Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Now if they could just:
- increase the size of the snippet by atleast two fold (when did they cut that thing in half!?)
- strip the over blown JS and CSS, (Like I really need my cursor focused on the search field - which does nothing but mess up scrolling).
- remove the those tricky adwords/premium ads that you accidentally click on. (funny how that click width is the entire page eh?)
- remove or expand the supplemental junk that obfuscates results.
- get rid of the indented system to twelve layers (if I want a directory - I'll go to Yahoo)
Do that and heck - we'd almost be back to the G we fell in love with seven years ago again. aka: a usable search engine.
I think services like "GiveMeBackMyGoogle" are a red flag that Google has moved too far away from the core search engine that built them. I think the lesson for google is to, quit trying to fix what aint broke.
-url(websitename)
This is really cool
thanks again
I think the lesson for google is to, quit trying to fix what aint broke.
I was just wondering the same thing as I was reading the BBC's new article:
Google offers personal searches@ [news.bbc.co.uk...]
However while I agree with keeping G simple. I also think the average user has very little use for many of these new toys, and most would not know how to find them if they tried.
If G keeps the home page simple as simple can be then I think all will be well. Mess that up too much and we have another Yahoo!
[edited by: Visit_Thailand at 11:24 am (utc) on Oct. 24, 2006]
Actually, google has always looked the way it does today, to me
Was it ever plainer than this?
I only started using em in 2002 so i dunno
(keyword) -inurl:(kelkoo¦bizrate¦pixmania¦dealtime¦pricerunner¦dooyoo¦pricegrabber¦pricewatch¦
resellerratings¦ebay¦shopbot¦comparestoreprices¦ciao¦unbeatable¦shopping¦epinions¦nextag¦buy)
Would someone please explain exactly how this works?
we'd almost be back to the G we fell in love with seven years ago again. aka: a usable search engine.
Things began to noticeably go south when they went public. Now, they are in large part answering to stockholders and that means always exceeding the forecasts of the financial analysts -- when the numbers look good, the dividends are sweet.
I was in Louisville KY last weekend riding along with my brother-in-law, who is simply a regular web user but by no means any kind of geek. He said he was trying to find a website with information about colleges in Vermont, for his son. According to him, he first went to Google and got nothing of use, then used the same search at Yahoo and immediately found a website that gave him exactly what he wanted.
That is perhaps a meaningless anecdote, or perhaps it is an example of how G is being distracted from its core focus as it expands it's operations more and more into other areas (aka: income producing). Time will tell.
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(>> keyword) -inurl:(kelkoo¦bizrate¦pixmania¦dealtime¦pricerunner¦dooyoo¦pricegrabber¦pricewatch¦
resellerratings¦ebay¦shopbot¦comparestoreprices¦ciao¦unbeatable¦shopping¦epinions¦nextag¦buy)
>> Would someone please explain exactly how this works?
Basically it is a general google search with specific domain names excluded. The -inurl just says return the results but WITHOUT the domains that include what is listed.
Really does clean things up quite nicely - these shopping portals are nice to some degree, but they are taking over everything anymore - not just for products, but for services, information and ever more.
A Google search string producer that removes affiliate and selected ad sites from the Google results: [GiveMeBackMyGoogle.com<...]And what will be next, if we follow such "remove" mentality and way of thinking?
- Serps without travel sites
- Serps without christian sites
- Serps without muslim sites
- Serps without women sites
- etc.. etc...
C'mon wake up, folks :-)
A Google search string
Heck if we can add a few million more characters we could clean almost all the same old same old spam crap out too.
Now there's a simple algo and I've not got a PhD neither :¦
....Implying that now proffits are a primary concern.
Somehow this hit home to me. I first built my website just as something to do. Just something that made the web better. No proffit motive at all. All of my time was aimed at producing content.
Now with Adsense, and a site that has surprisingly become quite proffitable, half my time is spent on content and half is related activities associated with producing income (tweeking Adsense, monitoring rankings). I've taken my eye off the ball. I need to get back to basics. And probably most of us wish Google would or could get back to their basics and focus the bulk of their activities on search again (getting rid of MFA's, affiliates, scraper sites,...in their SERPs).
Seriously - look at this list:
kelkoo, bizrate, pixmania, dealtime, pricerunner, dooyoo, pricegrabber, pricewatch, resellerratings, ebay, shopbot, comparestoreprices, ciao, unbeatable, shopping, epinions, nextag, buy
What are they best known for? Almost all appliance, computer, and home electronics searches turn up one of those sites in the top 10 and certainly in the top 50. They add no legitimate value to those product searches. 100% pure spam to a search engine results page. I think I am going to redirect my normal google search string to start using Giveme Back My Google...
You can exclude up to 5,000 sites with a simple interface. I tried it with a big list of undesirable sites from the UK and found it helped enormously, but there's so much junk out there that there will always be rubbish in the SERPS.
Worth an experiment though.
They add no legitimate value to those product searches.
I shop online a lot and I use some of those sites all the time to compare prices and gauge the respectability of sellers. They've helped me avoid the "bait & switch" type vendor time and again.
I agree that they shouldn't necessarily rank high every time for a product search though.
Back to the old commercial/non-commercial serps argument. I wouldn't expect Google to do it, but that givemebackmy... site could add buttons to give users the choice.
....Implying that now profits are a primary concern.
When G was a couple really brilliant techies with a loyal and smart employee following, they could devote themselves to making the best search engine ever, and huge profits be damned. Now, that attitude is no longer an option -- if they fail to maximize profits, the company officers could be held accountable, and in an extreme case, that could even mean a court of law. So, they have evolved and at this point make decisions with the profit mandate gun held in front of their face. We may not like it and my guess is we'll never again see "the Google spirit" of 2001, but it was a gas while it lasted...
.......................................
Brett said:
Seriously - look at this list:
kelkoo, bizrate, pixmania, dealtime, pricerunner, dooyoo, pricegrabber, pricewatch, resellerratings, ebay, shopbot, comparestoreprices, ciao, unbeatable, shopping, epinions, nextag, buyWhat are they best known for? Almost all appliance, computer, and home electronics searches turn up one of those sites in the top 10 and certainly in the top 50. They add no legitimate value to those product searches. 100% pure spam to a search engine results page.
Here's to weasel-free, straight-to-the-point search results.
Walking somewhere is more fun when you're not interrupted by people sitting on the sidewalk with their hands out.
[edited by: Car_Guy at 1:53 am (utc) on Oct. 25, 2006]
The problem with the bulk of them is that they aren't even useful price-comparison sites. Many will claim in ads to give you "just what you are looking for", etc. but you get there and there is nothing of the kind - not even close.
Ebay, at least, actually sells products. But their affiliates are nutsy koo-koo. The stories of rediculous things they claim that eBay sells are legion. (My favorite is "heroin".)
I have from time to time used a negative-match myself on a subset of those sites.
BTW, if you just want to get rid of ads altogether, there is a (perhaps several?) Firefox extension that will eliminate Google ads.
I am not an MBA nor am I employed in the financial sector, but I believe that when you become a publicly traded corporation, your first priority is to work on the behalf of your stockholders.
Yeah, and your stockholders won't be pleased if you run the company into the ground by intentionally destroying your core product.
Search engines index what's on the Web. Who's filled the Web with crap? Not the search engines, but Web entrepreneurs looking for an easy buck.
I believe that when you become a publicly traded corporation, your first priority is to work on the behalf of your stockholders. If anyone here is an actual expert in this, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm no expert but, that is a philosophy. One that has been en vogue for the past quarter century, and one which was drilled into me in business school. However, in my opinion it's a toxic philosophy. Corporations have many responsibilities to many stakeholders: stockholders, employees, customers, the communities in which they operate and to some extent, the wider world. And, you can not always put stockholders above other stakeholders, especially short-term stockholder interests. If you were raised on the idea that a corporation exists only to create a profit for stockholders, then you might find this idea a bitter pill to swallow, but I believe it's a more sustainable model for corporate perpetuation. There is actually an article about this in BusinessWeek right now. It's about Indian business philosophy. Anyway, coming back to the thread. Google needs to keep their users in focus and to some extent ahead of short-term shareholder interests, if it wants to retain it's number 1 position. So yeah, I'm all for getting rid of the spam log jam on those searches.
Yeah, and your stockholders won't be pleased if you run the company into the ground by intentionally destroying your core product.
...in my opinion it's a toxic philosophy.
My point is simply in response to a website called "Give-Me-Back-My-Google" -- I don't think it's coming back. I don't think it can. Not because it doesn't want to, but rather, because now it is playing on a different field with different rules. And yes, the rules are shortsighted and ultimately self-destructive (ref: GM & Ford), but I'm afraid that horse has left the barn, and where it goes now, we can only wait and see. Hope I'm wrong.
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I'm adding this edit to bolster my point, in case anyone missed the news:
==============================================
Published Saturday, October 21, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO
Google Profit Nearly Doubles
Google Inc. shares climbed 7 percent Friday, a day after reporting its earnings nearly doubled in the third quarter and handily beat Wall Street estimates. Its shares climbed $29.30 to $455.36 in morning trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock price rise added about $10 billion to its market value.
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[edited by: Reno at 4:05 am (utc) on Oct. 25, 2006]
They even suggest what it might be used for. ("-amazon -ebay").
So, you can do this yourself right from your browser!
I don't think it can. Not because it doesn't want to, but rather, because now it is playing on a different field with different rules.
The problem isn't the field Google is playing on; it's the the fact that the other team now has millions of sleazy players and there's no referee.
[edited by: Car_Guy at 5:32 am (utc) on Oct. 25, 2006]
sleazy players and there's no referee
Sleazy?
The "sleazy" guys are playing by G's rules.
In fact, they are only following what the above mentioned "ebay-amazon-nexttag" group is doing.
How do you think they discovered what the "rules" were?
Yea, sorry. I won't be crying any tears for a company that turned the free public library into a pay for exposure bookstore.
How much did they make last quarter off of free content again?
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Google had better figure out whether to re-focus on their search product or penetrate into the software market.
We all know what a jack of all trades is good at...
It could be argued that the methods that search engines use to select which results to display (and not display) are in fact playing the role of the referee.
I am looking for [] General Information ¦ [] Product Information ¦ [] Both
All the huge product sites mentioned above (Amazon, eBay, Dealtime, Bizrate, Nexttag, et al) are filtered out of "General Information", and voila', they clean up a lot of non-relevant results. Let the user decide.
.................................
or sites that charge a subscription,,
or sites that dare to offend the surfer with affiliate adverts,,
Indeed, google should ban itself from showing ower adverts beside its search results lest their pristine purity be sullied by contact with the avaricious commercial world,,
Guys , the Google you hark back to was but a passing illusion, a company searching for a way to make money, to for example pay for the forests of servers and techies, and bandwidth, that Google was actually built on,,
To pay back all those good folk who invested their savings in Google,,
Serps without women sites
No way!
Er.... WHAT "women sites" are you referring to?
I am looking for [] General Information ¦ [] Product Information ¦ [] Both [/quote
Actually, I've proposed a similar concept. Fallen on deaf ears, of course.
Some search engine should devise a technique (may involve AI techniques, may not) for classifying websites and webpages into multiple, non-mutually-exclusive categories.
Examples of categories: "store", "manufacturer", "online outlet of brick and morter store", " registered non-profit organization", "sports team", "parent-teachers association", "resturant", "airline", "travel agency", "hobbyist site", "enthusist site", "price-comparison".
etc. etc. etc.
Now, let users select categories that they do or do not want to see. This can be done on a global or per-search basis, using either special keywords or drop-downs, check-boxes, etc.
Is this just DMOZ/Open Directory Project? Not really. I'd like to see all the sites in a large search engine categorized.
Is Google already doing this with the specialized searches? No. You are locked-in to the specialized search you have chosen (say, academic), rather than being able to combine categorical terms.
Whoever does this will be the next dominent search engine.
