Suggestion box

Real one and virtual one

[GoogleGuy]

Hey, if anyone is going to the Google Dance ( [services.google.com...] )tonight, I wanted to let people know that there should be a suggestion box there. If you want us to index Flash or do a certain holiday logo or whatever, I'd be curious to hear what new features/data/stuff you'd like to see from Google in the future. If people are interested, we can also turn this thread into a virtual suggestion box about what you'd like to see from search engines in the future. Please be nice. :)

[Marcia]

Sounds like a nice idea. Wish I could have been there!

[Powdork]

I think a minimal fee for paid inclusion to your directory would be an excellent idea.
See how nice I was.

[Visit Thailand]

As I will not be there, I would like to suggest Google uses it's logo to educate people with more international personalities holidays, festivals etc from all over the world.

Or at the very least make it geolocation accessible so when there is an important event or birthday people in X country will see a logo that is relevant to X country, but it would be nice to see it network ride so that people in A country can learn more about X, Y, Z countries and customs.

For example a logo could be done for the Rio Carnival, one perhaps for the Music Festival in Paris, one for Songkran in Thailand.

Using festivals from all over the world will help educate people to others cultures customs etc.

[Tribewolf]

suggestion: stability and consistency in the algorithm for more than a month or two at a time and a more consistant updating of the things that the algo factors.

for any 2 year old site to go from #10 to #130 to #8 to #57 for the same 2 word phrase in the span of a 10 week period, as my site has, is riduculous.

[GrinninGordon]

suggestion 1: hold the dance somewhere else next year (sticky me if you need suggestions)

suggestion 2: put me in charge of the punch bowl

suggestion 3: Do you play party games at these get togethers? If yes, have a game called "Put the web site in the directory" (a variation on "Put the tail on the donkey"). Where you have a donkey (called the donkey) and a player called the "editor". Give the editor 10 tags with his site domains / names on them, and see how many he can put in the directory (on the donkey's behind)

:-) Grinnin as ever :-)

[Dolemite]

1. Google should supplement their algorithmic spam filtering with a responsive, hands-on team of humans, or possibly well-trained chimps.

2. Google should make good on its New Year's resolution of improving communication with webmasters.

3. Google should provide clearer guidance on what's OK and what's not in terms of SEO, in its eyes.

[TheDave]

Ok, this is a minor suggestion, and someone may know how I can customize it myself (please sticky me if you can!), but I'd really like to have a "Google Glossary" search on my IE right click menu. At the moment I have a "google search", but it would be great if I could highlight a word, and go google glossary from the right click menu. It'd be like a quick dictionary. I know the glossary is still in the labs, but I find it quite useful for things like abreviations.

[edit] I meant acronyms but couldnt think of the word :P [/edit]

[edited by: TheDave at 2:53 am (utc) on Aug. 19, 2003]

[twilight47]

I would suggest serving that punch that they make with 7-up and orange sherbet and also see if the DJ has a Kara-oke machine. I here that's all the rage with the kids these days. ;)

[LogicMan]

I would emphasis the "what's NOT okay" part of Dolemite's 3rd point of "Google should provide clearer guidance on what's OK and what's not in terms of SEO ...

Give as much detail as possible without giving away trade secrets. eg: repeating a word/phrase too much (x percent) will get you penalized for that term and eventually will be considered spam and get your whole page/site banned.

I believe giving details of what you consider spam will keep all good sites from inadvertently being consider spam.

My biggest fear is inadvertently being banned. I have a valid site on 'widgets', if I list my products like

1 inch round red widgets
1 inch round blue widgets
1 inch square red widgets
1 inch square blue widgets

2 inch round red widgets
2 inch round blue widgets

...etc...

Will repeating it too much be considered spam for the term 'widget'. If so I'd avoid it and do

<h1>Widgets</h1>
<h2>1 inch round</h2>
red
blue

<h2>2 inch round</h2>

Either way my site is just as valid for widgets but what might Google consider spam and what does Google like best. What ever Google likes, I like.

That's just an example of my concern about spam, others might have their concerns about what is considered spam.

[Dave_Hawley]

I suggest Google stop humouring us by pretending they will listen to Webmasters :o)

Dave

[greenfrog]

I vote that google take on Its Own Directory Project(IODP). I'm only one voice, but the DMOZ represents nothing but frustration for me. There are thousands of unchecked sites in the queue and many of them are not spam, or spam related. One site I submitted over a year ago has not yet been included. The site I submitted has nothing but original content, no seo tricks, and no spam. I can't even begin to tell you how many hours, and hair folicles I've lost because of the DMOZ.

Since Google is moving more toward pay-for-inclusion services. I vote they create a paid inclusion directory, to replace the ODP. Or to at least supplement what I view as a failed project.

[Powdork]

Dave,
From The Princess Bride
:o
When you say that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

[amazed]

no suggestions, just concentrate on including new pages faster, that is all I need...:-))

[Powdork]

greenfrog- By my count, you are not just one voice. You are the third to mention Google's relationship with the ODP in at least a roundabout way.

[Powdork]

sounds a bit one sided, they might not want to be bought

It's true, they may not want to be bought.
Ahh... who are we kidding, Google or AOL Time Warner, who would you wanna work for?;)

[guddu]

Wow, that's a great idea for google search suggesstion tool.

What about an addition to the FAQ page for recent changes on Google (3-4 months) updated atleast once a month? All info on Pagerank, Inclusion of Websites, Spam, Penalizing, Ranking etc.

[Visit Thailand]

I agree with all that was said re DMOZ.

Also reading this thread about moving servers / hosts etc:

[webmasterworld.com...]

It would be nice if G could add some info on this in their FAQ's best way to move servers and hosts etc from G's perspective.

[le_gber]

Quicker and better feedback from your support team when we ask them a question (hence as Dolemite said Google should make good on its New Year's resolution of improving communication with webmasters).

Been two month now and still no proper (non-automatic) answer given. Any other company would be blamed/pointed at for such a bad customer care :(

Leo

[vincevincevince]

Time to change the Google index page / logo guys! Keep it looking fresh.

[valeyard]

Three suggestions:

1) Toolbar PR functionality available on a web page or whatever for those of us who have upgraded from IE to Opera

2) An option to do a "link:" and get results from low PR sites included.

3) If a site is penalised, say so explicitly in the SERPS. That would help the sanity of webmasters worrying that they've been penalised when in fact they just don't have any decent backlinks yet!

[claus]

Okay, a wishlist?

well, one thing that bugs me as a SE user is all the results from email-lists that you get whenever you search for something a bit technical. This is a recent phenom. They're absolutely worthless for anything but email-harvesting, although the links pointing towards them do have the right keywords. When i need such stuff i go to dej.. Google groups or use my newsreader, as i can see the whole thread there. [added: blogs... same thing..]

I guess i want an option like "do not include this-or-that" ...regexps?

Also, well, sometimes i'd like to search for odd file-types like "something.pl" "something.css" "something.js" ... it's just a file-name search really - i'd just like a pointer to the file, no indexing is needed. (This is definitely not it: allinurl: "style.css" and this does not do the trick: "filetype:css" )

How about a way to escape special characters (. / etc.) so that they must be in the SERPS?

I only partially support the "tech-info" mentioned... i'd like to see IP lookup, DNS zone info, server config/netstat... all the details. OTOH that's not valuable to the general public, and there's already lots of other means for obtaining that - i do have my tools and probably would not use G in stead.

Oh, and then i'm in opposition... please don't personalise or do localization... somehow the Great G Gateway has got the impression that i'm from Germany but i'm not.. i don't need translations to German at all and i have absolutely no need to go to Google Deutschland... Keep these features fixed to the G TLD used please - if needed, use a .us domain for US-searches in stead of the com.

Guess that's all for now...
/claus

---

one more... this bugs me big time...Google News TOS:

"For example, you may not (...) take the results from the Service and reformat and display them, or mirror any portion of the results on your Web site; "

I think you have a business opportunity here as a content aggregator. By all means do provide a means to make filtered searches available on my website, i'll even pay or display your logo or whatever...

[Brett_Tabke]

Sights from the Google Dance - including the only known published picture of GoogleGuy. In the supporters forum:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Marcia]

>>the only known published picture of GoogleGuy

I'm almost sorry for the photo, Brett. Not that GoogleGuy isn't as totally adorable as I thought he'd be, but the way the photos are done kind of does something with the GoogleGuy mystique. Some of those among us have had quite a different image than what the photo shows.

Hey! I happen to have a single daughter, can you find out if he's already taken and spoken for or if he's eligible and up for grabs?

[Dolemite]

Great, let's talk about stuff 95% of us can't see.

The chance to see GoogleGuy is no big draw for me (no offense, GG ;) )...there are other reasons I'd consider subscribing, but how its being p1mped really turns me off, as in this thread and in how often subscriber's forum posts show up in the Highlighted Posts section.

[thewebboy]

I agree that Google SHOULD dump the Open Directory. Google should do something very similar to Yahoo Directory but allow slower free submittion. (It may be a hassle to Google but it could greatly add to search relevancy.)

Also, I would love to see a Google.us. I know its the world wide web, but there are sometimes when I would like results from American sites only. Other contries have it, and I'm jealous.

[TheDave]

While the dmoz could use some help, I agree, I don't believe human edited is the way to go for google. I think it all comes down to this - When does a "Search Engine" stop becoming a search engine? Remember, that is Google's goal - to build an engine - not a bunch of trained apes rating pages. Just my thoughts :) Same goes for the whole "god" thing. I'm glad to see google havn't corrected it (yet..), because it shows they are dedicated to producing a search engine and cutting no corners.

[markus007]

I'd like to be able to type in a keyword and then see a graph of how many searches its recieved for the past year. Google doesn't have to put in the actual number of searches, but seeing a graph of the word "iraq" would be interesting..

[Net_Wizard]

1. Stop asking for suggestions or spam reports when Google have no intent or lack of interest in following it up.

2. Stop using WW and this forum as Google PR playground.

3. This is Google News forum, if Google intend to participate in this forum then...What critical news can Google share that would benefit majority of the webmasters here?

<added>Mod, feel free to delete this post if this is hypocritical of Google as per WW standard</added>

[GoogleGuy]

Net_Wizard, I definitely think that Google pays attention to what people say here on WebmasterWorld. For example, when AdSense came out, a lot of people on WebmasterWorld said "I really wish that I could tweak the color palettes." That feedback made it back to ads engineers and product managers, and they made sure that the following iteration of AdSense included that ability.

That's a pretty recent example, but there are plenty of other ones. I think the give and take works pretty well here. I help answer questions and dispel myths when I can, and I get to hear what people are thinking. Personally, I think it's fair to ask what Google can do better every six months or so. I'm sure the mods get tired of seeing this thread each year, but it helps me see what people are thinking about, what features they'd want, etc.