Google, We Have a Problem...

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2006-05-23 02:25pm

http://www.cotse.com/20060516.html

Something is broken at Google

Google is currently the premier search engine. However, it's results are getting worse by the day. Besides being bombarded with gateway search engine pages no matter what term you type in, you are not getting relevant results. In other words, you are not seeing legitimate pages that other search engines like Yahoo will return.

For proof of this I give you the term "privacy service". This one affects us and our service at http://www.cotse.net. Cotse.Net is a privacy service. According to our logs it is indexed daily by Google. According to Google, we are not penalized in any way by them. Because we are a privacy service you'll find this term all over our site. So you'd think that if you enter the term "privacy service" without quotes (it does show up with quotes, but should as well without) into Google, somewhere in that listing you would find our site. But you won't. It's not listed anywhere in those results except for the ad for which we paid. What is going on here?

If you look at the results under that term you'll find site's privacy policies (including Google's), the general smattering of gateway search engine pages Google is becoming famous for, as well as sites that only seem to have the word privacy in them once. But you won't find us, a privacy service with the term "privacy service" all over it. It's also something recent because this is a key phrase we've monitored for years. For the last three years our site has been number two or number three in these results, suddenly it is completely gone. However it still appears as number two or number three in nearly every other search engine but Google. It appears that Google has seriously broken their algorithm recently.

Our results are not unique. When you use Google you are getting less relevant returns than you do with other search engines. For proof, run your own tests. Start with the example we gave then move to some of your own. Compare the results you get from Google to the results you get from Yahoo and you'll start to see differences. Pages that should be listed in Google are not there.

Google, what happened to you guys? You used to be one of the best, now you are either slipping or working your algorithm to require sites you feel should be purchasing ad space from you to do so (like we had to do to even get listed where we should be listed by default). Which is it?

We have contacted Google about this, they state that we are not being penalized and are unable to offer any reasons for this behavior. An also interesting note is that Google owns blogspot and has blocked users of our privacy service from accessing blogspot. We've received no response to inquiries about this.

Update 05/16 - Google responded to our latest mail asking them why with a response that basically says: We don't know, it's got to be your fault, we can't help you. That was in regards to the search results query. In response to the blogspot blocking us they could only refer us to a page we can't get to because we are blocked. The once intelligent Google seems to be breaking down.

/steve
05/16/2006

Note: HTML formatting in article transliterated into BBCode to preserve fidelity.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-05-23 02:33pm

Google for Nintendo Players.

www.nintendoplayers.com is somewhere past #50.

http://www.google.com/search?q=nintendo ... art=0&sa=N

Do the same on Yahoo, Altavista, or MSN. Not counting paid advertisements, we're #1 on MSN, #1 on AltaVista, and #1 on Yahoo.

Google hates us. I suspect that it's because of the 'incident' a while back where some of the members wanting to support the site clicked the ads a bunch and Google gave us a warning, but nothing's happened since, Google still provides ads for us, and they claim they don't discriminate...

It's interesting.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2006-05-23 02:43pm

I've heard all this is due to the Big Daddy upgrade coupled with gigantic amounts of SEO spamdexing literally clogging Google's disk farm up completely.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-05-23 02:49pm

Could this not be down mainly to Google-bombing?

Post by **Edi** » 2006-05-23 02:58pm

Google-bombing and the numerous other problems Einy refers to above. Google is in a world of shit ironically due to its popularity, because it's so easy to create junk pages to Google-bomb the service. There are even automated processes to do just that. I'm going to have to start using Yahoo and Altavista just for comparison.

Edi

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-05-23 03:03pm

I actually use Yahoo! or MSN when Google fails to find what I want. It's shocking that they can find things Google even misses. I just saw on the news before that Google is working on some brand new AI (codenamed "Zeitgeist", I believe) to make searching and organising all data perfect at a human level.

Post by **Edi** » 2006-05-23 03:41pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I actually use Yahoo! or MSN when Google fails to find what I want. It's shocking that they can find things Google even misses. I just saw on the news before that Google is working on some brand new AI (codenamed "Zeitgeist", I believe) to make searching and organising all data perfect at a human level.

It's going to do fuckall if they don't have enough server space, which is currently one of the problems facing them.

Edi

theski · Post by **theski** » 2006-05-23 04:15pm

Anybody use the new tools at Ask.com??

Grand Moff Yenchin · Post by **Grand Moff Yenchin** » 2006-05-24 12:46am

I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking WTF is going on with Google. Recently sometimes when I switch the language there are no effects on the results. In a more bizarre case, sometimes I search through their Groups to fish out some previous posts. And the fucking thing pretends they don't exist. Ugh.