Forum Moderators: open
The post florida G returns information sites for a commercial search in some areas. Why not just accept that commmercial searches should return commercial results? This is better for the people who want to buy.
:) Interesting dilemma for G., that one.
They of course want to drive towards sponsored links for commercial searches and this is why they are striving to return informational pages and not commercial ones. But for the reason you say (people WANT commercial results) this could mean shooting themselves in the foot.
Unless something interesting happens to the layout of the Google results page when a commercial search is "detected"...
Why not just have a button that says "filter out commercial results", for the people out there who want to search for informational sites?
That, I think, is an excellent idea! What better way to get the public what they want. Let the masses choose what they want to see. That way a person who is looking to buy a widget would get sites that sell widgets.
>The post florida G returns information sites for a commercial search in some areas. Why not just accept that commmercial searches should return commercial results? This is better for the people who want to buy.
The problem here is how does Google identify a commercial search? I'd argue if the search is just "fuzzy blue widgets", it should be assumed by default the person just wanted info on them, and all commercial sites selling them be filtered out. Only only if the searcher added something like "buy" or "sales" to the search term is it obvious it is commercial.
And, at the moment the searcher has the power already to do the above. If they add "buy" to the search term, that will likely bring the commercial sites to the top.
yowza:
>Why not just have a button that says "filter out commercial results", for the people out there who want to search for informational sites?
The problem here is that there isn't necessarily a clear line between commercial and info content. What about commercial sites that have lots of informational content? The above kills any site from appearing if it sells anything.
The way I see it in commercial searches the results are manipulated anyway. So, the guy that works the hardest on link building/buying/swapping, content building or whatever is the one who has the resources to do it and has the resources to deliver and should be #1.
Googles aim is to return the most relevant result based on the search criteria, not reward the site owner that work the hardest. In a nutshell Google doesn't care much for site owners only searchers. Cold hard facts I know!
BTW, I do not buy into the commercial filter theory and have yet too see any good reliable evidence that considers all the factors.
As the webmaster for review sites, I think that my information is of value to people that are shopping. An awful lot of those people that search on "commercial" terms end up spending a lot of time on my site.
Yeah, the commercial sites should have some representation, but not at the exclusion of on topic information.
ROFL. ;) People who run commercial websites tend to view things in a biased manner. If the search could possibly be commercial, than they assume that must be the intent of the searcher. However, given the tendency of people to use short, ambiguous search phrases, probably statistically only a very small percentage of searches would qualify as being obviously commercial to neutral judges.
Improvement?
Good user experience?
Why not just accept that commmercial searches should return commercial results? This is better for the people who want to buy.
What exactly is a "commercial search"? Something like "Book a hotel in Shelbyville" or "buy a Widgetco digital camera"? If that's what you're talking about, I agree. But you're defining "Shelbyville travel" or "Widgetco digital cameras" as examples of keyphrases that trigger lists of affiliate and e-commerce pages at the top of Google's SERPs, I'd strongly disagree. Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information, making it universally accessible and useful," and I suspect that Google's definition of "information" isn't focused pnrimarily on booking forms or shopping carts. :-)
But my preference is english, why send me espanol just so you can hide commerce? Too far is too far.
search?as_q=costa+rica&num=20&hl=en
It's a perfect example of not giving me what I want.
Did it perchance occur to you that some people are multilingual? I run a totally non-commercial site where I currently exchange links to one site in Russian, and one in Dutch, because many people on the Internet who know those languages also know English. (Hmm...that reminds me. Gotta add a link to that Finnish site I know of that currently links to mine.) My site happens to be one of the most authoratative on the topic in any language, and thus quite relevant to those for whom English is a second language.
Thus, the answer to your question is why filter out Espanol for those whose primary language is English on the assumption that means the person must not also know Spanish? It has nothing to do with filtering out commerce.
I mean, I really think google is the bestest Search engine no matter what, but altavista gives me english results when I request engish, maybe they just aren't cool enough?
Altavista Results [altavista.com]
There still are millions of meaningless plain random text pages spiced with <h1> text and mixed with 3-5% kw1 and kw2 saturation that either redirect by javascript or by frames or server side script that never display to a real user...just to Google. I also doubt Google willy-nilly decided to "throw the switch" on this we are likely seeing the future..like it or not of some form of AI type parsing of web results.
As far as the "costa rica" search...it is such a broad term it should probably yield a broad result and let the user decide what exactly he wanted to see. Since the country language is spanish and google is worldwide half the results being spanish pages doesn't seem off to me.
Am I missing something? I see Spanish results in that SERP? In any case, most Google users would likely just scroll past the ones that were obviously in Spanish.
You guys are great, don't get me wrong , but Apple trivia buffs will understand that you have just entered that strange place called the Reality Distortion Field [altavista.com].
[google.com...]
There IS a way to filter out the Spanish pages. You just gotta do it right.
Thanks for the link, but I use av now. They gave me a nice selection of info sites and a few commercial sites. I like to make my own choices, not have other folks make them for me.
Plus...and here is the really cool part . . drumroll...
If I like the info, I can use the same set of results to buy something!
AV rocks!
But google is still the best, no matter what.
3-4 years seems to be the crescendo zone.
Because Google is much better than Altavista at the moment, and far more people use Google. ;)
I would like to see ink get a bigger share to spread the eggs across two baskets and all, but Google is still it.
highlytechnical topicphrase
Where google has 83 of the best 100 sites missing since Florida.
Altavista only has 56 of the best 100 sites missing but they have been missing from Altavista for years. They were always in the top 100 at Google (for years) but are gone now so for technical people, Google is getting "as good as" Altavista, maybe even "better."
but AV's first three results are in spanish so that makes them good?
Okaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy.....
You might search for "associated1 kw1 kw2" or "associated2 kw1 kw2" and those sites will return if they had relevant content to start with. If all they had were "kw1 kw2" specially formatted for the googlebot they probably deserve to be lost to Florida. What got me at first was the number of .edu and .org sites that dominated competitive keywords. I think now what it means at least to me is how largely irrelevant a large part of web-page content has become that an .edu site will beat out commercial sites because the content of most commercial sites is basically so shallow...the emphasis over the past years being on generating content for the bots instead of people.
^see post subject above: "Commercial searches"
Any one word search is always going to be ambigious in results. Google works best when you use a string of words.
It's a poor tradesman that blames his tools :O)
