Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
As always MSN, Yahoo! & Google are here on Webmasterworld but they are here (I think) for their own gain really, never to help any of us webmasters. I have said it before, will continue to say it forever as far as I can tell.
All to manipulate webmasters... get us to do things thier way, make more money and manipulate us more.
I say spoof em! Really, it's security blanket!
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Tool Generates Fake Searches for Privacy
[biz.yahoo.com...]
Remember not too long ago this summer when there was a long stretch with no official Google participation here and so many questions coming up? The relief and gratitude that was expressed by many when at least some official answers were posted?
I think we have a complex situation going -- even a paradox. Webmasters and search engines are, by their very nature, both competitive and cooperative with each other. Focusing on just one side of that paradox will lead to an ultimately non-productive situation for both sides.
Mathematical game theory has made quite a study of the "competitive-cooperative" environment -- it's probably the rule in nature, rather than the occasional exception. No one creature or species exists in isolation or perfect independnce, they all need the completeness of a bigger pattern to sustain them.
And rest assured, we would not allow any company representative to post here for long if we felt they were ONLY being a PR presence.
All that said I rarely log-in to any search engine and I often hide my tracks even further through various methods. I don't think I'll be bothering to generate artifical searches, however. Still, to each their own.
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TrackMeNot is ALPHA software, not even beta. Be aware of that before hooking into your FireFox browser, especially if you already use lots of other extensions.
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But deep in the back of my thoughts anyone here can be a well posted (posting many days and weeks to increase tenure) search engine employee, yourself included.
Just a true possible fact, I have spoken with many SEO firms owners that go far back, many think there is SO MUCH disinformation on these boards that they try not to listen to anything said anymore. I feel the same way.
Examples
1) Recip links are bad
2) No description tabs are normal and SE's do not use them
3) Change content often
4) Make pages shorter as SE's are now into shorter more optimized pages
Almost all of what I read on here WebmasterWorld. is not true.
[edited by: Hollywood at 7:48 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2006]
It is true, on any public forum, that you need to read with caution and always conduct your own real world tests and make your own judgements.
I find it interesting to note the specific examples you chose. In several cases they were stated as overly simplified and absolute "truths" when the original thought was couched in much more theoretical language. Many people pass on the SEO "flavor of the month" but distort it in various ways like the children's party game called "grapevine" or "telephone".
There's never a substitute for your own sharp discrimination and rigorous logic.
<edit reason: fix typos>
[edited by: tedster at 11:29 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2006]
Hey Hollywood, "Almost all of what I read on here WebmasterWorld. is not true."
Perhaps you should check out some of the forums that do not deal with the search engines, and the "chicken little" (the sky is falling) posts.
When I first found WW, I just thought I knew nothing about webmastering, now, the more I learn, the more I find out I do not know. It is almost scary, I feel I am getting further and further behind, I keep finding smarter and smarter people, and I may never be able to catch up. There are posters here whom I consider clueless, and others I can only dream of someday learning what they know.
Consume everything, filter the garbage, and then look for yourself & do your own research, and then make decisions based on your findings.
Personally I love the "I"m gonna delete all my recip link pages" posts, the "I"m gonna remove all the meta tags", but my absolute favorite is the "I'm gonna block googlebot" to get even posts.
Lemmings run with Lemmings, let em go! I'll take pictures as they rush to the edge to jump. (Induced or otherwise)
On topic, I do not care if the search engines know what I am searching for, only that they find and display to me what I am looking for.
Back To Watching
WW_Watcher
[edited by: WW_Watcher at 8:57 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2006]
My guess is this is actually against Google's Terms of Service (TOS), automated queries.
Numerous times I have set up queries looking for 49 or 99 results and Google has returned, saying sorry this appears to be an automated query, and then Google proceeds to block such queries for some time period. It could have just been someone using the same IP address as I am.
They've done this in the past and this tool sounds especially easy to detect in its current form. You may end up being periodically blocked by Google, so good, use MSN or Yahoo, ask.com, etc. to hide your queries as well
