107 lines
5.4 KiB
Plaintext
107 lines
5.4 KiB
Plaintext
From rssfeeds@jmason.org Thu Oct 3 12:24:01 2002
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To: yyyy@spamassassin.taint.org
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From: diveintomark <rssfeeds@spamassassin.taint.org>
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Subject: When an engineer flaps his wings
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Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 08:00:05 -0000
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Content-Type: text/plain; encoding=utf-8
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URL: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/03.html#when_an_engineer_flaps_his_wings
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Date: 2002-10-03T01:31:51-05:00
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Remember that saying from chaos theory about how when a butterfly flap its
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wings, it can cause a hurricane a month later halfway around the world? As
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several people have already noted, Google has made some major changes in their
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most recent update. The weblogging community was hit hard (for instance, I used
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to be the #1 "mark"[1]; I am now #6). The changes appear to be the result of an
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attempt to stop two phenomena: explicitly selling ads based on PageRank[2], and
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Google bombing[3].
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Specifically, Google is now apparently cross-checking link text with the linked
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site, and discounting or ignoring links whose text does not appear in the
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linked site. This all but kills off Google bombing. Searching for "go to hell"
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[4] no longer takes you to microsoft.com[5]; searching for "talentless hack"[6]
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no longer finds ohmessylife.com[7], although it finds a lot of people who were
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previously participating in the Google bombing. No definitive word yet on
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whether Google is actively penalizing such sites.
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Unfortunately, the algorithm tweaks necessary to stop these two techniques have
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caused a wide range of collateral damage, apparently coming down hardest on
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medium-to-large sites that had previously been doing everything right (as far
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as page structure, link structure, accessibility, and general honest hard work
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putting together a usable and useful site). The Webmasterworld forums are alive
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with complaints and speculation:
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- New update, pagerank death?[8]
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- September 2002 Google Update Discussion - part 1[9]
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- Let's find out what happened - Sept 2002 Update - pt. 2[10]
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(Side note: amongst the confusion, it has been suggested that Google is no
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longer indexing ALT text in images. I can confirm that this is absolutely
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false. Searching diveintomark.org for "gimli"[11] finds my entry of July 29[12]
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, where "Gimli" is mentioned only in the ALT text of an image.)
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Regardless, Google's search results in general appear to be significantly
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degraded in many key areas. The forums are full of people complaining that spam
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sites, doorway pages, and obvious cloaking attempts, which Google used to be so
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good at filtering out, are now popping up in top spots with disturbing
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frequency. Nobody in the forums wants to talk about which keywords they're
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tracking, so I tried to find my own concrete example of crap search results. It
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didn't take long.
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- Searching for reservation hotel[13] brings up an empty sub-page[14] of a
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hotel reservation company in Italy[15] as the first result. This seems
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unhelpful, and unlikely to be relevant to the average US-based consumer (and
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Google absolutely knows I'm in the US based on my IP address).
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- Searching for news observer nc[16] (the News & Observer is a Raleigh, NC
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newspaper) does find The News & Observer[17], but it also finds an Internet
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betting spam page[18] at #7 and a non-existent page[19] at #9.
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- Searching for eminem[20] gives us two generic portal pages, a non-existent
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site, and a site that redirects to a site that continuously redirects to itself
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(I am not making this up). And this is just on the first page. Good thing I
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didn't care that much about Eminem to begin with, because Google just isn't
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that helpful.
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Many people in the Webmasterworld forums are now suggesting that AllTheWeb.com
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[21] has better search results overall. Just as a single comparison, their
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results for "eminem"[22] do appear to be much more relevant. Is this the
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beginning of the end of Google's reign?
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[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=mark
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[2] http://www.pradnetwork.com/affiliate.htm
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[3] http://uber.nu/2001/04/06/
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[4] http://www.google.com/search?q=%22go+to+hell%22
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[5] http://www.microsoft.com/
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[6] http://www.google.com/search?q=talentless+hack
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[7] http://www.ohmessylife.com/
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[8] http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5646.htm
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[9] http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5688.htm
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[10] http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5723.htm
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[11] http://www.google.com/search?q=gimli+site%3Adiveintomark.org
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[12] http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/07/29.html
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[13] http://www.google.com/search?q=reservation+hotel
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[14] http://www.venere.it/home/italy.html
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[15] http://www.venere.it/
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[16] http://www.google.com/search?q=news+observer+nc
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[17] http://www.news-observer.com/
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[18] http://www.linkslsgolfworld.com/king-arthur-knight-of-the-round-table.htm
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[19] http://www.nando.net/nt/nao/
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[20] http://www.google.com/search?q=eminem
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[21] http://www.alltheweb.com/
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[22] http://www.alltheweb.com/search?query=eminem
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