Questions for GoogleGuy

[Brett_Tabke]

Post your best question you would like to ask GoogleGuy and at the end of the week, we'll pull out the top 10 requests and submit them to him in another thread:

Thread Rules:
-q's about Google operation. (not gg himself)
-one question only please.
-no noise or clarifying questions.
-no specifics about your site please.
-off topic stuff will be zapped (nffc is on duty!).
-Keep it short. Don't drone on for more than 2 sentences.

[amazed]

Could google please please signal at what point in time webmasters should start worrying what they did wrong if their pages are not shown?
At present I am staying cool under the assumption it is google transition ....

[korkus2000]

Since Google is now keeping track of domain names and backlinks when a domain is dropped, will Google implement an automatic system to drop penalties on domains when they are dropped also? Basically destroying the domains history; backlinks, penalties, and all?

[HayMeadows]

Does Google like honest SEO's or would you prefer there not be any?
Please explain.

[Rugles]

I would ask this question but with a follow up.

"How "complete" is Froogle and when will it be rolled out publically?"

Will it get its own tab?

[Chris_R]

Is data from the toolbar is currently used in ranking sites?

[Rocca]

Why would a page with no links no title and no keywords no content and not in dmoz rank no 3 under a major keyword? There appears to be a lot of this in this particular keyword. Including being ahead of pages with lots of keywords. Is it because they are major companies.

[h_b_k]

Will Google have a grammar supported search: Find a keyword (not only a english one) when it occures in a flexed form (casus, numerus, tempus, conjugation, ...)?

[jatar_k]

Will the bot ever be smart enough to properly deal with and/or understand dynamic urls (of any size).

[creative craig]

continous update for me as well, and also mil2k's question about putting in a global drop down list so we can search other regions, instead of I am feeling lucky :)

Craig

[EarWig]

Will Google ever be able to detect what constitutes a genuine UK web site regardless of the TLD and therefor list it in the Google UK results.
I.E. Whois lookup?
EW

[nancyb]

Froogle? Current status? future plans? Is it possible that ecommerce sites will eventually be listed only in Froogle?

[Ltribe]

My question is an extension of Earwig's.

Finding geo-location from IP's doesn't seem to work well for a lot of sites. Could something like the country meta key be used to permit sites to designate their country? Or city?

[albert]

Same as msg #71 - I would like to know about grammar supported search (not to speak about semantically supported search - sadly just one question is allowed, and because I guess semantic search is still somewhat sci-fi I stay with the more realistic question about grammar).

[storevalley]

Would Google ever consider becoming even more regional, e.g. (in the States) Google Texas or Google Florida.

Adwords geo targeting could become a whole different ball game :)

[mayor]

Would Google define what is acceptable content for an affiliate marketing site (no idealistic pie in the sky like Inktomi's "labor of love" definition .... but what is realistic for both Google and affiliate marketers to co-exist in harmony)?

:)

[vik_c]

What is the easiest and quickest way to determine whether a page/ site is PR0 because there's a penalty assigned to it or because it has no backlinks. Also, what are the various circumstances under which a page can be PR0? Thanks.

[BigDave]

You've now given us the links to the respectable papers written by Google employees. When is Google going to allow their employees to put up pages about the stupid and potentially dangerous engineering stunts that they have tried?

Both Netscape and SGI had some great pranks and experiments online. You just can't have as much brain-power in one place as Google has, without some really creative stupid human tricks going on.

[netnerd]

I would 2nd Mayors Question. Very interested to know as this is my primary source of income.

Isnt an affiliate directory a good thing?

[affiliateguy]

Does Google have any plans to put in place a separate ranking system for
e-commerce/sales/affiliate sites?

The page rank system works well for information sites but how many inbound links occur naturally for a Viagra or online pharmacy sites? If the page rank was gone then all the un-natural linking methods would vanish saving Google a big headache. Any plans at all to change things in this area? -- you said in Boston that you agreed this was a problem.

[Jesse_Smith]

Does Google have any plans in the future to become more Webmaster friendly? For example..

1. With the freshbot, instead of dumping the new listings after a few days, to keep the pages listed until after the deepcrawl gets them listed for good.

2. On your webmaster section, including a section talking about HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE, telling us how to get it working.

3. Making a form in the webmaster section where we can enter a URL and it will tell us the status of the URL, has it been banned, and what the PR is for example.

[newtoseo]

Are there penalties Google places on a site that would only effect certain keywords? For example, if a site drops from #1 on a keyword to #350, yet stays consistent for many other keywords are we to assume there has been a penalty placed on the site? There doesn't seem to be another explanation for such a dramatic drop from just one update.

If this is a penalty, can you provide any information on what type of penalty it would be? Sites that are in this situation do not seem to be doing anything against the rules (except possibly linking to a PR0 site).

Thanks.

[pixel_juice]

I'll second the calls for more transparency on penalties/bans. Innocent webmasters who fall foul of a penalty should be given an opportunity to correct their errors. Not knowing if you're banned or penalised makes it an impossible situation for some. Will Google introduce something to help this situation?

[edited by: pixel_juice at 6:49 pm (utc) on May 27, 2003]

[lorax]

Does Google have any plans to incorporate raw XML data into the index?

[hafgan]

Hi,

Does Google have any plans of bringing back the original ads pay/impression option? Is google going to offer any additional advertising options?

Thanks.

[conor]

(a)Does Google or will it ever cap page rank per industry / ODP catagory, and if so to what extent and on what basis?

(b)Is transferable Page Rank ever capped from sites offering paid text links?

[NFFC]

If Webmasters are unable to read and understand 6 simple rules posted at the start of a thread what point is there to Google publishing guidelines for Webmasters?

[michael heraghty]

Given all the recent speculation on Google's plans for blogs (delisting from main index, etc.), can you clarify how Google intends to deal with weblog content?

[MyWifeSays]

There is currently some speculation that large numbers of keyword stuffed text links can stop the target page performing well for those keywords.

Does Google still stand by it's statement that you cannot harm a website by linking to it?

[DaveN]

What benefit does a PR0 penalty serve over a site been dropped from the database altogether (grey pr)

Dave

[needhelp]

I have the same question as vik_c, adding on: if a site has PR0, but still ranks well, should one worry or disregard the PR0 as not being used in this case to determine rank? (or is that ditto on the penalty transparency question?)

[edited by: needhelp at 7:28 pm (utc) on May 27, 2003]