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There is one particular area of Google I have a BIG gripe about and that is when I do a search for anything travel related. I get inundated with spammy companies who have registered 100's domains like:
cheap-holidays-to-wherever.com
cheap-holidays-to-anotherplace-and-flights.com
I could even do a search if I wanted to find information on india and I get companies trying to sell me flights all of them in the top 20 or so results.
I can never find anything of use unless I sift through hundreds of results. I think Google needs to look at this area and fix the algorithm accordingly. :(
What areas do you think Google needs to look at?
My 2pence
Steve
The thing is, most average searchers don’t know how to even use advance search and will probably leave frustrated.
Danny.
GoogleGuy what about trying to fix this cuz its really getting on my nut? :(
Steve
Back to your wider question though - >>What areas do you think Google needs to look at?<< - I'd really like it if when people take time to submit blatant guideline-abusing sites to Google's spam report, that action is taken. Now my client is wondering why I don't do what the spammy sites have done, seeing as they're ranking so well and Google hasn't punished them despite being reported.
It's difficult, especially when the owner of the site starts pressuring me to use spam tactics, even though I know we'll lose out in the end if I do, but so far I'm doing okay.
It would be nice if Google did something about this though. Especially since most of my results are coming from Google now that Y! changed their results around.
LOL
The mind boggles......
:)
#1 Travelocity
#2 Expedia
#3-4 Travel.state.gov
#5-6 Yahoo
#7 TravelWeb
#8-9 CDC Travelers Health
#10 City.net
#11 Travel.com
#12 Travel Channel.
I don't know how a human could make a better list of relevant travel sites. It's so good, it looks like a hand edited directory.
I've done extensive searching on travel related kw's this year (air fares, hotels, tours, sight seeing), and Google has been top notch on all the majors. I'd be the first to be critical if it weren't, but there's little denying Googles better than anything out there on the major kw's like this.
Sure, if you get down into some of the specific affiliate oriented stuff like hotels and local tours, there are some spammy sites, but that's just that keyword sector. 500 sites about hotels in bermuda all owned by the same guy? How can Google sort that out? They can't any way other than id the problems they can and rotate the algo from month to month.
And for all thse people searching for travel with no destination in mind I'm sure they love those results. ;)
If you are searching for other sort of info on, for example, costa rica then you need to narrow your search, otherwise you will end up with some travel sites.
I was a little surprised by the earlier post that seemed to question the validity of travel results in a search on "Costa Rica." Many people who search on "Costa Rica" are looking for travel information. In fact, I'd guess that more people want Costa Rican travel information than want data on Costa Rican poverty.
IMHO, the real problem is search clutter from hotel affiliate sites that use boilerplate content. And that leads to a pet peeve of mine: I wish people wouldn't lump editorial, e-commerce, and affiliate sites together under the generic heading of "travel sites." That's like placing CONDE NAST TRAVELER Magazine, a travel agency, and a travel brochure in the same category. The entities are actually quite different.
> I don't know how a human could make a better
> list of relevant travel sites. It's so good,
> it looks like a hand edited directory.
Come on, that's no quality proof at all. Sorry, but every stupid puter with a low level algo would return the same results.
> Sure, if you get down into some of the specific
> affiliate oriented stuff like hotels and local tours
> there are some spammy sites,
Now we're back to the basic facts. If google returns (*some*) garbage even at very narrowed searches there's in fact a problem!
> but that's just that keyword sector
Nope, not only that! I did a few very specific searches on many different areas like mobile phones, insurances, travel, pets, real estate, computer supplies, different product names and so on ... google returned a lot of really spammed results! Yes, google returned also a lot of usefull sites, but THERE ARE some quite popular phrases that are totally spammed! Cloak, redirect, sh**. We all shouldn't just complain. However we should discuss the reality.
BTW: don't ask if i reported the spam ... i did and i'll continue reporting it!
<rant>
I have been on the net for years now, YES, I know you can buy these products at Amazon. Thank you for yet another reminder! In the meantime I have to sift through cluttered results to find any real live actual honest-to-goodness content.
</rant>
I'm afraid that the hard reality is that there really are very few *good* review sites out there. Most of them, even the non-affiliate sites, have consumer "reviews" that are only a paragraph in length. "I love my blue widget, and I think red widgets suck because I own the blue widget."
There just aren't enough of us out there who are interested in writing in depth reviews for fun. On the bright side, if you put together a totally noncommercial site with lots of good reviews, you will have no trouble getting enough links to knock all the lousy review sites from the tops spots, since your content should be enough to place you well compared to the sales pitches.
Perhaps "Costa Rica" is a slightly atypical example as the Google algo can be slanted to DMOZ entries. And the DMOZ editor responsible for Costa Rica was recently (from memory about 2 months ago) removed in "suspicious" circumstances. It may well be that therefore the Costa Rica results that you have found are effected by that editors editing prior to his removal from DMOZ.
(not sure how the above is covered by TOS, but is I believe of interest to readers of the thread)
Im in no way knocking Google because they have a excellent Algo but it does need some fine tuning ;)
My suggestion is that Google should pay more attention to the spam reports that we take our valued time to fill in.
Steve
On the bright side, if you put together a totally noncommercial site with lots of good reviews, you will have no trouble getting enough links to knock all the lousy review sites from the tops spots, since your content should be enough to place you well compared to the sales pitches.
I can certainly vouch for that. Amazon's own pages outrank my reviews for some titles, but I haven't seen a low content affiliate site manage that yet.
How do I submit a spam report? :)
Do you mean where? Well, there:
[google.com ]
And what a coincidence your handle is "europeforvisitors". I don't mean that to be insulting at all, but why would you assume most people who were searching about that nation would be looking for travel information? I sure couldn't afford to go to Costa Rica, and my guess is that is true for many, if not most others. Not to mention those who are interested in Costa Rica who could afford to go there if they could might prefer to go to, say, Europe instead. ;) I'd expect a search for "Costa Rica" to give sites with facts about the country. To get travel information would require adding "travel", "vacations", etc.
I like the idea of getting facts about a country when searching for its name, but the hearts and minds of the Web building (and Web searching) public tend to be quite consumer orientated these days.
It wasn't like that in '92:).
How to beat the humans? Is the best thing to try and get a contact at google?
