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. :)

[onedumbear]

How about getting rid of some of those 8,550,000 amazonian listings (like the ones that begin with the word BUY and look really spammy) and making the amazonian company get their own search engine. They currently represent 3.8 percent of the total number of pages being indexed.

[Marcia]

>>amazonian company

Not only them, it's msn shopping also. It throws all pre-conceived ideas about ranking relevancy or scoring criteria right out the window. There's been a real serious problem since indexing dynamic URLs so freely.

I just checked on a site I watch and it was knocked out, out of a total of 6 million pages returned, by an msn shopping aspx page with a long dynamic URL that's nothing more than affiliate links - right in the # 1 spot. One single shopping page on that huge site that's SUPPOSED to be an ISP, if I remember correctly. No PR, guaranteed no quality inbound links with anchor text, just riding on what was orignally the site to begin with.

What's turning up has nothing to do with relevancy, spamazon and msn shopping. They're nothing more than affiliate sites (masquerading as soemthing else_ and should be reported to ODP for removal as such. ;)

[Noximus]

Dear GG,
1. It would be very good if you made the list of banned domains public.
2. It would be good that if there where some way for removing penalty from old, reregistered domains.

[claus]

I'll call back the DNS wish posted somewhere around page three, as this seems to be working a bit better now. I'll still hold on to my wish on less emphasis on the fresh (maillists, blogs, forums, whathavewe) and more emphasis on the old&good in the serps - it's getting more and more difficult to find long time valued static reference material in the serps these days.

/claus

[Hardwood Guy]

I've been seeing some message board links popping up in several search queries people use to find my site. If you can't get around 'em submit a reply with a link providing it's not archived. Agreed...this Amazon stuff is ridiculous.

[michael heraghty]

I have a suggestion re. the use of American vs. British English spellings.

Here's the problem. Currently, if you search for "search engine optimisation", for example, Google will ask "Did you mean: search engine *optimization*?".

I find it bothersome that Google.ie and Google.co.uk ask this question. I imagine it is a headache for teachers in the UK and Ireland, when their pupils' spellings are being "corrected" by Google.

I think it would be better if Google simply said:

"Try also the US spelling: search engine optimization."

Or something to that effect. I think it would be educational to know that there are two different versions of the spelling.

This technique could also be applied to words for which alternative spellings aren't currently suggested, e.g. colour/color.

Just a tip, but I think those of you in North America may not be aware of how annoying it is for us users of British English. (And no -- we're not going to change our spelling habits anytime soon!)

[valeyard]

I'd like to second michael_heraghty's suggestion. If Google is going to go to the bother of localisation it should do it properly. Some of us in the UK are fighting hard to preserve British English, it would be nice to have some support.

If nothing else, think how much free press coverage such a move could get in the UK media :-)

[berli]

With all due respect, I think Google is simply guessing at the spelling of words, given the frequencies of similarly spelled words in its database. I often do foreign language searches and I get those suggestions all the time. Ditto for names.