains that the web is a cesspool.
By the way, Search Engine Land is a site about search. A respected site. A site that is granted interviews with Google routinely, including one with Schmidt himself last year, where I talked with him about the "sewage" issue. Do a search for "Google CEO Eric Schmidt On Newspapers & Journalism" and you'll get that long interview. I don't want to drop a link and hit some spam filter here.
SEO is part of search, as is the quality of search results. This story was hating on Google, and Google had that coming to it. It was returning stories that were simply embarrassing to it, given the amount of effort it has been doing recently to talk about how great its search results are -- over and above the usual efforts it does. But I understand this, because that's my job. I track Google regularly.
It has nothing to do with a competitor. Most of the "news" sites I wrote about aren't news sites at all, and I'm hardly trying to bring in visitors by writing about candy bars.
The short answer is: -- Anyone can sue anyone -- Winning is another issue. The legalities of trademark terms in meta tags (or indeed, anywhere on a web page) are still being sorted out. Unfortunately, there's been too much emphasis on meta tags as some how requiring special regulation.
Slashdot Mirror
You're funny. I don't understand the internet. Um, I've been using it since 1994. That long enough for you? Been writing about search since before there was a Google. And trolled? What on earth are you talking about. I wrote a story for my readers, on my site. Someone submits it over here. Didn't ask for that to happen. Didn't encourage it. Don't even know it had happened. And that's trolling Slashdot?
What the hell I want them to do was explained in the article:
"It shouldn’t be that hard for Google to police what shows up in response to what it publishes on Google Trends. Spam sites ought to be nabbed. AdSense sites ought to be shut down. News publishers abusing the very lucky position they have of being in Google News, by routinely tapping into Google Trends topics that aren’t relevant to their publications, should get the boot."
These aren't unreasonable things. These are things Google should be doing already, to ensure the quality of its results. It's failing to do that. That's the point of the article, to highlight how badly they're doing.
Spend some time on Google Trends, go to the news results that come up and start looking more closely at the "stories" you get. You'll see huge amounts of junk -- outright gibberish. That's not what the world's most popular search engine should be returning.
The point was in the opening paragraph of the story. Google's CEO complains that the web is full of garbage. But his own company helps generate that garbage by publishing breaking, popular topics and then failing to police the results that show up, which is handy because most of that garbage also carries ads from Google, which earns Google money.
Bing publishes trends like Google. So do many other search engines. But they don't have near the network of earning off the garbage that those trends generate, as Google does. And they don't have a CEO who complains that the web is a cesspool.
By the way, Search Engine Land is a site about search. A respected site. A site that is granted interviews with Google routinely, including one with Schmidt himself last year, where I talked with him about the "sewage" issue. Do a search for "Google CEO Eric Schmidt On Newspapers & Journalism" and you'll get that long interview. I don't want to drop a link and hit some spam filter here.
SEO is part of search, as is the quality of search results. This story was hating on Google, and Google had that coming to it. It was returning stories that were simply embarrassing to it, given the amount of effort it has been doing recently to talk about how great its search results are -- over and above the usual efforts it does. But I understand this, because that's my job. I track Google regularly.
It has nothing to do with a competitor. Most of the "news" sites I wrote about aren't news sites at all, and I'm hardly trying to bring in visitors by writing about candy bars.
There have been a number of cases involving meta tags. I keep a page about the topic at http://searchenginewatch.com/ resources/metasuits.html.
The short answer is:
-- Anyone can sue anyone
-- Winning is another issue. The legalities of trademark terms in meta tags (or indeed, anywhere on a web page) are still being sorted out. Unfortunately, there's been too much emphasis on meta tags as some how requiring special regulation.