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Google algorithm change launched

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Re: Google algorithm change launched

#131

Post by Matt_Cutts »

jjcm wrote: post #102
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I actually posted over here at HN a little bit before I did a post on my personal blog.

I'd like to mention that this is really an impressive way of working with the community Matt. Companies say all the time that they value their customer's opinions, but rarely do you see a grievance that's posted on a social news site being a.) initially responded to by the guy who's responsible for it, and b.) amended by that person and his team with a request for review. It's heightened my faith that maybe Google ca…

HN has been a really high signal/noise site in discussing these issues, so it only seemed fair to give folks a heads-up here and see what other issues people were seeing. But thank you. :)

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#132

Post by moultano »

Alex3917 wrote: post #66

Not exactly a scraper site, but if you do a search for "learn to hack" the top result is just a list of SEO keywords: http://www.learn-to-hack.com/ Several of the other results are rather dubious as well. The reason I bring it up is because the Squidoo lens that comes up is something I made, and while certainly not perfect it's still a much better than many of the SEO spam sites and fake eBooks that rank above it. (A…

>Anyway sorry if it's a faux pas to complain about my own stuff, but I feel like it's a legitimate problem with the way Google works.

Definitely not a faux pas. Thanks for the example. My biggest annoyance in threads like these is people who write essays about their site losing traffic but then aren't willing to provide an url for people to check out.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#133

Post by Matt_Cutts »

dcdan wrote: post #81

At what point does Google cross over from "ranked by algorithm" to "ranked by algorithm selection as editorialized by Googlers and bloggers?" Publicly discussing algorithms changes like this seems like a potential PR problem.

The whole history of Google is trying to find algorithms that encode our philosophy and mental model of what we think users want. We've been discussing algorithmic changes with people online since 2001, when GoogleGuy would show up on webmasterworld.com to dispel misconceptions.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#135

Post by seles »

LiveTheDream wrote: post #117
seles wrote: post #100

This is good news, but I feel like it is only treating a symptom not the actual disease. If the algorithm properly detected site relevance, importance and viewer satisfaction, those copycat sites should never have ranked higher in the first place. In a way this is admitting that it is impossible to stop the gaming of search engine optimization, and that the only way to deal with it is to "win" in some special cases.…

How would an algorithm detect viewer satisfaction?

How long user stays on page (hint would be how soon they make next search/click), whether or not they continue looking for something under a similar search query, having actual buttons users can click to rate, etc.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#136

Post by tmsh »

One caveat, though I imagine this has been thought of before, is that mobile versions of sites often have the same content as full-browser versions of sites.

So ideally, perhaps m.google.com would be able to sort through this and not penalize the duplicated-nature of the mobile version.... Anyway, something to think about if you haven't already.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#137

Post by jswinghammer »

Ok here is the search that first brought this issue to my attention:

mysql spatial index example lft rgt

I see the following order:

1: http://planet.mysql.com/entry/?id=23512

2: http://efreedom.com/Question/1-1743894/Mysql-Optimizing-Find...

3: http://explainextended.com/2009/09/29/adjacency-list-vs-nest...

4: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1743894/mysql-optimizing-...

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#138

Post by chaosmachine »

seanalltogether wrote: post #53
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like we've got SO above efreedom for that query, but it's always nice to find a url that we didn't have that we'd like to be indexed. That lets us check whether we can improve our crawling/indexing. Thanks for the example!

Yes SO is above efreedom in this instance, but the SO results are actually worse then the efreedom result based on the query.

This is a situation I've seen many times in the past. Often the right site is on top, but it's showing the wrong result, meanwhile the scraper site surfaces the correct one.

It seems like just showing a few more results from the "real" site would solve the problem.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#139

Post by nikothefinn »

radley wrote: post #125
nikothefinn wrote: post #84

Since Matt is responding here, I figured this is worth a shot, no harm in asking. Matt, would love a response from you if you get a chance, since the Webmaster Tools appeals process gives no insight whatsoever to our situation. Following on from one of the comments here, namely the idea that "value is in the eye of the beholder", I'd like to raise our own plight. I run a number of aggregator sites - the largest and o…

As an aggregation site, your SEO shouldn't expect to outrank the content you're sourcing - that's unethical. At best, your SEO should focus on the service you provide. Looking at your site, it's easy to see why Google bumped you down: http://technifi.com/ http://technifi.com/news/Egypt-Leaves-the-Internet-3841691.h... It looks like your service is nothing like Techmeme, adding ad-related pages prior to accessing sign…

Let me address these points one by one:

1. We don't expect our SEO to outrank the original source, I was very clear about that in my original post. SEO is a tool to be used among many other tools to ensure that content is properly "classified", nothing more than that. When a search engine visits, you want that search engine to immediately know what any given page is about, and we do that very well.

2. The Vodafone image concern I don't understand - we identified Vodafone as one of the main entities in the story (Vodafone shut off service to Egypt), and that is why the image is showing up there. If you visit the Renesys blog (the original source) you will see that Vodafone is mentioned there. The Vodafone image is not an ad, it is there to identify what the story is mainly about - context.

3. Regarding adding insight, opinion or value - we believe that the role of algorithmic news aggregation is not to have an opinion, but instead to uncover news that you may not otherwise have been aware of, give you context in the form of links to the main entities in that story, or other stories on the same topic. We believe we do that very accurately, and are always working on making it better and smarter.

4. Regarding the comparison to Techmeme - everyone has their favorite aggregator, and I am a big fan of Techmeme as well. I would, however, point out that Techmeme also displays ads in order to make a living, and they also have "content pages" that you can find through Google search. Indeed, virtually all aggregators run ads against the aggregated content they display on their sites, and all aggregators have "content pages" above and beyond a homepage.

The issue I am trying to uncover is not whether you like our sites or not, but rather what exactly we have done wrong, when compared with other aggregators, that caused us to not just have our pages bumped down in ranking, but to be totally de-indexed and have our PageRank stripped away (from a respectable 5 on Celebrifi). That, and to understand better what the future of content or news aggregation might be - should we expect all aggregators to become de-indexed? Are there guidelines that should be followed, or changes that should be made, to not fall afoul of Google? Are all aggregators on a level playing field, or will the lesser-known ones be shut off while the chosen few with established brand names survive?

These are valid concerns, not just for us but for many others in this space, and we are more than prepared to put in whatever changes might be needed to get back into Google's good books.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#140

Post by WillyF »

tivaceous wrote: post #56
WillyF wrote: post #37

Matt, this is great news. How about sites that rank well with no content, just navigation? Here's an example: http://www.collegegrad.com/entryleveljob/entrylevelaccountin... It's generally a high quality site, but that page has absolutely no relevance to the query except for a title tag and some internal anchor text. The search terms aren't even on the page. If I remember correctly, it used to rank #1 for "accounting…

I notice that you run a competing site to collegegrad.com - namely onedayonejob.com. Obviously you are likely to have paid attention to some of the things your competitor has been doing. But are you sure you're not just using this as an opportunity to stick it to them? If so, that would strike me as a distasteful use of this forum, especially since Matt has been very gracious to give this opportunity to the HN commun…

I completely understand why you'd question my motives. I thought really hard about whether I should post this example or not. I tried to find an alternative example that would demonstrate the same problem, but this is the only one that I could come up with. I'm sure if I spent significantly more time looking I could have found something similar, but this example is very apparent to me because it's in SERPs that I watch closely.

I'm not trying to "out" this site. I don't think they've done anything wrong or manipulative—they just have some pages with no content that are ranking well. I think that this type of issue should be on Matt's radar. Most of the site is of extremely high quality, and it deserves the high rankings that it gets.

It's a page that is solely navigational structure, yet it ranks very well for a very specific keyword because of title tags and anchor text. We've already seen that Google has a problem (that they're working towards fixing) with low content from low and medium quality sites. What are they doing about low quality content (or non-content) from high quality sites?

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