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What am I missing?!
I hardly need one ...when google have had readily identifiable ( by all here and elsewhere ) problems with particular aspects of their algo's or results.. they have sent in the PR dept ( GG , AWA ) etc and their has been discussion of the particular subject with them in the fora the ....This subject is never answered or even acknowleged by either of these guys even in threads where it has been 50% or more of the posts and where they ( GG or AWA )have been been posting....(the only response has been from their "shills"...( I expressly do not mean you Hutcheson or the mods or admin )...and inept shilling it has been too ...as is all such when it happens ...problem of influential fora and site ) ...
Their silence I have always equated to the reluctance of PR people to lie outright and deny what they know will come out later ....I know the feeling I used to work in high level advertising and PR ....
google is not the victim here ..it is actively encouraging and profiting by this situation ...at the moment ....
It will however be the victim of loss of perceived integrity when the real position becomes known after the IPO is done as then the books and past practices are available for public inspection .....
Google got to be where it is by being perceived as more honest than the rest
...the fact that the start page didn't look like a yard sale didn't really come into it for most people except web pros and designers and those with "western" taste ( Yahoo looks like a yard sale still ..but to an asian surfer it looks positively spartan and low key )...
the recent ..and yes they are recent ( less than one years ) boosting of their adwords revenue stream via this methods will come out as a result of the IPO ..
I predict the "honesty" problem will hurt them when Moneysoft and maybe Big blue get into search properly ...then any "negative" points will hurt real hard ...and the worst "negative" you can do is to be caught lying about your product ....anyone here from marketing can tell you ..you can exagerate , you can hype ...people still buy it even if they know it is hyped ...but outright lies will topple products and presidents ...and will always out ...
no one has a more pointy investigative nose than an investigating accountant who gets access to one of the hitherto most secretive organistions in IT...
I'm adding together what I see and what I know and experience ..
I see the results ..those who don't are not looking in the same place ..normal we don't all have the same interests and Google doesn't serve up the same thing to the same question depending on the time of day and where you are etc...I learned this again today..see another thread ( I never did work out how to do that "post cross thread link thingy" or search WebmasterWorld or the cute "boxed" quotes thingy too ) ...sigh!
I do have some daily contact with people in data mining and collation and "private but huge" search engine programming ...they assure me and have explained simply how to stop this problem if they wished to ...they are not Google competitors but work with world financial institutions and have to extract similar quantities of info from what we sometimes call the "hidden net" every minute of every hour of every day ...as they said ..to know that google or any other search engine could stop this in a heartbeat ...it helps to be in the industry ...remember how many servers google "told us" "hand on heart" that they used ....and the real figure ....
Already they tell us many things "not to do" ..as they will be caught out by the "algo" ....most of these dont's the algo is NOT configured to catch ...If it were all of the big SEO players here couldn't make any real money at all ...the catch is finding which things the "algo" actually doesn't sanction ...eventually we find them and say nothing detailed ... :))
And as I said I worked in PR and advertising a long time ...I can smell an "embarrased , pretend I can't see or hear the conversation" PR man or woman even down a modem and through a screen ...any of us can ..we've been there ..done that ..and hated the money guys guts for placing us out there with the only alternatives to look stupid , deaf , blind or lie ...
Eventually you quit the business ...
To the money guys we're an expendable unit ....
so are all the little mom and pop type businesses that are what the web and search engines were built on ....
those who run spammy directories within directories helped by google and helping the pre IPO adwords revenue stream also see google as being expendable ..so do the money men that have taken over the policy unit in google ...where are the people who used to run Alta or Lycos etc now ....long gone from the ruins they made using the same tactics ....
I draw a thick line between, say, ODP or Yahoo category pages (which are -- IMO, of course -- among the most valuable results possible) and these sleazoid fakes. But ... _I_ draw that line, I'm not sure whether a program could do it effectively. I do not share your faith in the filtering power of data-mining techniques. Sure, it's easy to mine data that someone else isn't pouring toxic waste into. The average corporate stuffed-shirt may not be creating new works of art, but he's not trying to keep the company from seeing anybody else's reports by burying them in sludge. (Much as it may seem otherwise to the casual observer.) Search engines have a unique problem in that whatever filters are applied, the filtered entities immediately begin thrashing to get past them. It is a much more complex problem than it appears.
( I never did work out how to do that "post cross thread link thingy" or search WebmasterWorld or the cute "boxed" quotes thingy too )
You can do a WW site search by clicking on "site search" at the top of the page, (between "control panel" and "glossary").
For a link to another thread just use the URL, e.g. [webmasterworld.com...]
To do the quotes do this, but replace the {...} with [...]
{quote}Insert quoted text here{/quote}
You can do colours with {red}text{/red}
Are there any serps where directories are sitting below other style sites? What on page and off page factors do those top sites have? How are they different in content to directories?
You should not be proposing this to us. You should be proposing it to Google. It's their algorithm that's at fault here and they know it. With stuff like <snip> searches, etc. This has been going on for yonks now and they have done nothing about it.
They continue to insist that their organic results cannot be modified outside of the algo. Well, unless they condone these aff schemes they should either be fixing their algo or manually filtering them. I don't think that it's really as big a job as it appears. If they put their mind to it and concentrated on each area where it occurs they could sort this out in two or three days. Just do a few searches and exclude the affiliate schemes and directory sites they find at the top of the results.
If they want to give me £10K I'll do it for them in a week. They don't have to catch them all. As soon as they make a statement on this and start the process many of these sites will get the message. They won't take the chance of an outright ban.
When they go public I think that they will be forced into this by their shareholders anyway. I don't think they'll be insisting that they cannot do anything about <snip being at the top of the results then ;o)
[edited by: Marcia at 6:30 am (utc) on May 7, 2004]
[edit reason] No specifics please. [/edit]
I draw a thick line between, say, ODP or Yahoo category pages (which are -- IMO, of course -- among the most valuable results possible)
I don't see much value to either one myself.
Are there any serps where directories are sitting below other style sites? What on page and off page factors do those top sites have? How are they different in content to directories?
Yes, there sure are. And there have been people trying to get into analyzing that as well as analyzing what's making the "directories" rank as they are - but to no avail so far.
You should not be proposing this to us. You should be proposing it to Google.
No, it shouldn't be proposed to Google because they haven't asked for it, they don't need it, and developing and refining their algo is their business - not ours.
We are exactly the ones this should be proposed to because it relates to OUR sites and our sites are the ones that ARE our business.
There are people who have their thumbs up the wrong places sitting around trying to figure out how Google should take care of what's their job to take care of while they aren't even close to figuring out how to get their own sites even close to how the so-called "directories" are ranking.
That's not exactly a wise allocation of time and mental resources for people who are not on Google's payroll but have to rely on their own sites for income.
I'm surfing from the UK and I even just tried finding some, and wasn't able. If someone wants to sticky me some example keywords I'd be interested, as I wonder if google.com is giving me (the uk, not specifically me, no tinhat here) different results to those elsewhere.
There are people who have their thumbs up the wrong places sitting around trying to figure out how Google should take care of what's their job to take care of while they aren't even close to figuring out how to get their own sites even close to how the so-called "directories" are ranking.
Whoops.... Marcia ...touchy here aren't we?
For my part ...As I said already ...As soon as the "spam directories" and their end customers decided that there was no more revenue to be gained by sitting in my catagory the problem vanished overnight ...
And I went back to number one ...
Without having made a single change ....
Been there ever since ....
The crap just went elswhere is all .....
Do you own one of these things by chance .....?
You are correct in what you say to an extent. We do tend to forget that at times Google owes us nothing but by the same token we owe Google nothing.
No, it shouldn't be proposed to Google because they haven't asked for it, they don't need it, and developing and refining their algo is their business - not ours.
I must disagree with you on this one. Of course it is their business but all companies must listen to their customers or die, particularly when their customers are "informed". Before anyone starts splitting hairs people using the search engine are customers, whether or not they are paying Google.
There are people who have their thumbs up the wrong places sitting around trying to figure out how Google should take care of what's their job to take care of while they aren't even close to figuring out how to get their own sites even close to how the so-called "directories" are ranking.
I don't know what you mean by "so-called". As far as I know a directory is a directory is a directory and there are plenty of them to be found in Google.
I am a one man band and I only have so much time that I can devote to this. In any case better brains than mine have been unable to crack the current algo (apart of course, from those who provide aff schemes.)
You have made it quite clear that you are very happy with the Google results that you are seeing but I think that you are probably in the minority in this forum. If I were allowed to list certain KWs I could show you that a high percentage of their total searches yield useless aff schemes and directory laden results.
Apart from wasting people's time this is a turn off. In general people are slow to recognise this and hence slow to change to other search engines, but they will eventually, unless Google changes first.
Yes, there sure are. And there have been people trying to get into analyzing that as well as analyzing what's making the "directories" rank as they are - but to no avail so far.
Some of us have been posting the truth about this situation for months ...
It's only
to no availbecause its
their business...Precisely..!
And ranting at those who post what you personally dont want to hear or let be known is not going to change the truth ....
Only the tos ( and my respect for it )prevents me from commenting further on the tone of your post ...
and if saying that pulls me a "ban" ...so be it
[edited by: Marcia at 10:57 am (utc) on May 7, 2004]
[edit reason] Fixed formatting. [/edit]
:)I have no special relationship with google.I am sure I have more sites penalised by google than most people here but its quite obvious to me who the ranters in this thread are.;)
Google is not perfect and its not a perfect world but they seem to be trying real hard and as Hutchenson said It can't be easy for a search engine to keep the baby while throwing out the bathwater.
If you guys did a honest critique on the other search engines I think you should cocncede that google is the best there is.
Some may look like directories but they don't even qualify to be called that. In one search I checked last night, there were 2 out of the top ten, 5 out of the top 20 that were not actual merchandise sites selling the products.
One was a legitimate directory with every right to be there since the page was right on topic and unique, 2 were normal affiliate sites, also with on topic pages that had value enough to be there with appropriate merchandise - but not the two in the top ten. One was completely off topic for the page, and the other was worth taking the time to check out further.
That one appears to be a directory, but in fact doesn't link to any of the sites it appears to on the ranking pages - which is identical to loads of other pages on the site. It appears to be a site of around a dozen pages, but has in fact over 3K auto-generated pages linked to from several site maps loaded with every keyword imaginable for that particular product niche. It reads like an Overture keyword suggestion tool list - and each links to a page hyphenated with the search term and the appropriate page title - with links duplicated across many pages. Plus mini-site maps on each page. It's a literal factory of internal anchor text.
The pages have the identical links shared by many others - not a directory at all, they are NOT linking to sites. They all are extracts of text descriptions of the sites they're describing, top ranking sites for the niche with the site names as anchor text - and long strings as the actual links - PPC links all linking to the same site with different codes.
That certainly isn't a directory, even though at first glance it may appear to be. What that site did right, as did the sites above it, was have a rich, semantically correct span of appropriate vocabulary for the product line it's ranking for across the site, with all the appropriate anchor text, and second - a couple dozen quality inbound links from themed, on topic sites within that same niche or closely related.
Aside from good optimization, which most of the high ranking sites for those search terms have, what causes that "junk" site to rank are the common factors shared with the legitimate quality sites that are ranking. There are small, poorly linked sites of high quality languishing 4 or 5 pages down in search that well deserve to rank well - but don't share those few important elements with the sites that do - depth of size, richness of vocabulary used and *enough* appropriate inbound links.
It is exactly those site owners, with valid quality sites not doing near as well as they could and probably should, who sorely need analysis of what's causing some sites to rank well nowadays and not others. Us whining or *fixing* Google does those site owners no good whatsoever. Everyone gains if those sites move up and overtake those of lesser quality - the site owners, Google with better quality results, and the shopping public as well.
One was a legitimate directory with every right to be there since the page was right on topic and unique
"Legitimate" is a matter of opinion. I personally do not think that listings of directories are appropriate, and certainly not at the top of the rankings. I know from previous threads that many others feel the same way.
I have also been soliciting the opinion of "laymen" on this and they are almost universally agreed that these are not wanted. If I need a directory I will use the ODP because I know that I will find mostly quality links there.
I don't know why Google insists on serving up this drivel. They must choose to do so because I am sure that they have the technology to do something about it. If, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, they really think that directories are appropriate they could at least give us an option. This could be done by providing a button that would separate directories from the real, relevant results.
Sorry Marcia! There I go again telling Google how to run their business.
It seems to me that the sites I'm talking about are manipulating anchor text to do well in the SERPS. As most of the sites I've looked at did not have particularly high PR I can only assume the sites are doing well because of a lexically diverse set of keyword based anchor texts.
As other search engines don't seem to be suffering quite so badly from this kind of abuse maybe it is a flaw in the current Google algo.
Anyway for the time being I'm going to knock up a few extra keyword rich site maps!
#1 .. most of these "spamm directories" have no backlinks and no history ..just the whois dates of the "reg" on the domain names tells you the second ...the backlinks ...you got really unusually lucky if you found one with more than 2 "real" outside of itself or it's clones ..
#2 ..they aren't there due to good optimistion for "semantic" algos ...do the analysis of their pages by any usual criteria and they should have been penalised for keyword stuffing...
#3 ..you sya google would gain if it removed them ...in what way ...credebility?..YES ..Regain reputation?..YES ....
But it would lose revenue at a time when maximising the adwords revenue stream is the name of the pre IPO game .....
So google tweaked and tweaked and tweaked until they could do this ..and it's no accident ...this algo series was designed by the IPO launch guys working with the adsense etc dept....and the prop heads and probably even the founders are locked in for the moment ...
and Cabbie ..yes ..yahoo is doing the selfsame thing ..they'd be stupid (short term not to! )...
what is a waste of time and energy in SEO terms is attempting to do anything other than sit it out ...
As I said earlier ..when it happened to me I didn't change adamn thing ..( had too much "non" internet work to do ..otherwise I would have probably broken a perfectly well functioning #1 site for nothing )..
when they had milked my "area" for their clients they shut their sites ....they dissappeared from the serps ...in our areas ...
try their names now .."server not found"..why pay the bandwidth if you don't need to ...
and I went back to number one ...
Other engines? ...
I still prefer google ...mainly because I know in my own area the quality of my competition and when I don't find them ( the good ones ) ranking up there with me then I know the engine isn't as good as it says it is ..yahoo is a case in point so is M$ ....
but there aint' one of them Google included which is "honest" by my definition ...
Some of them suit my bottom line more than others ...is all...
But I wouldn't trust any of them ...ever ....
The additional problem with searching from the UK and for UK only sites is that trying the Adwords doesn't help either as most of them turn out to be American.
I do prefer Teoma, but still keep trying Google in the hope of getting newer results. Also it's easier to get a UK search.
Sound silly? Well, that is about what we are dealing with trying to figure out what Google has implemented. And if we were mind readers and were able to somehow figure out 100 unknowns put into the google box in any random order, google would see us figure it out and they would then quickly re-shuffle the 100 unknowns and it would take you another thousand years to figure them out again.
Goodluck trying to decode google algo, it appears to me to be an effort in futility.
what makes you think its as complicated as 100 items ..?
cos "G" said so ..?
didn't think you'd fall for that ...!
Every time you read the "g" guide and it says don't ..and you see a #1 who does and who always did ...does that say something to you ....
an algo is by definition an automated process and therefore can't "miss" these things ...unless it just takes them into it's sights and then either keeps or disregards them later ..depending on what else it finds or is told to outweigh them by ...
This means
Corse you mustn't put all your eggs in the one basket ..dont rely on any one "illegal" strategy to rank ....because the algo would only have that to identfy your type of site and SEO practice by ...and you'd be all black hat ...and gone ..like it is with Yahoo ..and INK on a bad hair day!
But spreading your technique and covering multiple bases .....and reading most of the "admin" posts around here very very very carefully ...
Is worth more than a "gazillion" "ebooks" or be #1 on google schemes ....
I know why some sites are above some of mine and why some are below some of mine...
Some of this I can change ..some does not depend on what I can do by myself ...
I don't waste my time playing around with my sites with factors I cannot change ...
And I sometimes if I can be bothered ..I change those that I can ..
Took me a lot of lurking and reading here to realise that the pro's here wether "new" or "admin" seem to work this way too...
Still doesn't stop me speaking out at what look to me to be obvious manipulations by the engines in favour of certain "customers"...mainly to save others from "breaking" good sites over a transient problem ..
oh and by the way ..I don't beleive Marcia does own one of those spammy directories ....sorry Marcia .. : )
There are people who have their thumbs up the wrong places sitting around trying to figure out how Google should take care of what's their job to take care of while they aren't even close to figuring out how to get their own sites even close to how the so-called "directories" are ranking.
You are utterly brilliant.
you are very happy with the Google results that you are seeing but I think that you are probably in the minority in this forum.
I'm tired of seeing this kind of statement. It looks like a minority because only the whiners are posting. Stop making assumptive statements. From this kind of thinking, I could say that 'Everyone hates google' because on webmasterworld there are mostly posts about problems with google. We know for a fact that 'everyone' does not hate google.
And ranting at those who post what you personally dont want to hear or let be known is not going to change the truth ....
I think you should double check who's doing the ranting here. And who's 'truth' you are believing in (your own).
"Legitimate" is a matter of opinion. I personally do not think that listings of directories are appropriate, and certainly not at the top of the rankings.
Keyword phrase here is 'a matter of opinion'.
Personally, I DO think that listings of directories are appropriate. There were directories long before there was a google (I've been on the net since 1996).
I would much rather go to a directory on, say, music, which contains everything on the topic I am interested in... than doing a thousand different searches on the word music.
Again, and this is important....
There are good directories and there are bad directories.
There are good web sites and there are bad web sites.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
Personally, I DO think that listings of directories are appropriate. There were directories long before there was a google (I've been on the net since 1996).
I've been on the Internet since the late 80's and I think directories stink. They have never been given such weight, not even in the late 80's before you knew what an Internet was.
It looks like a minority because only the whiners are posting. Stop making assumptive statements.
Read the subject of the thread again and don't be abusive. It is not in the spirit of this forum.
These are not rants they are opinions about Google. That is why I used the word "opinion". Also, I did say that the views expressed were mine personally and I am entitled to them. In any case I don't have to look hard for supporters who agree that directories add little to the value of the results so I am not being assumptive.
Google includes a human edited Directory of its own so why display those of cheap, spammy affiliate schemes above sites which contain useful information?
It really is 'to each his own'. Eventually, illegitimate sites (using 'illegal' methods) tend to dissapear. But just because some folks don't like a particular type of site (I totally dislike DMOZ - bunch of links added by supposed 'editors', many good but many with seemingly their own apparent 'rules'... and its slow and maybe way too large) doesn't mean its 'bad'.
I hate long flash introductions too... lets remove all those sites from Google. I also hate to see tons of words misspelled, lets get rid of those... and dont forget those Travel sites, who needs em? (smile at EFV - just kidding)... and dont get me started on MLM sites!
Lets let google do its job. And we do ours.
[edit] We probably disagree on the definition of 'abusive', but I shall apologize. And 'rant' wasn't MY words, but a quote. And you are CERTAINLY entitled to your opinion. And I mine. I think I am allowed to disagree with you.[/edit]
This is a good expression of the (common) poor understanding of the problem. To the Google algo, there is no concept of directory. There are only "link PAGES". (To a human, a directory is a domain containing a large number of interlinked link pages.) And there can be no concept of "useful". Pages either are widely linked to (quantified by high page rank) or aren't.
It is not merely difficult, it is completely impossible for a program to distinguish between a coherent page and an incoherent containing the same words. So the kind of spamming described here (basically rerum-ipsuming with keywords of choice) cannot be detected by on-page methods.
Something off-page and off-site (trusted directory, page rank, etc.) must serve as the substitute for "useful." Well, you all know how to go about subverting page rank: buy links from a couple of high-PR sites, and create your own great cloud of doorway pages. These spammers have done that also.
Google's response, whatever it is, will not be easy. And it won't be free of side-effects. And it won't be impossible for spammers to get through, the same way mules find gaps in a fence (not by intelligence, but random wandering in every direction). And there are enough spammers to find the gaps.
What they are, as is obvious from the description in the other thread, is "cached search engine results." They prey on the search engines or any other feed they can get, steal searchable snippets, and then algorithmically roll them into hairballs and stuff them on deceptively labelled doorway pages, with random links to themselves (to build up PR, I assume). There often aren't even any any outbound links -- they don't need them, since they're relying on ad displays for revenue.
Obviously, people have found the key to success with Google's algo and are making hay while the sun shines! Buying keyword ladden domains (which are a dime a dozen) is a pretty cheap way to make a lot of money! So what if they have to throw it out inside of a week or two ... they made plenty of money in the meantime.
It reminds me a lot of what happened in 2000 when Inktomi had MAJOR problems with their index being spammed by porn sites and had to shut down their site submissions portals.
The easiest way into Ink back "in the day" was through Canada.com and then Hot Bot. Both submissions pages were shut down (or just stopped working) and within months, Ink was teetering at the gates of oblivion. Their index was a mess for well over a year. Nobody was more surprised than I when they made a very slow comeback. I truly thought they were finished.
I think this so callled "authority/directory" problem is far more insidious than Google is letting on. They are nothing more than doorway pages ... and bad ones at that! (I suspect most are computer generated pages)
Google is most certainly aware of the problem and I imagine the algo guys are bleary eyed, bald, automatons at this point ... having spent the better part of 6 months trying to fix it.
I have managed to elbow my way past these blighters ... but it has taken months of hard work and very, very long hours. Its an ongoing battle.
I don't know what the answer is and as Marcia said, its not our job to "fix" the algo ... that's up to Google. In the meantime, all we can do is do our best, buy advertising if needed, keep your fingers crossed that they figure it out soon and concentrate on other engines which haven't fallen prey to the same crap.
The evidence you cite is not adequate to prove this conclusion. Suppose you see, say, 7 million "Las Vegas Hotel" pages. Is that proof that there is no filter, or is it proof that the other 14 million pages were filtered out? You can't know.
There are so many spammers out there, that no one filter is going to catch all of them -- some of them will accidentally do something so stupid that the googletechs will hever have thought to check for it; some of them will have such a fancy Laputan knowledge generator that any particular mechanical process won't detect it.
