Forum Moderators: open
There is no evidence that Google currently uses any "page quality" metrics, but it is very possible that at some time they will do so. Popups and dead links would be two possible targets of any "page quality" metric.
Assuming that Google did start evaluating page quality, what features do you think they would take into account?
1. Pages with no/few outward (external) links. Recently people have started "hoarding" their PRs in this way. Bad for users, though.
2. Pages with high ratio of internal/external links. Similar to (1) above. Even in pages there are many external links, webmasters have started adding infinite number of internal links to preserve PR.
3. Pages with too many external links. (Currently, Google recommends max 100, but does it penalize?) Too many links per page is bad for users.
In some cases "too many links" per page is just find for ome users, say in the case of a research site listing a bibliography or other research based pages. Yes they could be split into small pages but ive found some pages with 200 links on them that im qute happy them all being on one page.
The key about the web is that sites have all different purposes, and general "rules" of quality are hard to come up with that apply to ALL sites.
Bring it on!
Not EVERYONE is a genius at html and css, I agree that Frontpage isnt perfect and does dish out some bad code.......but to have a penalty for people that use it because they cant write their own code is not right.
It's a real bummer when you're on a dial-up, click on a search result and end up with 500kb worth of images.
If a certain site had badly formed HTML and then failed to display properly in any browser, what would be the point in giving that site a high ranking? No-one would be able to access the information. Better to bury it in the SERPs. Hides it from visitors. Alerts the Webmaster that there is a problem. QED.
You are absolutely right. Corporate websites won't have many, if any, external links. Same with length of bibliographies. ;)
Even we humans have hard time defining what a good page/site is in general, I don't expect an algorithm to be able to do that for a very long time.
Lots of Flash sites have lots of good content.
While this may be true, I still think that most sites with Flash are geared more toward making the site eye-candy rather than delivering good content.
For argument's sake, let's just say that there's a Flash site with an amazingly great biography on Michael Jordan, that has absolutely everything you could think of that has to do with Michael Jordan. Let's say you were looking for events that occured in (and ONLY in) 1996 in Mike's life. Now rather than reading the ENTIRE biography, I'd like to be able to use my browser's "Find" function, type 1996, and wham.
You can't do that with Flash, unfortunately. The only thing you'd really be able to do is skim through the entire document until you find 1996.
Just because the site is done in Flash that doesn't mean that it shouldn't rank well in the search engine.
I beg to differ. Using Flash is search engine rebellion, in my opinion. How, you ask?
Notice how it's a two way street for the webmasters/websites. Now, sites that use Flash essentially are saying "Search engines, I don't care that you can't crawl my content. I don't need your users." Keeping that in mind, why should Flash sites be ranked high (if they're even indexed at all)?!
If you can come up with a solution that crawls images for content, then all the power to you. A solution like that would antiquate ALT tags, don't you think?
Sites with JavaScript shouldn't be penalized by the engines.
I certainly think they should. JS slows down even the fastest/newest computers greatly, and I certainly wouldn't want the engines to send me to a site that would slow down my computer.
Besides, what if a user has disabled JavaScript or is using a text browser? Are they not worthy of viewing your content?
Sites with junk code should be ranked lower.
They certainly really should :\
Junk code denotes a webmaster that doesn't care about his page. Clean it up, guys!
And if you're really THAT concerned with getting content from those people who don't know HTML at all (like the 75 year old fisherman used in an earlier example), then perhaps you should make a WYSIWYG editor that outputs search engine friendly code. Doesn't sound like a half bad idea, actually. :)
Sites with misspellings should be ranked lower.
I agree completely. Maybe that way, we'll be spared from sites with text like : "0mG!11! iF y00 TyP3 l1k3 th15, u R A n00bx0r!1"
-panic
Keyword dumps. Most natural language has a certain proportion of connecting words, punctuation, verbs, nouns, pronouns etc. It should be possible to calculate a normal range for all parts of speech in a typical passage of writing. Pages that fall significantly outside this range, or that don't seem to have many sentences, are generally less informative. I'm seeing a lot of sites at the moment getting good positions just because they have a bunch of keywords listed. "You could also try these related searches", that sort of thing.
Often js can be used as a "poor man's" includes/interactivity/dynanmism etc when people dont have access to scripting like php/cgi etc. Often doing the same thing in php and cgi will ALSO reduce page loading, and sometimes more so.
I really dont see that as a good reason when it will penalise sites that use js well (e.g. to provide functionality that js does best or uniquely) For example some js scripts are faster than alternatives for the same functionality.
Finally i would find it highly doubtful that google would see any page that uses js as lower qulity when they use it themselves to deliver ads to Adsense sites. No js.. no display.
If a certain site had badly formed HTML and then failed to display properly in any browser, what would be the point in giving that site a high ranking?
Well of course in that extreme. However, most badly formed HTML (Frontpage etc) has no real effect on the viewer. As I say, most that use WYSIWYG editors do not know HTML etc BUT do know their content material.
Dave
After someone brought the accessibility issue to my attention, I updated one of my sites that uses JS to show information based on user input (dynamically, in other words), and added <noscript> tags where appropriate, and put some of the original markup into document.writeln() blocks.
The result is very pleasing. With or without JS, the layout is almost exactly the same and the information is now accessible to all. :)
Also, server side uses a top-down parsing that causes the SGML / XML parser to wait for it. I.e., it runs through the page once and is done. With JS the JS interpreter is running in parallel with the SGML / XML parser, meaning that content is delivered more quickly w/o having to wait for the JS to be interpreted.
Jordan
scumware prompts
He, he is that like unwashed Tubaware :o)
Dave
Hmmmm....Guess that is the end of Dmoz then? Yahoo will be in some trouble also. I guess Yahoo deserve it for using Inktomi results?
AOL/Netscape/Dmoz definitely deserve it for operating on equipment that works less than 50% of the time;)
Go Google, let see ya dish out some punishment to these cornerstones for a change.
I see no reason for Google to look at the quality of code, they must have spent dozens of man years to overcome the poor quality of code there. Little point in throwing that away now. Coding quality tests would definately damage some good content sites.
Having said that, I would be delighted if they penalized all FP, Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG generated pages full of code bloat. They probably already do, I'm sure all those count in the word relevancy calculations.
Hmmmm....Guess that is the end of Dmoz then?
Oh no, telling the truth about DMOZ always gets a thread locked or deleted!
Dave
Your rather lengthy comments are a bold-faced version of thoughts most webmasters seem to keep to the back of their head - a dislike for Javascript and Flash because of search engine incompatibility (or uncrawlability) - but the reasons you forward are biased and not very honest.
Let's keep it simple. If my profession was webmaster and I had several sites to promote and maintain, I would want to be able to put them up, have them crawled, and let the users come. If search engines can't find content in a site potential customers won't find them either, and that means a massive banner, ad, or link campaign. Webmasters don't want to do that, and probably don't even want to learn how to use it in consequence. Period.
If search engines could (or chose to, in the case of Google) follow Javascript links and dig text out of Flash content like they do even for powerpoint, you wouldn't see any dislike and Flash criticisms would be based on Flash content. There (still) IS NO ALTERNATIVE to Flash content as there is for Javascript, I can't replace a Flash movie with a gif image, I have to make a whole new page instead! Perhaps I should say 'no longer any alternative'. I've already spoken to great end of this elsewhere.
Flash is a *** good tool when well used, much like a camera. Just because I have one doesn't make me a photographer, and the same goes for someone who owns a copy of Flash or Quark Xpress professing to be a graphic artist/art director. How about keeping the criticism there?
The in ad summum of the present day 'web-attitude' seems to be 'the net is working fine as it is, we all have a majority of HTML content and we'd like it to stay that way and we don't want to be bothered by anything new' - doesn't that mentality sound rather 'small-town' to you?
True that W3C won't be changing anytime soon and we're stuck with IE 6.0 for at least another three years, but that's no reason to glorify bringing the whole machine of web development to a grinding halt.
Sorry if I sound a bit steamed but I guess I've heard a few too many comments like 'when I want to see a movie, I go to the cinema'. I'm sure that some once said the same thing about concert halls and gramaphones.
Just my two centimes, take care,
Josefu.
I see no reason for Google to look at the quality of code, they must have spent dozens of man years to overcome the poor quality of code there. Little point in throwing that away now. Coding quality tests would definately damage some good content sites.
Fair enough.
Having said that, I would be delighted if they penalized all FP, Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG generated pages full of code bloat. They probably already do, I'm sure all those count in the word relevancy calculations.
Isn't that contradicting what you said in the first paragraph?
Josefu:
If my profession was webmaster and I had several sites to promote and maintain, I would want to be able to put them up, have them crawled, and let the users come. If search engines can't find content in a site potential customers won't find them either, and that means a massive banner, ad, or link campaign.
If you want your site to be crawled, then make it crawlable! Using Flash makes it virtually uncrawlable. Having uncrawlable content, yet demanding to be crawled is like demanding to get paid when you DON'T go to work.
True that W3C won't be changing anytime soon and we're stuck with IE 6.0 for at least another three years, but that's no reason to glorify bringing the whole machine of web development to a grinding halt.
Who's to say that development has to stop? Very rarely can I say that I've seen a useful Flash animation with any useful content. Come to think of it, the only time I've ever seen anything good done with Flash, it's been for small games or very small funny/useless Flash videos.
If I'm looking up information on Michael Jordan, the last thing I want to see at the top of the search results is a Flash movie poking fun at his short-lived Golf and Baseball careers.
I'm sure that some once said the same thing about concert halls and gramaphones.
Yet another person that's not too happy that they spent all that time trying to learn Flash, only to have the web community write it off.
when I want to see a movie, I go to the cinema
Couldn't have said it better myself. :)
-panic
"If I want to see colors, I'll go to an art workshop"
"If I want to see text, I'll read a book"
"If I want to see layout, I'll go to a fung shui class"
What is left for the web?
I am as much against a misuse of Flash content as I am against misuse of any other kind of content, but why should every instance of Flash be labeled as a misuse?
I personally *despise* the stupid Flash movie that shows at the emuleplus page, but then when I look at Josefu's page I see nothing at all to dislike. In fact, it seems very apropos, and not at all intrusive.
Well, that's another perspective anyways...for what it's worth. No offense intended or anything, just being a really, really, really, really monkee-man (ask Josefu ;) ).
Jordan
This is exactly what would (and even does) happen when Flash movies are crawled. You can't send a visitor to a specific frame in the movie, so they must start at the top. That's not what search engines want to provide for their users. They want to take them to the exact spot where the words in their query appear.
There's a similar challenge when we use show/hide divs on a page -- Google does index the hidden div content in this case, but visitors don't SEE that content when the div is hidden onLoad and only made visible by clicking a link.
I don't see how Google could detect the show/hide problem. But with Flash Google certainly can avoid indexing the content in the first place, and I don't blame them if they make that user-friendly choice.
There (still) IS NO ALTERNATIVE to Flash content as there is for Javascript, I can't replace a Flash movie with a gif image
Unfortunately, Flash still isn't an open format - which means that as far as I'm concerned, it has no place in an open, interoperable web. If you wat me to see that movie, perhaps a standardized format that I can get a player for would be a good idea?
I've got no problem with rich content, but I don't think Flash, Word, PowerPoint, or any other formats without published specifications have *any* place on the web. If there's only one person/company who knows the format, then you can absolutely guarantee that users are being locked out of any content you present that way. Content that users can't access is fundamentally useless, and therefore not a valuable search result.
Webmasters don't like and never learned how to use flash probably because it can't be crawled. It's nice to leave the finding to the users and the search engines. Point. I don't have to repeat myself, I'm sure you understood what I meant.
All this discussion of penalizing anyone for anything is just silly. Where is it yours or Google's or anyone's role to decide the quality of any content before it gets to its computer destination? As long as sites play by the rules (which has nothing to do with 'taste' or quality) let the users decide. If they don't like the content, too bad for the site. If they don't want to use or can't have flash, too bad for the site. If the site is just downright boring HTML or ugly Flash and the user doesn't come back, too bad for the site. Everyone should have his fair chance but it's not like that, is it?
It's quite obvious that what's miffing me is that if you use flash you have no alternative to flash that's not a compromise so if you use flash you're search engine screwed. No need to be smug about it.
If a user can't bookmark specific content on a site, then a search engine is not likely to want to provide a link that must go to some top level destination and assume the user wants to dig down to locate the content they are searching for.
This is so true for full-flash sites. There is a site out there that I LOVE (can't promote it, though) and it has exactly the same problem. There i~s an alternative for IE 6 users who can 'bookmark' between loaded movies, but for me and my mac I'm ****'d.
But I knew all that before : ) - that's why my site is a mix of HTML with a 'flash centre' - have a look in my profile if you want to. Oh, click on the Eiffel tower if you can't read that first line of Japanese... : )
I"ve come up with a great idea for putting the text in without putting it into the movie. Mmmmmmaybe both (grin). No cheating, either.
(added) I'm doing it with the *user* in mind, not Google. Mr. Bot comes second : )
[edited by: Josefu at 5:41 pm (utc) on Aug. 15, 2003]
Where is it yours or Google's or anyone's role to decide the quality of any content before it gets to its computer destination?
I think I speak for many when I say that the reason I use certain engines is because I trust (and like) the content that they have indexed... plain and simple.
In that sense, I think the engines have say as to what's in their index and what isn't, to please its users.
If you don't agree, you don't NEED to use any specific search engine. If you really disagree with it THAT much, why don't you build your own search engine, and you can include/exclude content as you see fit.
-panic
They get 'skip' or 'click-close' as punishment.
(added) Hey, monkeySage (-man)! I didn't see your post at first - odd. I liked your site as well : )
There (still) IS NO ALTERNATIVE to Flash content as there is for Javascript, I can't replace a Flash movie with a gif image
haha, what I meant by that is that nojavascript users have <noscript> and noframes browsers have <noframes> - Flash users had a <noembed> chance to provide some noflash content, but no longer.
There's no other app out there even approaching Flash's capabilities, everyone has the Flash plugin as it's free and ships with most browsers. That kind of kills the argument that it's 'not available to all' - oh, and one could have a 'beginnings of a monopoly' theory - but an example against both would be the .doc and .ppt content we find on Google - we sure don't all have Word and Powerpoint : )
Are you trying to tell me that we don't get any one-page-wonders and PDF's in the results?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Flash pages technically "one page wonders" since they're embedded into one HTML file?
Some of the most downright ugly sites are on top
They're at the top because they have good CONTENT. I would certainly hope that most would rate a page on its content and not its layout. I'd rather see ugly sites with good content rather than pages with nice layouts and crummy content at the top of the results.
-panic
Flash users had a <noembed> chance to provide some noflash content, but no longer.
Good game, Macromedia. I usually saw content like "Please upgrade your browser in order to view this page" between the noembed tags.
There's no other app out there even approaching Flash's capabilities, everyone has the Flash plugin as it's free and ships with most browsers
I didn't know there was a Flash plugin for Lynx :P
but an example against both would be the .doc and .ppt content we find on Google - we sure don't all have Word and Powerpoint
You can open .doc files with Wordpad or other FREE RTF editors. I know there's other programs you can use to open up PowerPoint files in Linux, such as Pointless [freshmeat.net] , but I'm not too sure about Windows.
-panic
THAT's why I don't normally have the flash plugin installed.
And I have YET to see a website done in flash were the flash gives me as user anything. I can see how it's hte wet dream of designers and site creatorsy, but is it for the user? That's all that google cares about.
SN
Hee, thanks for trying to play devil's advocate : )
