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Anyone else noticing any major changes?
I'm not sure if my new links are just sandboxed, and this is completely unrelated, but...
It looks like there may be a duplicate link filter and possibly combined with time. Sites with older links ( older than 4 months ) are showing many links with identical anchor text, but newer links are only showing unique ( text )links.
I was wondering if anyone is seeing anything like this too?
Google figured out how to rid the world of Google bombers.
Means anchor text bombers are going to be having a tough time of it in the future.
I like it!
Scarecrow why does G still show up number one for out of touch management. Why would they go through the trouble of removing those terms when they did not get rid of the real offending result.
I think it's a time-line situation.
"Out-of-touch executives" was installed in late February, and written up on The Register in late March.
"Out of touch management" was something I first heard about in the NYT on June 22. I did some research, and the week prior to the NYT piece there was one or two bloggers who had discovered that "out of touch management" worked, but other than that, there was no out-of-touch management bomb. The NYT was mistaken. The "management" worked because it was collateral damage to my original bomb. Out-of-touch Sergey and out-of-touch Larry worked as well. Management worked especially well because that word is in the title of Google's page and also in a headline. The NYT ran a correction on page 2 on June 25, admitting that the bomb they described as coming from disgruntled Google employees was actually from me, a person who runs a website critical of Google.
My hypothesis is that Google put the fix in and started the update cycle prior to the NYT piece. At the time the fix was put in, they were not aware that "management" was also an issue. Heck, I wasn't aware of this either! (It took between four and six weeks for my original bomb to become stable, so my assumption that the current update cycle started before June 22 is not unreasonable.)
Long story short: Google didn't put the fix in for "management" because they didn't know that "management" would be an issue. The only fix they installed was for the adjacent words "touch" and "executives." The juice is denied from my bomb only if these two words are adjacent in your search box. If they aren't adjacent, then the juice still works on each word individually.
Google figured out how to rid the world of Google bombers.
Well, yes, except for those bombs like mine where collateral damage is an issue. For example, the word "miserable" alone brings up that famous page at the White House, and so does "failure" alone. Now all I have to do is find a word on that page to go with "miserable." How about "miserable President"? Yep -- that works. So if Google's solution to rid the world of Google bombers is restricted to what they've demonstrated so far, it's not adequate. Google could wipe out "miserable failure" with their adjacent-word hack, but that wouldn't fix "miserable President."
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"Craig Silverstein, Google's director for technology, says the company sees nothing wrong with the public using its search engine this way. No user is hurt, he said, because there is no clearly legitimate site for 'miserable failure' being pushed aside. Moreover, he said, Google's results were taking stock of the range of opinions that are expressed online. 'We just reflect the opinion on the Web,' he said, 'for better or worse.' " -- International Herald Tribune, 9 December 2003
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"Google Inc., the leading Internet search engine, said Monday that it had no plans to alter its search results despite complaints that the first listing on a search for the word "Jew" directs people to an anti-Semitic Web site.
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"The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., said it had no plans to remove the site from the search results list because it trusts its automated program to rank Web sites accurately. The search engine has been listing 'Jewwatch.com' as the first-ranked site for three years.
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" 'We find this result offensive, but the objectivity of our ranking function prevents us from making any changes,' said David Krane, a spokesman for Google, adding that an exception is made only in cases where a site is illegal." -- New York Times, April 13, 2004
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"Our corporate policy now reflects the belief that a common-sense approach to issues of quality, social ethics, and human decency is superior to any possible mathematical algorithm. We will be installing a full-time ethics committee to review problems brought to our attention. Issues within their purview will include spam, Google bombs, advertising policy with respect to gambling, drugs, alcohol, firearms and similar issues not clearly covered by consistent laws, indexing and ranking of hate sites, copyright and cache problems not clearly covered by consistent laws, and collection and retention of personally-identifiable information. A formal appeals process will allow the decisions of the committee to be reviewed and potentially reversed by an semi-independent ombudsman with a reputation for public integrity. We apologize for past statements suggesting that our algorithms were beyond reproach. Google has made a lot of money from support by the public, and we feel it is time to give something back." -- (Unfortunately this is not an actual quotation; I just made it up. This is my fantasy of what Google's position will be some day.)
"The "organic" content and SEO approach has worked well for me, and it's certainly less stressful than wondering what surprises the next tweak of the algorithm will bring. "
i am riding this one out, just keep on making good content and linking out to reputable sites whenever it will be of benefit to my visitors.
