Marcia - 5:00 am on Dec 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

>>GoogleGuy has repeatedly urged people to send in feedback about serps, and those definitely have an effect.

No doubt they have an effect in that they're probably taken into consideration and taken seriously. But if even legit, accurate feedback on quality of search results will over-ride higher priority company concerns right now is something I'm supposed to believe, someone will have to pass me the pipe first.

It's been awful tempting a couple of times this week to give feedback on something I've caught because it's so transparent and admittedly interesting. This is not a "spam report" type thing, it's completely within Google's guidelines.

It looks to be a gaping hole, a vulnerability that could easily be exploited and is barely perceptible; you have to look twice, blink and look again to see it. I don't think they can fix everything with adjusting the algo, and this looks to be one of the things that falls into that group. I don't think the algo could catch it; it looks like it's playing right into it.

Ordinarily I'd give feedback if I catch something symptomatic like this, and quite honestly it's being exploited to where it's taking up the majority of top spots in certain lucrative markets, but at this point I'm really thinking twice, just on principle.

Tell your friends, relatives, anybody who uses Google to speak up next time they get irrelevant search results. Perhaps if we use some other channels and cry out with enough voices we might be heard.

cherryo, to be honest this post kind of stopped me dead in my tracks and got me thinking hard. Google's done a lot to nurture relationship with the webmaster community. Like many others I'm a person of strong, long-lasting loyalties, on a personal level and beyond.

Many of us value trust highly, and that's an issue that's personally hitting on a few levels at this point. Once trust starts to erode something has to happen for it to be restored. This is an impersonal, relatively unimportant type of thing compared to an issue or two on a personal level that deeply parallel some core issues, but I'm inclined to take a wait and see attitude.

Hitting the button about problem results is basically an act done in good faith and with helpful intentions, and is a simple, insignificant thing that only takes a few minutes. But some things I'd ordinarly do without hesitation are just something I'm not inclined to do right now.

It's broader than causes and companies, sometimes we just have to pause and take time to introspect, look around us with eyes wide open, and do a reality check.