From rssfeeds@jmason.org Thu Oct 3 12:24:01 2002 Return-Path: Delivered-To: yyyy@localhost.example.com Received: from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1]) by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8AFEB16F1C for ; Thu, 3 Oct 2002 12:23:14 +0100 (IST) Received: from jalapeno [127.0.0.1] by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0) for jm@localhost (single-drop); Thu, 03 Oct 2002 12:23:14 +0100 (IST) Received: from dogma.slashnull.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dogma.slashnull.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g93805K19919 for ; Thu, 3 Oct 2002 09:00:05 +0100 Message-Id: <200210030800.g93805K19919@dogma.slashnull.org> To: yyyy@example.com From: diveintomark Subject: When an engineer flaps his wings Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 08:00:05 -0000 Content-Type: text/plain; encoding=utf-8 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-734.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,DATE_IN_PAST_03_06 version=2.50-cvs X-Spam-Level: URL: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/03.html#when_an_engineer_flaps_his_wings Date: 2002-10-03T01:31:51-05:00 Remember that saying from chaos theory about how when a butterfly flap its wings, it can cause a hurricane a month later halfway around the world? As several people have already noted, Google has made some major changes in their most recent update. The weblogging community was hit hard (for instance, I used to be the #1 "mark"[1]; I am now #6). The changes appear to be the result of an attempt to stop two phenomena: explicitly selling ads based on PageRank[2], and Google bombing[3]. Specifically, Google is now apparently cross-checking link text with the linked site, and discounting or ignoring links whose text does not appear in the linked site. This all but kills off Google bombing. Searching for "go to hell" [4] no longer takes you to microsoft.com[5]; searching for "talentless hack"[6] no longer finds ohmessylife.com[7], although it finds a lot of people who were previously participating in the Google bombing. No definitive word yet on whether Google is actively penalizing such sites. Unfortunately, the algorithm tweaks necessary to stop these two techniques have caused a wide range of collateral damage, apparently coming down hardest on medium-to-large sites that had previously been doing everything right (as far as page structure, link structure, accessibility, and general honest hard work putting together a usable and useful site). The Webmasterworld forums are alive with complaints and speculation: - New update, pagerank death?[8] - September 2002 Google Update Discussion - part 1[9] - Let's find out what happened - Sept 2002 Update - pt. 2[10] (Side note: amongst the confusion, it has been suggested that Google is no longer indexing ALT text in images. I can confirm that this is absolutely false. Searching diveintomark.org for "gimli"[11] finds my entry of July 29[12] , where "Gimli" is mentioned only in the ALT text of an image.) Regardless, Google's search results in general appear to be significantly degraded in many key areas. The forums are full of people complaining that spam sites, doorway pages, and obvious cloaking attempts, which Google used to be so good at filtering out, are now popping up in top spots with disturbing frequency. Nobody in the forums wants to talk about which keywords they're tracking, so I tried to find my own concrete example of crap search results. It didn't take long. - Searching for reservation hotel[13] brings up an empty sub-page[14] of a hotel reservation company in Italy[15] as the first result. This seems unhelpful, and unlikely to be relevant to the average US-based consumer (and Google absolutely knows I'm in the US based on my IP address). - Searching for news observer nc[16] (the News & Observer is a Raleigh, NC newspaper) does find The News & Observer[17], but it also finds an Internet betting spam page[18] at #7 and a non-existent page[19] at #9. - Searching for eminem[20] gives us two generic portal pages, a non-existent site, and a site that redirects to a site that continuously redirects to itself (I am not making this up). And this is just on the first page. Good thing I didn't care that much about Eminem to begin with, because Google just isn't that helpful. Many people in the Webmasterworld forums are now suggesting that AllTheWeb.com [21] has better search results overall. Just as a single comparison, their results for "eminem"[22] do appear to be much more relevant. Is this the beginning of the end of Google's reign? [1] http://www.google.com/search?q=mark [2] http://www.pradnetwork.com/affiliate.htm [3] http://uber.nu/2001/04/06/ [4] http://www.google.com/search?q=%22go+to+hell%22 [5] http://www.microsoft.com/ [6] http://www.google.com/search?q=talentless+hack [7] http://www.ohmessylife.com/ [8] http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5646.htm [9] http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5688.htm [10] http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5723.htm [11] http://www.google.com/search?q=gimli+site%3Adiveintomark.org [12] http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/07/29.html [13] http://www.google.com/search?q=reservation+hotel [14] http://www.venere.it/home/italy.html [15] http://www.venere.it/ [16] http://www.google.com/search?q=news+observer+nc [17] http://www.news-observer.com/ [18] http://www.linkslsgolfworld.com/king-arthur-knight-of-the-round-table.htm [19] http://www.nando.net/nt/nao/ [20] http://www.google.com/search?q=eminem [21] http://www.alltheweb.com/ [22] http://www.alltheweb.com/search?query=eminem