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Today they had removed it so I ended up looking through the new links they had replaced it with and could not so I ended up doing a search within google and still could not find it so I finally did a search on the global google search engine and thankfully it came up number one!
I would definitely keep a link for advertisers on the home page.
Plus I would also add a link to googles home page on the page you get after you log out. I find it quite annoying when I log out I have to them type google into the address bar rather than just click on a link.
What other small things like this would you like Google to do?
I'd say, don't mess with a good thing... just tweak it a little regularly.
Many of the pages now placed in the top ten have hidden text, hidden links and keyword stuffing in graphic images.
They have invisible Text (keywords) at the top and bottom of the page that only become visible
when highlighted on the cached page.
They have stand alone Keywords visible at top and bottom of the page which is blatent keyword stuffing.
They have graphic images stuffed with keywords.
The Sites are abusing Googles quality
guidelines - Specific Recommendations (http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html):
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Perhaps a massive spam reporting campaign might get Googles
attention.
I'd also like to be able to apply filters to the results to strip out pages with only affliate links, non-content portals, pages with excessive pop-ups & adverts etc.
Reading what others have said I'd agree that if sites are applying questionable SEO tactics then they should be penalised - this is especially annoying for sites which are either cloaked or which change dramatically after they have been indexed - mostly these are affliate schemes or similar which comes back to my original wishlist item...
- Tony
The algos, results, spam etc, have been done to death, and everybody will never be happy.
What this thread is about is the really small little things that you think Google could just improve on.
Such as adding a link to their home page on the 'you have been logged out page' of Google Adwords etc.
1) AdWords positioning needs adjust - the right hand side is just not the best. They really should be mixed in with the results, but clearly marked as different.
2) Descriptions shown need changing - snippets are fine in some ways, but often they make no sense. It should try pulling out full sentances with the description meta tag to display the result description (note: not a change to the algo, just a change once its found the results and is deciding what to display).
3) Two results per should maybe shown as just one - the most relevant. Yahoo looks much neater for this.
4) AdWords should use the most relevant advert for the keywords entered. So, if someone sets up two ads with the titles: Blue Widgets and another with title of Red Widgets and I search for 'blue widgets', I should get the blue widgets advert copy and not the red, as you sometimes do at the moment - it appears to be random at the present time.
5) The full URL should not be shown on default searches: just the domain name. This could be an option in the advanced and preferences screen to over-ride this setting.
Then there's the home page. Little wrong with it except: If I go to Google.co.uk, why does it not default to the UK results? Or, searching with UK at the end of the search query does not give me the same results as selecting the UK option.
And then when I'm given the results on Google.co.uk, I scroll to the bottom of the results page, I can amend my search (if it were useless), but it then reverts back to the global search whatever the original setting was on!
God no. I hate the things and never click on them so the only places i can think of that are better than out on the right hand side would be
- the extreme bottom of the page
or
- gone. never to return and darken my search results again.
I'm with richmc, how could this possibly make for useful SERPS? It would confuse users no end. What they have now is best - info on the left, ads on the right - you look at the side that will give you what you are looking for. I dont see how google can rank ads and info sites with the same algo. Its like comparing lychees with papaya.
>>4) AdWords should use the most relevant advert for the keywords entered.<<
This would need a complete rewriting of the Adwords system. Adwords ranking is based primarily on how much advertisers pay, though there is a "minimum bar" for relevance based on CPC mins and levels and staff checking pages for relevance. Someone paying the max bid for "widgets" will beat the guy paying a smaller amount for "widgets trinagular" any time. Its the way Adwords work and how it makes Google money, but it does reduce relevancy agreed. But this problem cannot be solved by "tinkering with the algo" It is an inherent problem in the basics of how Adwords works.
You can pick out phrases (such as red widget, blue widget) and then assign an advert to them. You can assign 50 adverts to them phrases if you wish. But Google just display a random advert from that list, not the most relevant. And it would not require a complete rewrite - the position would be the same.
So if my campaign looked like this:
Words: Red widget, blue widget, yellow widget, green widget, pink widget, widgets
Advert Titles: Red widget, blue widget, widgets
I would expect the Red widget advert to be used when I search for red widget (relevant, no?). But it doesn't, it may show blue widget, then I hit refresh and you get widgets and so on...
richms, If you want AdWords to disappear, then you also want Google to disappear. You are obviously one person who fails to understand that it cost Google money to come and spider your site. You want free traffic, but you want someone else to pay for it (it does cost Google to send you the free traffic - wages, computers, high speed internet connections, office space and so on...).
At the moment I use advanced search to look at 100 results per page and then do a find on the URL I'm tracking. Very tedious. I give up once I get past 400 ;).
Second, I'd like a Google Toolbar compatible with Opera browser ;)
We've had a a few of these before
X-mas present for GoogleGuy [webmasterworld.com] there is one more which i can't find at the moment though.
Think of all the carpal tunnel savings on webmasters the world over. GoogleGuy could get the Nobel Prize for Medicine by making a regular update day. :)
