Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I wonder whether this is a altruistic move of Google.
If people can't find the specific pages they're looking for, I can't see that this will help much.
Will they guarantee unfettered bot access to the archives?
Wikipedia should issue a firm but polite no.
1.67 billion
(US)
Maybe they should be scrimping.
Anyway, there is a difference between indexing information and controlling information, this would put google into control mode, probably not a good thing.
Although it might be nice if google contributed to the project. Here is the link:
Just one example:
A page changes twice in quick succession -- once to add a link, and again to remove it. The 2nd change is by a known moderator of Wikipedia. Reasonable assumption: it was a link spammer......so feed that snippet into all the other Google filters.
Wikipedia could be an excellent spammer trap.
I doubt it has to do with hosting (all the wiki stuff is already public), but why list 40000 pages with the same content? What good does that do to the user? Can you blame Google?
what do you mean blacklisted? banned the domain (that had a lot more material on), just the wiki clone part or individual pages?
One of my friends site who offers wikimedia content was blacklisted by gooogle today morning. The site was in full compliance with Wikipedia terms and conditions. The site was ranking well. IF this happens to all wikipedia mirrors what will happen? Just a curosity question. Has this to do with Google hosting.
A perfect answer. IMHO, there's no need of having 100's of wikipedia mirrors indexed in google. Just in case wikipedia may be done, it may help to have one or two reliable mirrors indexed.
This is related to the latest google algo update...
Anyone who mirrors wikipedia content will rank exceptionally well for many obscure (non-money) two letter keywords.
Try it...
See how many times the wikipedia.org page ranks on page 1 or 2?
Check out en.wikipedia.org's Alexa traffic surge:
[alexa.com...]
Guess where that traffic is coming from?
Hint: It begins with the letter G...
Why do you think Google is trying to buy about.com?
Hint:It's not for altruistic reasons...
Here's about.com's Alexa traffic chart for reference:
[alexa.com...]
see:
[webmasterworld.com...]
alternatively,
since the greatest single source of income for google is ad display, try analysing their business as an ad display engine. viewed this way, the quality of serps is as irrelevant for google as they are for scraper directory sites. as long as their are sufficient eyeballs, the money rolls in. to extend the analogy further, google is the biggest scraper directory site of them all. and they won't be banned or loose their adsense account. and everyone here encourages them to do it.
google groups have adsense now.
adsense on google-wiki anyone?
There's always been a market (i.e. advertisers) for any large content provider; the trick to being a large content provider is to get content. Hence the Geocities, AOLs, and Tripods of the world. Google just thinks bigger and better -- more and higher quality content.
They've been doing this for a long time: newsgroups, blogs, digitized libraries, etc. -- it's all the same scheme: looking for webhosting customers with big data requirements.
Is it a good scheme? Depends if they can stay ahead of the curve on server efficiency (they're riding the right horses, at least: cutting edge software built on the only massively parallel OS (Linux) ready for industrial applications and on trailing-edge (i.e. very cheap) hardware. Is there anybody else in the free world with this team in tandem?
It also depends if they can identify enough desirable unique content. But they've got a pretty decent track record, and some pretty serious partners in academia.
Just to contrast: Microsoft, the great innovator, has, heh, Encarta and MSN search. Oh, and a few terabytes of security patches for its own software. Well, that's ONE way of generating hits.
I have a dedicated server with about 20 gigs of hard drive space and about 60 gigs of bandwidth to spare, monthly, on my personal, extremely fast server. This ain't a lot, but I am willing to donate this much to wikipedia if they choose to decline Googles offer.. and Wiki are free to call on me whenever they publically decline Google's offer.
In fact.. I'm the CEO of a reliable tech company - If Wiki get in touch with me, I'll have them set up with a few servers, free of charge, that they can use to host their operation. No ads from my company, perhaps just a little link at the bottom of their pages.
Perhaps other webmasters here are willing to donate?!
Just to contrast: Microsoft, the great innovator, has, heh, Encarta and MSN search
This isn't the thread BUT: Google have managed to write a program to rank web pages based on OTHER PEOPLE'S CONTENT.. and they wrote a nifty advertising program... Now, think for a second, then compare that to all of the original stuff that Microsoft has done.
Google and Microsoft are in a completely different sector. Google is a tiny tiny tiny ant in comparison to the massive MS ant-eater. There is no comparison, and no contrast.
Most of the programs that Google own have been bought - Blogger, That image thing (Picaso), and whatever else they have lying aroung.'
MSN bashing should be left for the MSN forum me thinks .. but in the long run, Google will be gone and forgotten long before MS.
cutting edge software built on the only massively parallel OS (Linux) ready for industrial applications
ROFLMAO, twice
Google just thinks bigger and better -- more and higher quality content.
only if someone else(aka webmasters and scraper bots) provides it for free.
prediction, aka wishful thinking
there will come a day when webmasters will be greatly incensed because googlebot is so desparate for content that it is ignoring robots.txt
Have you ever looked at A9's little search thingy?
Imagine if google started to tie their properties together in the same way that A9 did then this would all make a LOT of sense. Searching on a keyword would show search engine results, hand picked About.com results, blogger results, froogle results, etc. etc. If you got multiple relevant data stream results to choose from, the odds of finding exactly what you want MIGHT get higher.
Just a thought
GOOGLE HAS offered the Wiki Media Foundation, which organises the huge free online encyclopaedia, the Wikipedia, a free hosting spot.In a notice posted to the nonprofit outfit’s site, Wiki Media said its board was thinking about the terms of Google's offer and plans to meet with the search company in March.
