Google intrigued yet concerned

[xodigo]

Intrigued as I am that Google offers over 91 public services (many of those free), I am a bit concerned these days that the basic Search results of Google are less than overwhelming.

I recently did a search in Google using the following phrase; “Bird Flu Blues – helping your child cope with bad news”.

Having written the article myself I simply wanted to see who had picked it up and placed links to it.

Google Search gave 2 “relevant” results (one was not). So I checked Yahoo. They gave 20 “relevant” results – most were.

Then I checked MSN. They gave 50 results, practically all as far as I could see were absolutely relevant although I had just submitted the article 48 hours before.

My question is this – what is going on with Google? 2 results are a far cry from 50 – and remember, I typed in 10 words, way over the average 2-3 word search. Regardless of + 91 services from Google, I will have to migrate elsewhere soon if I don’t get the real results for Search which I know exist.

(My article is birthed from the web-site http://www.xodigo.com )

[janeth]

None will show me anything with the quotes but without the quotes Google is showing 60,300 and MSN is showing 5,800 while Yahoo is showing 2,410

Looks like Google won to me?

[google junky]

I used the first 4 words to find the article xodigo was talking about and realized children was supposed to be kids and without your

I think it was supposed to be (comes up with the number atleast) heh
“bird flu blues - helping kids cope with bad news”


although the text link at the site shows
Bird Flu Blues - helping children cope with fear

and the articles title on the page reads
Bird Flu Blues - helping kids cope with fear

How confusing.......
ok I admit I dont know what I was supposed to be looking for now

[damarzee]

I understand what you mean when referring to Googles results being less relevant. It appears that since the jagger update, a high degree of content is no longer available though Google, but this relevant content is available through Yahoo and MSN.

One of my websites has vast amounts of content which is very relevant to the home and garden industry. This content is easily found with Yahoo and MSN, but since Jagger, this content is almost impossible to access with Google, short of using extremely precise multi-word descriptions found only on the specific page. Now, if you look for a "room layout", instead of finding my premier site (which is all about room layouts), you find a site in the #2 spot that just happens to mention the term "room layout" when describing how to arrange speakers. The site is sony. They were the #1 spot for this search term, but are now #2 and their site has almost nothing to do with room layouts...except they just happen to mention it on one page. How is this relevant?

It gets even better. Search for "room layouts" plural and I'm #1. So how could i not even be listed in the top 600 for "room layout", yet I'm #1 for the plural version? Shouldn't the singular version get some weight as well? This new algorithm has no consistency and does not work in the way a human would search...thus it now provides results that are not as helpful as they used to be...at least not for humans.

This premier website has lost over 2000 visits a day from Google since the jagger update. We're not banned and we're not penalized. We're very relevant, yet we have almost no traffic at all any more from Google.

Bottom line, we agree that Google is not doing a very good job right now with providing relevant results and they should be concerned since i also agree that Yahoo, MSN and Clusty provide very good results.

i know i may be biased right now since the past 60 days have been a challenge, but it appears, from many posts and blogs i visit, that Google has dropped or lost many sites providing relevant content. Jagger was supposed to be an attempt to reduce spam sites, so perhaps Google needs to look more closely at their definition of "Spam site" so that is does not eliminate so much relevant content that has been posted for years, acceptable for years and is totally acceptable by all other major search engines.

[pemburung]

damarzee,

I'd have to agree. I think what has maybe been ignored when when site owners complain about being lost on Google is not that they just don't see their site, but that a good proportion of the sites high on the SERPS can be not very relevant, and of course as the site owners know their own specialty, they probably have the best idea of this. I just checked Clusty for a few terms in my own industry, and not only did our site come up, which it no longer does in G but does in Yahoo and MSN, but pretty much every site on the first few pages was right on the money. I saw a few old friends, who I suddenly realized also disappeared in the last shuffle, which I know to be highly relevant. It was a bit deja vu from a few years ago, when this would have been the G return, and the current G return altavista or one of the others of the period. It seems that the Clusty algo understands a searcher's intent, a feature that G no longer seems able to do.

MS focusing on itself, and not the client, led to LINUX and more; AOL to virtually every ISP only, especially back then Earthlink. As I recall, Earthlink was spread by word of mouth from industry people, who basically told internet-innocent AOL subscribers that there was a much better way to get what they wanted. We're now hearing some of the same talk from within the search industry. It would seem that unless G gets off targeted ad delivery as its number one focus (or admits it), and back to good search, it will also see better engines dominate in the near future. Build it better and they will come, and come they did, but build it worse, and they will go.

Janeth, the result you quote is exactly what is wrong with G. No-one cares about the 63,250 pages where part of the search term occurs once somewhere on the page. They care about those pages where the search term appears in full, first. If the terms they used don't work, then they can change, but they shouldn't have to before all the relevant results using all the terms are displayed, just because more people link to a page that also includes one of the terms than link to a page that includes them all. Google no longer seems to understand that, but thinks more is better. OK, OK, maybe in some things size does matter, but not in this. The whole point of their model, academic citations (I used to subscribe to the main Abstract and Citation Search publications way back when, and then the electronic versions), was to see which publications were most cited in the specific field. It was divided up into lots of categories, and you could see which general peer review thought most relevant, as the number of citations of the paper was noted. Google adopted this, but in reverse by looking at the citation number as very important, and the actual written paper as less important. (Please people don't post again about the "100 factors; we know that, but we also understand weighting - all factors are not equal). Interstingly, in academia this also led to certain behemoths being frequently cited, and even more, Authorities developing as their papers virtually had to be cited, strengthening their importance still more. It didn't matter if they were no longer the most relevant, they were a Gray Eminence. Is there some coincidence that these Authorities also tended to be well established in the universities and research labs that would employ the whippersnappers publishing the newer papers that had to cite....But I digress.

Cheers all.

[ADAM Web Design]

Hi Ron, I'm Adam.

(For those who don't know who Ron is, he's the guy who wrote the way-cool Bird Flu article and the thread starter. No I'm not spying on you, I just found the article.)

You're in a lot better shape than you thought, friend. Google will pick up on your articles, and has picked up on them more often than you think.

Let me show you:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22When+I+explained+to+Josh+that+Bird+Flu %22&hl=en&lr=lang_en&safe=off&rls=DVXA,DVXA:2005-04,DVXA:en&filter=0

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv1-&p=%22When+I+explained+to+Josh+that+Bird+Flu%22

http://search.sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx?FORM=TOOLBR&q=%22When+I+explained+to+Josh+that+Bird+Flu%22

Yes, MSN still provides the most results, which isn't overly surprising given that they tend to crawl article sites a lot faster for some reason (at least this is something I've noticed for all the articles I've submitted.)

However, your Google and Yahoo! situation is different. The reason I took a phrase specifically from the article is because that phrase could only be found on the article itself.

When querying your article by title, you'll not only get the pages where your article is published, but the pages that link to where your article is published. So a lot of the results you were seeing on Yahoo! and MSN weren't all pages containing the article body.

You've written a high-quality article on a subject that, to my knowledge, no one else has even touched as far as writing an article goes. You've also submitted it to some of the major article syndication sites, so you're good there as well.

That's one that, if geeks are reading, tend to spread around like wildfire. I'm still finding sites that are publishing an article I wrote in July of 2004 (one of which is iDunce.net, which may or may not be a compliment.)

Have a shameless plug, on me:

Bird Flu Blues - Helping Your Child Cope With Fear (http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=94105)

Anyway, I wouldn't sweat this issue too much right now. Google will probably have about 40 or 50 results within a week, if you keep plugging away.

As far as relevancy is concerned: those of you who are upset about it tend to have a vested interest in the results. You want your own site to rank first because you believe it to be the best.

There's nothing wrong with believing your site is the best: however, if it doesn't rank, that's no reason to summarily blame Google or any other engine. Consider these things;

1) Is there too much (or too little) information on the individual pages of my site? damarzee, your site in particular tends to have this as an issue. It's got a lot of great information, but too much of it appears on the home page. Spread it out. Divide the load.

2) Do the other sites bear relevance to the topic at hand? As long as the sites above are related to the topic (and most I've found that outrank mine in anything I'm targeting tend to be in some form or fashion), than the search engine has done its job.

3) Are there spammy results, and if so, have you reported them? No engine could possibly detect every blackhat technique or variant thereof. There are simply too many people out there with too many twisted ways to manipulate (sadly, some are here on this board) for SE minds to keep up. And if we don't say something, how can they reasonably be expected to check, automatically or manually, the 10 billion pages in their DBs to remove the spammers and the scammers?

It's also somewhat unfair to compare any SE to the Clusty engine, since it's a different kettle of fish entirely. If it had its own spider and internal database, then it's on the same level as other SEs. But it has the benefit of being able to indirectly take advantage of the spam filtration of multiple other engines, find out the top results on all of those engines, and group accordingly. It's really a different animal.

[damarzee]

Thanks for the input Adam. I agree that I may have too much information on the home page and i have recently begun to look at refining this page. The truth of the matter is that my website offers such a great variety of services and products and because of how many spiders work, I didn't want them to have to dig too deep, so i placed links and descriptions to many of our services on the home page.

Bottom line, i adapted the home page to please the spiders and make it easy for them to navigate the site, but now i am apparently confusing them...a virtual catch 22. Still, google increased my home page from a PR5 to a PR6 when jagger released, but then buried almost all references to the website. This makes no sense at all. On one end google is saying, check out this relevant page, but instead it is showing a page layout for speakers on a sony site that has no overall relevancy at all.

Actually, i did find out why Google ranks sony's page so highly for the term "room layout". They use that term in their file name...and although their site in general has absolutley nothing to do with room layouts, their listing is 600 pages above my website which is all about room layouts....which, by the way, my page that does come up at #1 has the term "room layouts", plural in its file name. This means that sony is in the #2 position for the term "Room layout" strictly because it used it in its file name and therefore, it is more relevant than an entire website dedicated to it. This isn't relevant search results, this is poor conclusions and bad concepts at work.


Back to the subject on hand...i recently added a site map which is linked from the home page and others and this puts most pages within two clicks of the home page, but this only answers the problem with how Google may be treating the home page. i have over 1000 internal pages, most are very specific and focused and google no longer lists them. i am concluding at this point that I must rename every page to more acurately mirror the page title...so what do you do with pages called "index"?...like my home page.

Personally, i stopped using Google searches, except to occasionally see where i am at. i now use msn overall. i also stopped paying for AdWords and now use overture more since i refuse to pay Google for purposely making it difficult for people to find the relevant information i provide.

Sour grapes? I have some and am working on that, but i am moving on. There is life after google.

[DrTandem1]

On other threads and topics I stated this basic observation before the "Jagger" upchuck was even recognized as occurring. I got no response when I mentioned something drastic was starting at Google. Then, when I mentioned the quality (poor) of the results compared to MSN and Yahoo I was rebuffed by several posts.

It's refreshing to now see many others expressing the same observations. The bottom line on all this is that Google is not providing obvious relevant content, even when digging deep into their SERPs. At the same time, MSN and Yahoo show them among the top of their SERPs.

Maybe I'm beating the proverbial dead horse, but Google's financial life (now the share holder) depends on its PPC offerings while MSN and Yahoo do not. In other words, MSN and Yahoo have very little to lose by providing relevant organic results while Google needs to drive clicks to their PPC and away from their organic SERPs.

As I mentioned on another topic, I myself am using Yahoo far more for my own searches. Google has become a waste of time.

[ADAM Web Design]

I don't know if I fully agree with that, DrTandem1. I find that it really depends on what you're looking for.

When it comes to a technical query (i.e. one where a webmaster wouldn't bother to SEO, since almost no one in their sane mind would look for it), Google is hands-down the best tool for finding relevant results.

Use the query "ASP Regular Expressions remove HTML". The first result for Google returned exactly what I wanted: a function that could remove the HTML from a string of text, and spit the resulting plain text back out to me.

MSN doesn't come up with what I was after until #7, and Yahoo! was #1 (indirect result) and #5 (direct result).

It's even more true among error codes. Try the ASP error code "80040e14", for example. The first result in Google (and the 2nd in Yahoo!) is an article that explains exactly what the different possibilities are and how to solve them. MSN? Well...they come up with a different result, which is also relevant, but a lot harder to read.

In other words, for tech purposes it's great.

Commercially? I gave up on Google years ago when every other search I did turned up a gay or gay-positive website. Nothing against gay people: I just don't want to know about your nudist clubs when I'm looking up a downtown Toronto bowling alley.

As stupid as it sounds, my commercial needs are so minimal that I tend not to bother much with any engine anymore. I know what I want, and I've also gotten to the point where I regionalize and use phrases that are so long that no manipulation can occur (e.g. Toronto 5-pin bowling alley, Markham computer store video cards). You drill down that fine, no one's gonna optimize for things like that.

[DrTandem1]

I don't know if I fully agree with that, DrTandem1. I find that it really depends on what you're looking for.

When it comes to a technical query (i.e. one where a webmaster wouldn't bother to SEO, since almost no one in their sane mind would look for it), Google is hands-down the best tool for finding relevant results.

Use the query "ASP Regular Expressions remove HTML". The first result for Google returned exactly what I wanted: a function that could remove the HTML from a string of text, and spit the resulting plain text back out to me.

MSN doesn't come up with what I was after until #7, and Yahoo! was #1 (indirect result) and #5 (direct result).

It's even more true among error codes. Try the ASP error code "80040e14", for example. The first result in Google (and the 2nd in Yahoo!) is an article that explains exactly what the different possibilities are and how to solve them. MSN? Well...they come up with a different result, which is also relevant, but a lot harder to read.

In other words, for tech purposes it's great.

Commercially? I gave up on Google years ago when every other search I did turned up a gay or gay-positive website. Nothing against gay people: I just don't want to know about your nudist clubs when I'm looking up a downtown Toronto bowling alley.

As stupid as it sounds, my commercial needs are so minimal that I tend not to bother much with any engine anymore. I know what I want, and I've also gotten to the point where I regionalize and use phrases that are so long that no manipulation can occur (e.g. Toronto 5-pin bowling alley, Markham computer store video cards). You drill down that fine, no one's gonna optimize for things like that.

Fair enough, but most here are concerned with making money via the internet and thus being found is extremely important. I guess I should have qualified my post by adding that I'm talking about relevant SERPs for e-commerce sites or at least sites that are trying to make money whether or not they have a shopping cart.

I assumed we were comparing commercial sites as those are the only ones likely to spend money on a PPC campaign. Google's organic results for relevant commercial sites in their "organic" SERPs pale in comparison to Yahoo and MSN.

That is a good point. If Google starts attracting info-only seekers, those searchers are unlikely to use the PPC links. On the flip-side, those looking for commercial offerings will be disappointed in the organic SERPs and as studies have shown, few click on the sponsored links. Google cuts their own throat no matter which avenue they take. They need to improve their organic SERPs to attract visitors and that cuts their financial throat. The poison pill scenario.

[xodigo]

Wow - lots of helpful comments - thank you!

By the way, just to pick up on something you mentioned Adam, I posted the article to around 20 sites on 25 Nov. (my first attempt ever). I think I did the initial search on Google 2 days later. I wasn't surprised that Google returned only two links and I don't recall now what made me even think to try Yahoo and MSN, but I sure was surprised that MSN came back with 50 links. So yes, MSN seems to pick up article sites very quickly.

And Janet, you mentioned last night (my time) that Google returned 0 results on the quoted title. This morning Google returned 5, so it's getting better. Still, MSN returns 155 and Yahoo 132 (I catch your point Adam about the relevancy issue).

Friends, I am NOT complaining about Google, but I began to notice some months back that I was having more and more problems using the basic Google search when doing research. Another thing I noticed (a few months ago?) was that Alexa and Google returned totally different results on another web-site I run. (I just checked again this morning - Google now returns the same results.)

Perhaps it was just a lapse for a while with Google. Again, I am intrigued with all that they do and their 91 odd services - so no complaints from my side. But the bottom line is still simply that when doing real research, I need real results.

Thanks again for all the input - very helpful. Ron

[damarzee]

I have found a recent article about MSN vs Google, with respect to being viable search tools. I'm posting a link here since this totally backs up what xodigo is saying.

http://www.search-engine-marketing-services.net/sem-articles/is-msn-search-better.asp

I don't believe Google is going away any time soon, but it appears that there are many who see them slowly cutting their throats by providing less relevent results in exchange for making it necessary for commercial sites to use their PPC.

[DrTandem1]

I have found a recent article about MSN vs Google, with respect to being viable search tools. I'm posting a link here since this totally backs up what xodigo is saying.

http://www.search-engine-marketing-services.net/sem-articles/is-msn-search-better.asp

I don't believe Google is going away any time soon, but it appears that there are many who see them slowly cutting their throats by providing less relevent results in exchange for making it necessary for commercial sites to use their PPC.

About six weeks ago, I wrote a related article:

http://www.drtandem.com/gamble.htm

[ADAM Web Design]

Actually, i did find out why Google ranks sony's page so highly for the term "room layout". They use that term in their file name...and although their site in general has absolutley nothing to do with room layouts, their listing is 600 pages above my website which is all about room layouts....which, by the way, my page that does come up at #1 has the term "room layouts", plural in its file name. This means that sony is in the #2 position for the term "Room layout" strictly because it used it in its file name and therefore, it is more relevant than an entire website dedicated to it. This isn't relevant search results, this is poor conclusions and bad concepts at work.

Well, since you thanked me for my input (you're welcome, by the way), I figure it might help if I gave you some more.

Truth be told, I can partly see it from Google's standpoint. Your site appears to be a site about interior design as a whole, not necessarily room layouts. You get into home and garden, home improvement, gardening, design and decor, and a bunch of other things and thus, room layouts tends to get buried.

In fact, if you run a keyword analyzer on your site, "room layout" shows up at 0.55% density. That's not all that high.

Mind you, that doesn't explain why "room layouts" ranks. I don't see that phrase anywhere, unless somewhere along the line you've gained some inbound links with "room layouts" as anchor text.

Again, though, you mentioned that you're looking at scaling back the info on your opening page. That will go a long way toward helping what you're doing.

Again, these are just surface-glance, late-night things. Give some people on this board more time, make it a thread unto itself so as not to interfere with our boy's here, and I think you'll find that there are factors well beyond Google's algo that are affecting you.

[kgun]

Googl junky wrote:

I used the first 4 words to find the article xodigo was talking about and realized children was supposed to be kids and without your

I think it was supposed to be (comes up with the number atleast) heh
“bird flu blues - helping kids cope with bad news”


although the text link at the site shows
Bird Flu Blues - helping children cope with fear

and the articles title on the page reads
Bird Flu Blues - helping kids cope with fear

How confusing.......
ok I admit I dont know what I was supposed to be looking for now

Look at his signature
http://www.horsesearchengine.com/. He should know what he is talking about. I also got little confused when trying different terms.

ADAM Web Design wrote:

The reason I took a phrase specifically from the article is because that phrase could only be found on the article itself.

When querying your article by title, you'll not only get the pages where your article is published, but the pages that link to where your article is published. So a lot of the results you were seeing on Yahoo! and MSN weren't all pages containing the article body.

The phrase could only be found on your site. Excellent observation Adam.

damarzee
Is this http://www.trafficwithoutgoogle.com/ your site? Google uses over 100 factors in their alogrithm. May be GoogleBot look at the links on your site. May aloso be that they have a factor that penalizes a little for high ranking on other SE's as they see their algorithms as "primitive" (today) http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm

If they use more than 100 variables, the result on the SERP's is a projection from a k (>100) dimensional room. Since there is so much meta tag spamming, text that is unigue on the site is most important.

Then how does that projection onto the SERP's take place? I do not (and will never) know, but we may speculate. GoogleBot may also look at related articles and give high rank to articles sites that have related subject.

Yesterday I noted that Google have indexed my page where I mention OOP http://multifinanceit.com/it/norway/norway.htm

I was searching on Simula related stuff since I am writing my own post here on OOP http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=57037

I did not even think about it, and I found what I was looking for on Simula.

damarzee

Google is still my working horse, since I see no reason to replace the SE at present, and since Mamma.com was first to accept my site, I use the Canadian SE http://www.mamma.com/ as an alternative, since none are talking about it.

Maybe Adam should look for a job at Mamma? I think he has a very relevant point. Unique content on the site must have a high weight.

Remember my one SEO rule:
Write quatlity content with simple clean code and good headings (anchor text).

The code of some sites may not be good (confusing to the bot). Remember to use the right KW's in the alt tag when using pictures on your site.

[pemburung]

I don't know if I fully agree with that, DrTandem1. I find that it really depends on what you're looking for.

When it comes to a technical query (i.e. one where a webmaster wouldn't bother to SEO, since almost no one in their sane mind would look for it), Google is hands-down the best tool for finding relevant results.



Adam, intersting observation. Last night as I prepared my post above I did a little test, on "fly eye morphology" on Google, clusty and Yahoo. Google won hands-down on relevant articles, and for a couple of other technical type searches. But as pointed out above, and earlier by me, when more general search terms are used, Google seems less able to interpret just what the searcher is looking for, whereas, it seems, the others can. Or at least that's what the results indicate. I wonder if the G algo recognizes certain terms as technical, and flips over to incorporate its academic search algo, and so gets very relevant results, but when more usual and natural English is used, either it is simply not as good (I personally believe its link emphasis is causing it to go astray), or as DrTandem1 and others have said, it needs to separate PPC from organic. I remember thinking over a year ago "why would a company pay for PPC when they appear first page organically anyway?"

[mishj]

I would warn all on here that the main thing Google does better than Yahoo! is PR! Like all of you on here, I have seen for myself that Google's search results are often not as good (exception: Technical searches are often better - IT Related) and that Google updates (not just Jagger - remember Florida!! Disaster for all SEOs!!) can be scarey, completely upsetting all the people who have spent a lot of time and money getting their sites up to the top of the results, with little or no advanced warning of the huge impact of the "update". Yahoo! updates have far less impact, and Yahoo! typically filters out a lot of the irrelevant sites that are purely designed to get PPCs.

The difference is that Google employs people to praise Google - in the Media especially (Fox News uses Google Maps, various journalists have reportedly been paid vast sums to say that they "googled" for information, Google puts out lots of misinformation in press releases), in movies too (Google infamously is mentioned/shown in many movies),but also on forums like this - which is why some of the members on here get "flamed" whenever they criticize Google - because other members are being paid to do the flaming..

Just be aware of that..

Also.. It really upsets me that Yahoo! has a product for years, Google comes along and copies it exactly, puts out a press release announcing this "new" product and their share price goes sky high.. They did this famously for the Toolbar, but also Instant Messager, GMail (granted, their product was a bit different, but I deal with this in another post), Desktop Search, the Sidebar, etc.

[kgun]

I would warn all on here that the main thing Google does better than Yahoo! is PR! Like all of you on here, I have seen for myself that Google's search results are often not as good (exception: Technical searches are often better - IT Related) and that Google updates (not just Jagger - remember Florida!! Disaster for all SEOs!!) can be scarey, completely upsetting all the people who have spent a lot of time and money getting their sites up to the top of the results, with little or no advanced warning of the huge impact of the "update". Yahoo! updates have far less impact, and Yahoo! typically filters out a lot of the irrelevant sites that are purely designed to get PPCs.

You have misunderstood what a free SE is. Free SERP's shall give relevant hits. What about the good articles on SERP 10 000 that knew nothing about SEO? May be she / he used much more time and money to write a quality article.

And I can tell you that I have found very good sites on it solutions in finance on very deep SERP's.

Please give me a SE that gives the best content independent of place of production and SEO technical abilities.

[pemburung]

Kgun, isn't that what we were saying? And what G isn't doing. And remember, it's not only obviously commercial sites that are affected by G's updates, so are non-commercial ones. If you publish a site, you are publishing, and want, I would think, for people to read it. So you follow G's general guidelines - no different to following the guidelines to authors that other publishing media have for potential authors - and after either the aging delay or sandbox (depending on your dictionary or the side of the bed you got out of or if there's an R in the month or....) there you are. Then, one day, there you aren't, for no reason that you can understand, or the experts can understand, and the publisher won't tell. Sounds like a pretty crappy system to me.

[mishj]

Actually, I think perhaps I didnt express myself very clearly, and hence you misunderstood my message - on Google, you HAVE to pay to get to the top of the search engine results, and thus, if you have paid, it is very annoying to then be pushed off of the top by an "update". On Yahoo!, which, I agree, operates as a search engine SHOULD, i.e. relevance of content is more important in getting to the top than how much has been paid(!!), the results are far more consistent, and therefore there are also less upsets to customers due to updates..


I would warn all on here that the main thing Google does better than Yahoo! is PR! Like all of you on here, I have seen for myself that Google's search results are often not as good (exception: Technical searches are often better - IT Related) and that Google updates (not just Jagger - remember Florida!! Disaster for all SEOs!!) can be scarey, completely upsetting all the people who have spent a lot of time and money getting their sites up to the top of the results, with little or no advanced warning of the huge impact of the "update". Yahoo! updates have far less impact, and Yahoo! typically filters out a lot of the irrelevant sites that are purely designed to get PPCs.

You have misunderstood what a free SE is. Free SERP's shall give relevant hits. What about the good articles on SERP 10 000 that knew nothing about SEO? May be she / he used much more time and money to write a quality article.

And I can tell you that I have found very good sites on it solutions in finance on very deep SERP's.

[kgun]

Can somebody else take the time to explain in an easier language :-)

[pemburung]

Kgun, I think what mishj is saying is that Google is either more suceptible to manipulation through SEO, both on and off page, per se, or because it's the leader has been more subject to SEO. Most likely it's a combination, and this may be analagous to IE, which is the leader in virus susceptiblity due to both its code and its leadership position. So, to get to the top of a G SERP with a non-technical page, you have to have done a fair bit of SEO, which always means time, and usually money. This would be on top of the actual time spent on content itself. With Yahoo and MSN, for the reverse of the above reasons, you can get to the top of the SERP through content alone. So, "you HAVE to pay to get to the top..." of Google.

[dburdon]

Maybe they should be renamed "susceptible engines".

In essence all engines are equally susceptible to manipulation. Google got ahead of the pre-existing ones by focussing on "off page" factors and therefore avoiding the on page spam and keyword stuffing.

Once Google became the most popular engine, SEOs focussed there efforts on craking the "off page" factors such as purchased, automatic and reciprocal links.

Google's latest attempt the thwart the manipulation - the Jagger updates - has in the opinion of some, "thrown the baby out with the bath water".

Dr Tandem and other regulars contend, that as a consequence of Jagger, Yahoo now provides more relevant results. I would certainly agree that that is the case in many B2B categories.

[ADAM Web Design]

The difference is that Google employs people to praise Google - in the Media especially (Fox News uses Google Maps, various journalists have reportedly been paid vast sums to say that they "googled" for information, Google puts out lots of misinformation in press releases), in movies too (Google infamously is mentioned/shown in many movies),but also on forums like this - which is why some of the members on here get "flamed" whenever they criticize Google - because other members are being paid to do the flaming..

I'm not a Google defender. In fact, I'm not even a Google fan for anything other than my aforementioned tech searches.

But come on. Do you really believe that?

Yes, Google has taken product ideas from other companies. Yes, they do a much better job of PR. But paying journalists to say they Googled info? That's just excessive and paranoid.

The reason some people criticize others for criticizing Google is because, in numerous cases, it has been shown that the people who criticize Google are doing so because their sites aren't the ones coming up on the top. And of those critics, quite often their own sites have flaws (some minor, some serious) that prevent high ranking.

There's nothing more annoying to me on WPW than when I see Bob talking about how great his site is and how it should be #1 in widgets, and then I go to the site and see some Front Page monstrosity with bloated code, inconsistent navigation, varied fonts, and lack of mention of the word "widgets" anywhere in the copy.

[kgun]

Yes, Google has taken product ideas from other companies. Yes, they do a much better job of PR.

<blocked for MsnBot>
Like Microsoft did with Windows from mac, IBM OS/2 and Lotus spread sheet.

IBM, please give me an updated version of OS/2 presentation Manager where I can run my Simula compilator and teach people OOP.
</blocked for MsnBot>

Like David said in another thread, dogs eat dogs in UK.

I am penalized if I click on a single of my AdSense Ad's. Think I did it once by accident.

[dburdon]

Google has done a great job of branding. For company that's so young it its built a great reputation in a very short time. That reputation was built on the integrity of its product. And the fact it was free and accesible.

Unfortunately the shine is going off the integrity as Google tries to monetise its franchise. The free bit of Google has to be paid for by other activities like adwords. Google was never as holy as it was perceived. And neither is it as black as its now painted by some forum posters. Like every other large corporation its driven by its earnings per share and the demands of the financial analysts.

As Adam states above, to knock Google on the basis of a narrow self directed failing - e.g. my site's lost rankings - is pretty childish. Let's be objective.

[roam_dx]

I personally believe its link emphasis is causing it to go astray

I agree on that one, and it is easy to see why

Academics are trained to give credit where its due and document sources, it's part of the process of when creating a document ---- they have no reason not to do it, in fact if they don't and claim a work to be their own creation without giving credit and it's later found out (and most likely will be) --- its risking your reputation.

Businesses on the other hand including Google will blatantly steal without giving anyone any credit, and there really is no process or ethics here as long as you can "get away with it".

The relevance created by links is great in theory, but for commercial search is an illusion, absolutely artificial IMO.

How is link mongering harder to do than keyword stuffing, hidden text or any other form of spamming.

Google has run out of ideas to better their core search engine, that's the only reason any SE would sandbox, and scream --- stop spamming me, and post other peoples websites as examples on their blog for public mockery and debate without taking a step back and looking at their own very suspicous and secret business practices.

Also, from all I have read in the forums, the good thing going for MSN is that it is easy to rank, as everyone agrees. And although I have encountered a a spam issue, I've never seen anyone come screaming to a forum saying HELP! I've been beaten out by a bunch of spammers.

That's how Google used to be.

You have all the right in the world to fight spam, but don't use my business and earnings to fund your war!

[kgun]

the beta version of the mamma deep web health SE (http://www.mammahealth.com/):Searching: eMedicine Health, Health AtoZ, MayoClinic.com, Medem, MedicineNet.com, MedlinePlus, NHSDirect Online, and WebMD.

But that may be due to the differnce between a special and a general SE.

Can anybody find it there?

The ordinary mamma SE uses a simplified version of the Condorcet Method (http://www.mamma.com/info/about.html).