Forum Moderators: open
Is this spamming by exclusion?
Frankly, this is getting rediculous. I wish Google would remove the page ranking from the toolbar because it's really being used for the wrong purposes. People should link to other sites based on content and the opportunity for relevant exchange of traffic, not for manipulation of and commercialization of Google page rank.
If google is not capable of dealing with the web with people less smart than fathom on it, then it is Google that is stupid. The net is people and the net is NOT google in spite of what some of you may think.
As for GoogleGuy,I hope you don't think everyone reading your hype is buying it. I read some document just a month or so ago here
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=807
(it's a link to the lawmeme site if the link gets deleted)where Google hired some lawyer to tell a federal judge that your results are your opinion. Now you are telling us all here (again), that it's not you, it's the web. All that uniquely democratic crap!If you are implying that you have no control over the web being distorted, either your lying to us or you lied to a judge or you have another post you want to make explaining what you meant.(I'm guessing it's going to be the last option)
You are a search engine for christ sake. You haven't cured aids or something and you, (in spite of what you seem to think), don't own the web. People do! And people are starting to see the clay feet that Page Rank tries to hide, (not most of the people who post here of course). It has holes in it! It is not perfect, it is not uniquely democratic and the more you insist on refusing to admit that it is not perfect, the more people see.
I'm dying to see the post that says
"we never said it was perfect"
The net is people and the net is NOT google in spite of what some of you may think.
welcome here in what ever angry state...
I agree, the people decide, and for the moment the cold statistics show me 93% of my search engine referrals come through google and its partners.
It may be different tomorrow, but for the moment I follow the people.
As the people posting like Shurlee vent their frustration at Google, I guess I was just venting mine at the all the people who hate Google yet hang out in these forums and always have very negative things to say.
It wasn't directed at Shurlee, but instead at all Google haters in general and I should of said so. As Shurlee was ranting, I was also.
Although, Shurlee did directly attack someones opinion. I didn't see anyone jump on that so I assumed I was free to also make a comment.
The topic of this thread was whether or not Google is distorting the shape of the web. The true searchers using the web have no concept of that since they don't know what optimization is. All they see is the results after they type in a query. That really is all Google is interested in. It is only the people who optimize pages for the web that get the feeling it is being distorted.
It is interesting for that so many people who hate Google, sure spend a lot of time in the Google forum.
Perhaps I should of chose my words more carefully!
Another thing I find interesting is that in the olden days (i.e. pre-google), people were mostly motivated to create resource pages (i.e. lists of links) because the search engines were so crappy you couldn't find related sites any other way. For example, if you wanted to find a bunch of sites about paleontology, you would do a bunch of searches at yahoo, alta vista, or some other lousy site, find a well-thought out site on paleonotology, then mine that sites' resource list.
Once Google came along and people could actually find what they were looking for using a search engine, a lot of university depts, NFP's, hobbyists, and gov't agencies stopped publishing and/or maintaining resource lists. Now, instead you have all of these reciprical link exchangesd and outright purchases.
Of course, Google has distorted the shape of the web. The question should be for the good, for the bad, or who cares.
I understand that shurlee does not admire Google much. As BigDave and Vitaplease say, everyone can put an opinion here as long as it does not overstep the bounds of politeness that we have become accustomed to in these forums.
I believe they are distorting the web, but what I am interested in is whether I need go along with it to keep my websites up there in searches, and whether there are acceptable alternatives that we can suggest.
Google may be arrogant, vain, pig headed or however else we may individually or collectively criticise them for, but...
...when the punter wants results they go to Google to get them. However you knock them or hate them, they still deliver good results, and as long as (well probably because of inertia for that and a bit longer) they continue to deliver good serps, then they will be used by the public.
Hells Bells, I use Google when I want information!
Hells Bells, I use Google when I want information!
And that is the whole point. You can hate it as a webmaster all you want, but they are going to stay the top dog as long as the searchers find what they want.
I can't find anywhere in our charter where it says this forum exisits only for those that love and respect every decision Google has ever made. This forum is simply about Google. No more, no less. There is room here for all opinions so long as they are expressed within the boundries of our Charter/TOS.
Your jumping all over me!
It was just an opinion as well as an observation in the sea of many!
I agree the forum is for all.
That is what makes it interesting!
chiyo wrote [webmasterworld.com]:Also refer to my first post. My feeling is that recip linking is reducing in value anyway. The more done, the less PR recips pass on.
Hi chiyo,
I am perplexed by your comment.
I do not understand why you assume that reciprocal links pass less PR?
Would you mind explaining how you came to that conclusion please?
I am of the understanding that a link that has not been PR0'd will pass on the SAME amount whether it is a reciprocal link or NOT, but if you have evidence to the contrary, then please share, so that I will not be misinformed, thank you.
You want to try a seach of the WebmasterWorld "Site Search" on your question.
The way PR is passed on appears to depend not only on the PR of the page that has the link, but also on the number of links off that particular page.
In other words, the more links the less each passes on.
Monkscuba wrote [webmasterworld.com]:I think what Kackle means is that it can be hard for a new site to get links because some webmasters don't want to link to or exchange links with a low PR site.
While this may be true for the small group of Webmasters who do not understand Google's algorithm, I do not believe this to be true for the majority of quality sites.
Cream always rises to the top. Always. Can you show me any quality site that has not risen to the top in due time?
Any Webmaster who has a quality site, will be linked to, maybe not in one day, but in due time. That is the concept that Google has as its foundation.
An established site which already has a "decent" PR may have more success with linking.
EXACTLY, but here is a question you must ponder and answer FIRST, "How did the site become established?"
Did it not become established just like any other site (or page) that has ever made its way onto the Web, one link at a time, and one day at a time? Of course it did.
I mean, it is not like all of the best Websites have already been designed and that there will never be another quality Website that launches from today forward that will never make it to a #1 ranking for its chosen keywords, right?
You don't believe that for a second now do you?
Any Website (whether it launches today, tomorrow, next year or ten years from now) has the opportunity to grow up and be a PR10. While not all will, it doesn't mean that the opportunity is not there for them, right?
Build a LINKABLE Website and I guarantee you that all you have to do is to introduce it to folks and many will give you a link without having to ask for it.
Conversely, don't you be stingy with linking to other sites.
Remember: Give and it shall be given unto you. Whatever measure you use to give, large or small, will be used to measure what is given back to you. It is nearly impossible to get lots of links without first giving lots of links. The paradox here is that this principle will not work if you are giving to get, so simply give out your links freely and without want.
It's harder now because PR has suddenly become such a big issue and many people (myself for one :)) don't undertand it.
Just because you don't understand PR doesn't mean that it is now harder to have more success with linking.
It simply means that you should learn just what is involved and what is not involved in the linking process.
First of all, my advice is that if you are not linking out to all the best sites, then why should others want to link to your site? So here are my primary questions for you. If I were to come to your site, would I be able to visit the Top 10 sites in your industry? The Top 100? If not, why not?
Do you provide your visitors and prospects with content they WANT?
1.) If you do, then simply let everyone in your industry know about your site. (Notice I did not say to ask them for a link, but merely let them know you exist. Introduce yourself and your site.)
2.) If you don't, then that's your major obstacle. FIX IT. Then move on to step 1.
Some might think that linking with a low PR site would somehow damage their own site, or you might see a fairly new site with a low PR and think it is not important solely because of the PR.
Why would YOU think that?
PageRank by itself has NOTHING to do with a QUERY.
If you learned or think otherwise, then you need to read these papers.
2. PageRankPageRank is the connectivity-based page quality measure suggested by Brin and Page [BP98]. It is a static measure; it is designed to rank pages in the absence of any queries. That is, PageRank computes the "global worth" of each page. Intuitively, the PageRank measure of a page is similar to its in-degree, which is a possible measure of the importance of a page. The PageRank of a page is high if many pages with a high PageRank contain links to it, and a page containing few outgoing links contributes more weight to the pages it links to than a page containing many outgoing links.
[www10.org...]
4.5.1 The Ranking SystemFinally, the IR score is combined with PageRank to give a final rank to the document.
[www-db.stanford.edu...]
Please pay particular attention to the fact that PageRank is combined to the IR score as the very LAST step in the ranking process.
The IR score consists of position, font, and capitalization information. Additionally, Google factors in hits from anchor text.
The document goes on to say:
Combining all of this information into a rank is difficult. We designed our ranking function so that no particular factor can have too much influence.First, consider the simplest case -- a single word query. In order to rank a document with a single word query, Google looks at that document's hit list for that word.
Google considers each hit to be one of several different types (title, anchor, URL, plain text large font, plain text small font, ...), each of which has its own type-weight.
The type-weights make up a vector indexed by type. Google counts the number of hits of each type in the hit list. Then every count is converted into a count-weight.
Count-weights increase linearly with counts at first but quickly taper off so that more than a certain count will not help. We take the dot product of the vector of count-weights with the vector of type-weights to compute an IR score for the document.
Finally, the IR score is combined with PageRank to give a final rank to the document.
Make sure that you really understand that last sentence, because that explains why people ask this very common question, "Why does that PR4 page outrank that PR7 page?
[edited by: Christyl_Stevens at 9:42 am (utc) on Mar. 13, 2003]
cornwall wrote [webmasterworld.com]:The way PR is passed on appears to depend not only on the PR of the page that has the link, but also on the number of links off that particular page.
In other words, the more links the less each passes on.
I understand that.
That is not what chiyo said.
chiyo said, "The more done, the less PR recips pass on."
I understood that to mean, "The more [reciprocal links are] done, the less PR recips [as opposed to one way links] pass on."
chiyo can correct me if I may have misunderstood.
Thanks for your input cornwall.
Isn't that what ' Google distorting the shape of the web' means? That a meaningful discussion on SEO will always come back to PR, and that before you add a link to someone elses site, you have to stare hard at a few green pixels to see whether you have Google's approval for the link?
(Just in case I am misenterpreted- I am no Google hater, nor am I a Google lover. When i'm top of the SERPs, I love Google, when I'm wading through spam pages looking for useful info, I hate Google ;))
[added]woohoo! full member! [/added]
>says this forum exisits only for those that love
And literally in my stickymail inbox is a message from a member going off about how much everyone here hates Google.
Sounds like "balance" to me. Horse is down, lets move on.
