Five years of updates - but have results really improved?

I also like vertical searches, and I am sure there's a future here -- but it's just not the same creature as a general web search. I also remember the 90's before Google -- when you could get search results with 5 out of the top 10 being completely off-topic. I'm glad those days are gone.

Google's efforts are to increase search efficiency but also keep ahead of the people that would like to exploit the serps. I think they are been very successful at both. Otherwise they would not have the market share they do today.

And frankly, if you can't find what you are searching for, does it matter if spam exists or not?

I think Google's turn away from exact phrase matching was the first straw to bend the camel's back. From there, it was just one straw after another.

I'm really not sure if the search is better now or not, but IMO there's more diversity in the search results than there was in the early years. Back than I definitely had the feeling that I had to hit certain keyword targets and a certain page size in order to rank well. Nowadays you can find a 100K page next to a no-content splash page in the SERPs.

You can't examine one without considering the other.

The amount of junk info on the web has grown at an astounding rate the past 2 years.

Where is Google's fault in all of this?

1) They created a very successful way to monetize junk.

2) They don't police the junk very well.

To Google's credit, they have started implimenting changes to Adwords (and therefore Adsense) that give advertisers greater control over how their money is spent. For example, we can now bid practically nothing for content clicks if we want to. We can also bid aggressively to have an ad placed on a specific site that we consider highly targetted. They are trying to track conversion and incorporate that into the system to further punish junk sites and reward performers.

The changes they are making to their PPC system will eventually slow down the growth of junk on the web. Assuming of course that all the other players start enforcing similar quality incentives (and punishments).

Freq---

On the one hand Google appears to have been producing progressively worse results these last few years, but it's hard to say how much worse they would had they not updated their approach (I mean, look at Yahoo!).

However I think we are justified in blaming Google for the explosion in junk and spam of recent years, or at the very least contributing heavily to the problem. Providing the means for second-rate content producers to make money from crap has meant we are all wading through even more nonsense than we might have been. And don't get me started on content theft!

Ironically the relatively small amounts to be made from AdSense have themselves encouraged an even greater amount of spam. If you can make, say, $5 a day from one of these crappy little sites, then you have every incentive to make 100 sites. Meaning, of course, 100 times the spam.

Since this was a philosophical question then perhaps we should really be thinking along broader lines. Namely, has Google contributed to the lowering of quality by insufficiently cleaning up after themselves?

They invented AdSense and, frankly, haven't bothered to police it well. Before anyone flames we have to factor in the fact that Google make a huge deal out of their efficiency, their superiority (of SERPs), and their innovation. I see these factors as less and less applicable to a company that is rapidly becoming just another player in a crowded field.

So for me the real question is - Are Google yesterday's news? And I don't meant this in the usual "I'm pissed off with Google, I hope MSN beat them" kind of sense. Are we genuinely seeing, as someone above indicated, Google unable to cope and therefore entering a phase of their history where they are being exposed for what they really are - i.e. just another search engine in a time when search engines are no longer as relevant?

I don't know about using the loaded term "blame", though. Should you blame them for simply becoming a runaway success? They didn't do anything unethical to get to where they are today (à la Microsoft).

All they did was build a better, larger, faster, leaner search engine at a time when all the other SE's were misguidedly trying to get into the portal business. Then they came up with an improvement to ad serving that reinvigorated online advertising. They did cause this explosion of Web spam and I'm sure the irony keeps them up at night. But I don't see why they should burn in Hell for succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.

I do think it's true that Google encouraged a vast inflation in the number of web pages online

I agree, GOOG's greed, through Adsense, has killed their SERP quality. "To get everyone clicking our ads" should be their new mission statement.

Dave

I do think it's true that Google encouraged a vast inflation in the number of web pages online

I agree, GOOG's greed, through Adsense, has killed their SERP quality.

Okay that's your opinion, but just to clarify I was more trying to say that Google's success and certain specific elements of their search engine encouraged the inflation. I don't think there's much question about that. But I certainly was not trying to imply that they wanted it to happen or are happy with this result.

It has got to the stage that (for the greater good) anyone starting a new search engine would have to consider penalties for sites carrying Adsense.

I find most updates just solidify the rankings of certain sites and further establish those of sites that can beat the algo. The vast majority of sites will be on a continuous roller coaster because to compete they must engage in some form of SEO to exist. Once they do this the filters to control the massive spam problems (which Google to a great deal creates) will hurt even the most minimally optimized sites.

From all the famous or infamous algo changes over the years, the ups and downs, is Google really any better then it was in 2001 or 2002?

Did all these updates make a damn bit of difference in how well people find what they are looking for? Is there any improvement at all? Can we look back with hindsight and say - Google is better then it was and these algo changes and DC's made a big difference?

I monitor the search engines pretty closely for generic and for specialised SERPs.

Over the years there's been a change in the type of low quality information appearing. eg. bad affiliate sites now to bad comparison sites, and bad adsense sites.

Different low quality sites still appear in the SERPs today, compared to yesteryear. So as I see it, things have moved on.

For me, one of the most important mistakes was to mis-understand the impact of the so-called "sandbox" on quality, small sites. However, a quick look at Yahoo, MSN, or Ask usually pulled up the "Google sandboxed site" elsewhere.

If you know what you're looking for, and how to use the advanced search, i've nearly always found it in G's SERPs.

Are they better than yesteryear?
Today, a general look at the SERPs and yes, they are better than they were.

We ought to be asking, how much better can it become?

I think the question of whether Google has contributed to "Web crapola" with AdSense is completely separate from what the original poster was asking

It's different but far from separate. For one thing, most of Google's updates seem to revolve around their efforts to keep webmasters from exploiting loopholes in Google's algorithms - mainly manipulating link patterns and vomiting vast amounts of duplicate/scraped content onto the web.

To put it another way, if Google was still using the same basic algorithm from circa 2000, then their results would almost certainly be much much worse than they are.

Google has become anti-seo, Google filters the web more and more with every new update making it's on search results less relevant every time.

Doesn't matter if your black or white hat Google penalizes you in the beginning with the sandbox and may penalize you again for being a "white hat" seo after the sandbox.

I remember the days when you could create a good site, rank quickly and have thousands of visitors to your site.
Spam back then didn't really matter to me, at least I could find what I was looking for and rank well with a content rich site.

If your rich and or have great idea to make a website with then most of the time you will do well in Google.

If your a new webmaster and you dont have that much money and want to be treated fairly then Google is not the way to go these days.

Google penalizes new and old "white hat" webmasters by sandboxing and filtering keyowrds and dropping pages (throwing the baby out with the bathwater).

Google's results have not gotten any better they have gotten worse. You cant censor the web and have better results than you did when didn't censor, you just kill the diversity of the web.

[edited by: ulysee at 7:44 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2006]

Recently, several big name companies (e.g., BMW) were dropped from Google and are now scrambling to get their position back. They can afford it. I can't.

We are a small business staying clean. No cloaking, no word spamming, no duplicate pages, etc. We have clean html code, child-safe everything, professional-looking site, etc. Yet, Google recently dropped our site.

It just isn't fair that I have to take days (weeks?) to remedy this and get the site back into not only Google but also the SE's that use Google (such as AOL). Meanwhile, sales are down - or not up as much as they should be.

Why are any broken links in Google at all? It seems that they can easily test and remove them from their index before penalizing us. How many legitimate sites are dropped or have their PR lowered because these nonexistent pages are taking up room?

We use a perl script to redirect 404 and other errors. Google Sitemaps doesn't like this and I have to remove it to have my site verified.

Some of you may think that I am blaming Google for spammers and other deceiving website managers. I understand what G is trying to do, but I must say, they aren't doing a good job at improvement.

If Google were to human-review the demoted and banned sites, then their own service to the user (search results) would much improve.

Many of us email Google about why our sites were demoted or banned. They can use the time to reply to us who were unjustifiably demoted or banned, and redirect those resources to reviewing the banned and demoted sites - and ban the illegitimate ones forever.

Whatever happened to creativity and individualism? It seems that soon, every successful website out there will have the same architecture as dictated by these controlling search engines.

Thank you for the podium. I feel a little better. Now, to get back to this daunting task of reading Google's mind.

I would be interested in hearing examples of why people think that Google has lost or is losing its edge over competition.

Search results are not that bad. In most cases when I am looking for something I am able to find reasonable answer on the first, second page - which means in first 50, as that's the way I have configured Opera.

I agree. However i also agree with the original post that things haven't really improved that much. And i also agree that this is largely because of the adsense beast that Google created. And finally i agree that it was one of the worst things to hit the Internet.

But there is a solution outside Google's control on that....ICANN specify a minimum charge of $500 per domain name. That would a) make people think about what went on their sites more b) get rid of the hundreds of cent-earning spam sites and c) stop domainers hoarding crappy domain names.

But lets face it, thats never gonna happen. So lets get ready for the next major update. We could name it "The Groundhog Update" :)

Adsense was the worst thing that happened to the net.

Exactly, Adsense has *encouraged* webmasters / companies to create hundreds of millions of pages of absolute dribble, just to be able to stick adsense on their sites. This has killed the web. It's 90% s***** now.

Whether G did it intentionally or not they inflated the web into a gigantic crappy mess, which in turn makes their lives more difficult every update trying to sort out the enormous crappy mess they made, but at the same time getting as many people as possible to click adsense ads otherwise their share price plummets. An impossible task.

1.) Google would have even more spam now then they did before with these updates.

2.) That the fault of all the spam present we see now is because of Google Adsense

#1 is just speculation, that is possible, but not easily proven.

In #2, it needs to be pointed out the Adsense department and Tech department at Google are two different hands on the same switches. Each team has their own agenda.

Personally, I think there are too many off page factors invovled and the switch from "Exact Phrase" words to "Any" words coming from "authority sites, is what is really killing their search results these days.

Personally, I think there are too many off page factors invovled and the switch from "Exact Phrase" words to "Any" words coming from "authority sites, is what is really killing their search results these days.

Yep, that's what i meant when i said that G's turn away from exact phrase matching was the first straw to bend the camel's back.

I think the question of whether Google has contributed to "Web crapola" with AdSense is completely separate from what the original poster was asking

And you are entitled to your thoughts EFV but I think that Freedom is more than capable of defending his own thread.

as he said ...

I apologize for rambling here, but I have been putting together these loose thoughts on the state of search affairs from a different perspective - and don't have all my thoughts elequently written or or thought through. This is a theory that's a work in progress.

Adsense was the worst thing that happened to the net.

Yeah, I would have to agree there. In the past the reverse engineering was focused primarily one a few concentrated areas which were ALWAYS commerce related. With adsense, everything is fair game, and yes, it it is a helluva lot harder to find the right info now.

As for g's overall improvements, I would say they have improved a bit in terms of getting complete junk out of the index, but this is one piece of the puzzle.

As for relevance and quality serps, it has suffered. Seems like along the way, every little change has hurt the BEST sites on the web. The niche authority sites, the interesting and even FUN sites.

I think many here are now programmed into thinking big, mega million dollar companies provide the most useful, interesting, or even important information when, in fact, it is mostly utter crap. And the guy who writes his arse off about a topic he KNOWS and loves gets pushed to the back in favor of cookie cutter content from semi relevant sites. Sure, many of these sites used SEO techniques that google may not like, but the final result is just worse. I would rather see the old google, even if it had a bit more clutter (not sure it did).

whew...that was tough... :)

is Google really any better then it was in 2001 or 2002?

Prior to the winter of '03 (when AdWords was deployed), Google seemed to read my mind and I invariably found what I sought within the first 20 results using a little common sense and a three word search phrase. Search quality declined further in the spring of '03 when AdSense was added. The fall of '03 brought us the Florida update and a significant decline in search quality that Google was been struggling to rectify ever since. They have made a good deal of progress but...

On the other hand they have built the most powerful and effective advertising system the Internet has ever seen insuring their survival for many years. How many other SEs have come and gone over the years? Clearly, it's a better business model.