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Now, for the most part, I think users are still happy, but there is no doubt that computer-literate folks I know are beginning to use other search engines if they don't immediately find what they want on Google. This trend is likely to continue unless Google gets a grip on its problems.
I will kick off with the following suggestions.
1: Read javascript links (or publicly admit PR is broken and won't be fixed). Also, where possible, read cgi-links. (Where the link contains an url beginning http:// or www. this is easy. However, this might open a door to cheating SEO so this is debatable.)
2: Fix the link: tool so that it shows all links are displayed. Also change it so that it works like ATW and AV and can show backlinks for an entire site. It need not show more than, say, 200 but it should give the total count. This would allow webmasters to feel more confident that Google is working properly if nothing else.
Kaled.
PS
Please vent unhelpful comments and waffle in other threads.
2) Kick out sites with to high keyword density.
Another point, the power of backlinks too high?
Re; one of the sites on which I am allowed to write articles to achieve page one of G, information not product.
For a 2 word key, home page is listed as No.2 with the actual article at No.1. As the home page has absolutely no SEO, just the 2 words as the title of the article, is it justifiable that this appears as NO.2 just because of good PR backlinks to home page, with absolutely no mention of the keywords in those links?
There are 18 articles with exactly the same situation, although one against 250,000 the ranking is 3 and 4.
2. Come up with a way to drop re-directs out of your results immediately.
3. Hand check sites that use "Nosnippet".
4. Faster full-update of sub-pages, and less popular websites. Even willing to pay for this!
5. Froogle Froogle Froogle
6. Froogle
If the search term ain't somewhere on the page don't return the page in the results.
I find it very annoying that when you type in www.google.com, you automatically get the version that fits the country you are in.
Kick out all affiliate links - instead follow those tracking links and show the merchant site in the search results instead.
Another point, the power of backlinks too high?
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From what I’ve seen over the past year it looks like the small niche sites are being pushed lower and lower in the rankings. Large, high PR sites seem to be coming up for searches when they may be relevant but not relevant in a specific way. They’re often not what I’m looking for or I need to search the larger site again to find what I’m looking for. I used to get the specific results first and the best results came from the smaller niche sites. In my opinion it’s due to PageRank and the way Google now handles phrases. It seems keyword proximity or an exact phrase match is less meaningful than it used to be. Now, the phrase sometimes isn't even on the page. PageRank dominates too much.
Has such an idea been discussed before? If not, Google and Microsoft can feel free to chip-in and make me a millionaire… or at least list my site at the top of the rankings :)
One thing is certain, it would reduce the number of Have I been penalised threads? on WW.
Kaled.
One thing is certain, it would reduce the number of Have I been penalised threads? on WW.
Trying to count how many times people can use "Google" and "penalty" in the same sentence is half the fun of WW.
Off topic but:
English is second, Spanish is third, Mandarin Chinese is first.
Off topic but:
English is second, Spanish is third, Mandarin Chinese is first.
From the first message of this thread
Please vent unhelpful comments and waffle in other threads.
Kaled.
I can see it now on all homepages, "bookmark us and get 10% discount" I think this one will be easier to manipulate than inbound links.
Dave
Money talks. The commonest language of money is English. The Chinese and Spanish speaking peoples of this world have fewer bucks to spend and fewer computers with which to spend them (from the point of view of professional webmasters).
This is about google and the things to do, not about money and what is the most common language. That there is no Adult filters for the most common languages is very bad and strange for a company as google.
If I always search for the MYSQL manual and always click on that mysql.com link then my LOCAL, PRIVATE, file should check that before I send the query and get that closer to the top. Repeat, sort the result based on my previous results (unless I say differently) If I spend a lot of time on DPREVIEW and then type in "Canon d300" I want DPREVIEW results to show first usually. Are we on computers or on we on Atari 2600s? How many Google rocket scientists, Marketing VPs and IPO mavens does it take to make this happen? Of course some people may want STEVES to show first....
I should be able to manually edit my LOCAL,PRIVATE preferences file. This is like a bookmark system but much more sophisticated, it's a personal filtering system, a web document firewall that can learn from my queries, rank my queries both against my other queries and against a relative value based on those queries, allowing meta-filtering rules, free beer and whatnot.
If I follow the wrong link and end up in a vortex I want to hit the big red "THIS SUCKS" button and not see that domain again in my search results (or at least severely downgrade it, perhaps there would be an OBLITERATE button for the really egregious cases).
Rank the QUERY not the web page.
Please do not give me some goody-goody know-nothing-about-me web "editor" dictating what links are relevant to me, what I should look at. That would be the absolute worse-case nuclear winter scenario and would be the end of Google as a respectable search engine. Perhaps, there can be a suggestions drop down or something as an extra, I'm willing to support that as long as I can choose which editor/s I like and the results are secondary, not my main results (or at least have a choice). Several sites allow you to rank the result. That's fine for google to do that but each person's choices should have NO impact on anybody else's results.
What is Rainbow_Mama_69 doing ranking my web links anyway? ...or Googleplex Corporate HQ for that matter....
4. Faster full-update of sub-pages, and less popular websites. Even willing to pay for this!
"Faster full-update of sub-pages, and less popular websites."
Absolutely.
"Even willing to pay for this!"
No, no, and no... period. Just no.
1: Increase the value of pagerank greatly. In my "topic area", a list of all the relevant sites, ordered by pagerank would produce an almost-perfect list of the best sites. A lot of people (including myself) are being outranked by some very garbaginous pages these days. :)
2: Massively downgrade sites as they fail to be updated. (Sites that haven't been updated for a year should be sent down about 25%, two years - 50%. Sites that haven't been updated for five years should be riiight at the bottom.)
3: Downgrade abandoned pages (i.e. pages with excessive broken links, or broken Image links.)
4: Ignore anchor text.
5: Let me get rid of those little binoculars on the Google Toolbar :)
6: Bring on the Voting Buttons! I write lots of quality stuff, but the Googlebot doesn't know it. I know who the best Photoshop sites are, and they certainly aren't 1, 2 and 3 on the list.
7: Let me change my email address in Adsense. (I'm sure you know about that one though :)
2. Update the Directory so quality sites that have been in the rdf dump for the past seven months can get the benefit they desrve.
3. Update the Directory so you don't look like a bunch of dorks.
2: Massively downgrade sites as they fail to be updated. (Sites that haven't been updated for a year should be sent down about 25%, two years - 50%. Sites that haven't been updated for five years should be riiight at the bottom.)
I don't agree with this one, sorry. What about the historic subjects. This suggestion is only useful for people looking for current up-to-date info, probably relating to computers, stock, money-making. What about students looking into history. A good paper might have been written by a professor 5 years ago, who's gone on to write others on different subjects. Then a student comes along and writes a new paper as a college project, and that gets a higher PR! That's daft.
Putting more emphasis on voting buttons, and timing how long a visitor stays at a site ( or doesn't stay ) I think would be useful to include.
Yep. The flaw in this logic is that there are topics that are static.
I think the vast majority of topics (if not all) prefer up-to-date information.
And even in the case of history, the professor's old paper would be beaten by the student's new paper. But that would in turn be beaten by a professor's new paper. (The top positions would all be occupied by professors' new papers, not professors' new and old papers.)
It remains my opinion that Google should downgrade very old and abandoned sites.
Assuming that the ODP could manage the extra workload that would result if Google scrapped their copy, doing so would be no bad thing.
There you are, a simple suggestion to save money, manpower and resources.
Kaled.
My helpful suggestions:
1) Alongside the spam report form, have an expired content alert form. In one search, the number one result in 3 million contains only the title "No More" and the text "It has become obvious that I don't have time to maintain this page. Yahoo is an excellent starting place for information of all kinds." - nothing else. Its position is entirely due to incoming link anchor text and having that site at number one is of no use to anyone. It's been there for at least a year.
2) On the reducing affiliate sites in the SERPs issue, something that might be worth looking at is the now pretty extensive database of sites submitted to dmoz (and rejected) that have been hand-noted as containing exclusively affiliate content. I see no way other than human editing to recognise affiliate sites and the dmoz list of red-noted sites must be the largest around. If nothing else, it might be worth using as a start for Google employees to hand-pick affiliate sites or identify common factors.
Ok, back to measuring several kilos of radioactive excrement - yes, that's really what I'm doing... :(
>>Ok, back to measuring several kilos of radioactive excrement
Its all Marcia's fault [webmasterworld.com]! (msg # 15) ;)
My $0.02...
a) De-emphasize the <title> tag in SERP. Too much baloney
out there to continue supporting this, and far, far too easy to maipulate.
b) Again, as said before: Do something about to spam reports!
I've reported sites w/ BLATANT abuse.. hidden text, reciprocal link farming, etc., etc.Three months later...
Nothing. The same sites are all still well-ranked as a reward for their cheap, deceptive tricks.
c) De-emphasize the importance of link text, unless it is again reflected well on the page linked to.
Hope you're still tracking this thread, Google Guy.. :-}
