Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
complain about a real problem
Can't see the sandbox being a "real" problem, or a problem at all. It's there to stop the SPAM. If I start a new company called Mesothelioma Lawyers Ltd you reckon I should show up in the top 500 purely because that's my company name?
Sure, the "sandbox", whatever it is, hurts some. It hurts people who are creating sites for free traffic. Many of them are spammers/freeloaders. It also hurts others. They - particularly anyone starting a new business with a business plan that relies on free SE traffic - are probably better off staying unemployed (or employed if they can find a job). Any new site starting off on the premise that free traffic will sustain it deserves to fail.
So, if you remove the sandbox as a reasonable cause for complaint, and remove most of the other whining, we'd reduce this thread to one page and those that can't even be bothered to read it will get a personal reply from Googleguy because he owes them.
Let the public decide.
Not the "Dissatisfied?" link at the bottom of the current SERPs; 99.99% of the people out there won't take the time to do that.
Just 5 radio buttons at the bottom: very bad, bad, OK, good, very good.
(1) Yes, there are TWO flip-flopping result sets ... and the "Allegra" one has some clearly obvious programming errors (I assure you {smile/no joke}). Whether those "programming errors" are later defined as "new features" remains to be seen. {grin}
(2) For those who believe that a "whole web" index can be edited by humans ... QUESTION: How many human editors would it take to "edit" a "whole web index?" (HISTORICAL NOTE: Do you remember the calculation that Bell Telephone made many years about about how many operators would be needed to manually connect all the phone calls? The answer being the ENTIRE female population of the United States [yes, those were sexist times]) I.E., It it simple mathematics that a whole web "human edited" index is IMPOSSIBLE. (Why waste your time arguing about this? {smile} Go study some math.)
Now back to watching the flip-flop...
I think Google needs a "rate these SERPs" group of buttons at the bottom of the search results page.
I had the thought, in fact, that they may be what they've been doing the past few days... getting these two sets of results evaluated by focus groups, or else some sort of A-B comparison setup.
just 5 radio buttons at the bottom: very bad, bad, OK, good, very good.
Not at the bottom - at avery rank: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 ... #n
Than everyone who got really p***ed off from a result can rate it so.
See on Amazon how rating is working. There is no need to employ a bunch of people, just let the surfer rate!
Let the users govern the results. Then let the 100 people weed out the good from the bad and then send the bad serps to 5 people to evaluate even further to either ban the offending spam or help create and algorythm to stop it all together.
It wouldn't be too much for 100 people to handle, 8 hours a day, especially once they got rid of alot of the mess in the beginning.
I really think google is trying to do this allready with their smile and frown faces in the tool bar but you can't prove it. But what if they were using it and someone clicked the frowny face one too many times which tells google to rank your site less than it is?
There is nothing to stop google from doing this and they have been trying to use human control ever since they began using the DMOZ directory data in the beginning.
But if they are not doing this yet I think they should start because it would definately clean up the results alot!
It is the same crappy results as usual after every update. What the hell? Pick a method and stick with it. Yahoo is the KING! Make the change people. If you have made it through the storm this time - your days are numbered.
Sell your Google stock now it is going to go Down.
Also by the way if your site hasnt showed up by now, you are done and have felt what I have been talking about. Dont dwell on it just make the switch.
Best of luck to all of you.
Just a thought guys but I've been looking at my logs for google visits from early Jan and this is what I get:
Each visit is for 2 or 3 days and the bot indexes more or less every page that is available, this is the pattern;
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) ...
Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)...
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) ...
Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)...
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) ...
Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)...
etc, etc
Each visit is almost exclusive to to the user agent with perhaps a day or two's break between visits.
Perhaps this is a final roll out [webmasterworld.com]
I'd love to hear other people's opinions about this bot
The new one has much more pages indexed and I see that more DC's are taking this data over.
But the other side is: The SERP's for my site are terrible! When I do a check for my keywords, I now see "competitors" I've never seen before.
Unfortunately this is not a very popular search phrase. For other search terms I can see clear spammers ahead of me (css-spamming with negative positioning).
This is really frustrating.
It it simple mathematics that a whole web "human edited" index is IMPOSSIBLE.
It is simple mathematics that makes this inevitable. Who said that it was difficult?
What makes it easy is that the spammers whole business is based on presenting their information to Google on a plate. I think you could train chimpanzees to find spam and nuke it.
We are not talking about editing the whole web. It's just about searching for certain labels, tags and techniques, finding the perpetrators and banning their websites. Dead easy and no one would complain if the odd one or two slipped through the net because the SERPs would be infinitely better for this.
I believe that given a category to police, let's say travel or something, I could make a major impact in a week. If G wants to try me out I would not be hard to deal with and all they have to do is sticky me.
[Added: The only thing that we can be sure of in any G update is that there will be massive collateral damage and that in a few weeks things will be as bad as ever. The good sites that are dropped may never make it back but the spammers most certainly will. Result? A constant dilution of quality.]
Google probably has its reasons for not implementing this.
[edited by: snoremaster at 1:31 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2005]
I'd like to take GoogleGuy up on his feedback request, but what I'm seeing still isn't stable enough to comment upon. Just when I think it's over, it changes again to the other index.
Higher up the results were directory sites that mentioned my site but didn't link to it, and a few sites that had both words of my site title on the page, but the page itself was totally out of context and completely irrelevant to the topic, certainly had nothing to do with the name of my site or its theme.
I also pointed out a site that was listed near mine. It was a spammy page with a bunch of hidden text at the bottom. In that tiny, tiny, tiny text that matched the background color of the page was the name of my site. The text was so small I couldn't read it, I only found it through viewing the cached version of the page, where the words were highlighted.
Well, today, my site has dropped even further when searching for its unique name, now in the 200's somewhere, and the spammy site with the hidden text has gone up to 50-something!
I've never done anything sneaky on my site to be penalized, and this proves to me beyond any doubt that Google is totally screwed up right now. There is just no excuse whatsoever that this spammy site could ever have more relevance than my site, regardless of the circumstances!
It appears that Google is rewarding sites for breaking the rules, while honest sites loaded with unique content and information are being buried. And this has been the case with my site for months! Google is broken!
Andy
I occasionally see a third and fourth set.
The third is, I think, mostly the "inflated index" with modifications caused by changed content on reindexed pages. It is only slightly different (i.e. the sites that I watch go up or down one place on that index).
The fourth index is the normal www.google.com results without supplemental results.
For me, www.google.com does not change. I only see differences when I start looking at specific datacentre IPs.
Human rated/ranked web?
Who said anything about human rated or ranked? All I was suggesting, along with many others, is that the spam should be manually deleted. This is the ONLY solution to this. The Google algo cannot even deal with same colour text and background and how long has that been going on?#
BDW, when was the last time you went to ODP to look something up? If thats what you want for Google then why not just use the ODP.
There is no comparison one is a search engine and the other a directory.
(Incidentally I used the ODP on Friday. I am currently looking to buy a new PC and trying to find suitable vendors in Google proved to be an impossible task. I found a great, spam free list in the ODP in less than a minute. You should try it. It works.)
[edited by: BeeDeeDubbleU at 2:52 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2005]
[edited by: ciml at 10:51 am (utc) on Feb. 14, 2005]
[edit reason] Fixed quotes [/edit]
For me, www.google.com does not change. I only see differences when I start looking at specific datacentre IPs.
The two sets I see are both rotating on www.google.com and most likely throughout the DC's. (I've stopped watching the different DC's for now).
Some competitors for these kw are 100% consistent across all data centers, particularly the top 1-4 positions. These sites' seem to be "non commercial" blogs, news, professional, .edu, and big "portals" mixed zines and commercial.?
Most of my listings contain a second, indented page - I have to be curious about whether that's related.
Back to the spread sheet.........
w
Don't waste your time. I wrote to the E-mail address GoogleGuy provided, gave him my site URL and a search that showed my site listed around #100 for its unique name.Well, today, my site has dropped even further when searching for its unique name, now in the 200's somewhere, and the spammy site with the hidden text has gone up to 50-something!
I concur.
I am seeing the same situation.
I pointed out to googleguy that when you search for "make money" on google.com without the quotes, the second site listed in the results is an error page.
It was fixed yesterday, but today the error page is at #1!
This is what the result is showing right now
Error
Error. FW-1 at fwnode1: Access denied.
I think google is in flux and it may take some time to settle down. Something is definitely wrong and I hope they can fix it soon.
My 2 cent worth of Analysis :
As I understand the situation, google has a list of sites that are sandboxed. If a site shows up in top results for allinanchor, allintitle, allintext etc, but not in the normal results for the same keywords, this is an indication that the site is on this list. Previous to this update, the sites on this list were being filtered out totally (except for the allin searches), they were nowhere in the results. Now it looks like these sites are being returned somewhere after the first 100 or so results irrespective of the keyword you search for. The filter would not only hijack the site from the top results but it would also push it in somewhere bellow where no one except webmasters who are out hunting for their site would find them. This would explain the brand name searches showing the real site way bellow, if the brand name site was on this list. Now the real problem for google seems to be that the criteria for a site to be on this list got messed up and during this update many legitimate sites who have been around for many years (no previous sandbox) somehow got onto this list. Unless google has a history of this sandbox list, it will be difficult for them to identify which site really belongs on the list and which has come in because of the mess up. This may be the reason the results are still in flus as they are working hard to resolve the mess!
What do you think of this analysis? Does your observation lead to similar conclusion or do you have any facts that contradict the above analysis?
Mufad.
These three sites showed number one positions on two Class C blocks, 216.239.53.X and 66.102.7.X and zero on all other IPs.
I think this is essential! I rank VERY good on those C-Blocks, but didn't gain any visitor out of it.
The index which is provided on these DCs is very clean and for my keywords there are more sites indexed than on all other DCs.
This is a good index and I don't understand why these DC'S are not integrated in the rotation for google.com, .de etc.?
greg
when you search for "make money" on google.com without the quotes, the second site listed in the results is an error page.
Yep, I’m getting the Error page you mention at first position now.
Something is definitely off. I also noticed on a few occessions that sites linking (lets call the linking sites, "b") to a site (lets call the linked site, "a") gets much better position then the original site ("a") even if you look for a unique keyword that can only be found on the linked site ("a"). The sites that link to site "a" get to the top while "a" is getting berried down the list or off the SERPs altogther.
If these are the final update results (if update is really over), then Google is broken. Case closed.
Incidentally I used the ODP on Friday....I found a great, spam free list in the ODP in less than a minute. You should try it. It works.)
Comparing Google to the ODP is like comparing apples and oranges. Google can index thousands of pages within a site; the ODP normally indexes only the home page. It's like the difference between THE READER'S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE and BOOKS IN PRINT.
That doesn't mean that "human evaluation" can't or doesn't play a role in Google. There have been several threads here about Google employment ads for quality evaluators on Google.com and Craigslist. But it's likely that these evaluators are being used mostly to establish reference points for analyzing algorithms and filters, not to override the automated search results.
Comparing Google to the ODP is like comparing apples and oranges. Google can index thousands of pages within a site; the ODP normally indexes only the home page. It's like the difference between THE READER'S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE and BOOKS IN PRINT.
With respect I wasn't comparing them and I also pointed out the difference. But while it seems fashionable to criticise the ODP in here we should remember that it does fulfil a useful purpose. I find that specific information can often be found quicker in the ODP nowadays than it can in Google. Try it!
You also have the guarantee that the results are of much higher quality and relatively spam free. This of course depends on what you are looking for and that said, we should not dismiss the ODP.
When I'm searching for specific informational material, though, I'm very used to using Google, seeing as how Google returns all the relevant subpages in its search as well as the more general homepages; and it's really frustrating that they're being so useless for this purpose lately. I hope things right themselves soon, as I really don't care for Yahoo search much.
This NEVER happens, in my area Google is everything over 15 sites 97% of SE referals are G.
google.be even refers more visitors than MSN.com
Are the general public now starting to switch, it cannot be coincidence that I am seeing this now and never before?
I spent a couple of hours on Y this morning and their results are better, never thought I wold say that!
If this Google lash up of an update helps release their stranglehold a little then perhaps it has a silver lining
These three sites showed number one positions on two Class C blocks, 216.239.53.X and 66.102.7.X and zero on all other IPs.I think this is essential! I rank VERY good on those C-Blocks, but didn't gain any visitor out of it.
The index which is provided on these DCs is very clean and for my keywords there are more sites indexed than on all other DCs.
This is a good index and I don't understand why these DC'S are not integrated in the rotation for google.com, .de etc.?
I agree.
Results on 216.239.53.X and 66.102.7.X are much much completed, cleaner, faster, logical etc.
Something is definitely off. I also noticed on a few occessions that sites linking (lets call the linking sites, "b") to a site (lets call the linked site, "a") gets much better position then the original site ("a") even if you look for a unique keyword that can only be found on the linked site ("a"). The sites that link to site "a" get to the top while "a" is getting berried down the list or off the SERPs altogther.
"Hey Walley, let's get them webmasters to grow some more inbound links this month! Turn up on knob "A" just a tad... lil' more... that's it!. And hand me that Florida brochure, will ya?".
"Aww Hell, Walley. Ain't nobody linking out no more. Ratchet up on knob "B" fer a while why don't ya. Mind passin' me that Allegra?"
I find that specific information can often be found quicker in the ODP nowadays than it can in Google. Try it!
