Google search and search engine spam • Hacker News Board

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#221

Post by Matt_Cutts » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 4:30 AM UTC

paul9290 wrote: post #191

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to know where the Walmart is and what searches you tried.

Jan. 15th I was curious if the walmart was going to be a supercenter so I searched, "fallston md walmart," & "will fallston md walmart be a supercenter." As you can see either result does not show the most relevant and recent info about my query, rather it's littered by prominent job sites. Though on a search for "will fallston md walmart be a supercenter," i see the six result to be http://www.belairnewsandviews.com…

This is interesting. Part of the problem is answering questions when there's not much content on the web. I think a lot of the job sites showed up because Walmart is hiring for that location in preparation for opening.

I'm just now testing this query, but when I did [fallston md walmart], there is a really comprehensive article at http://www.exploreharford.com/news/3074/work-start-fallston-... that shows up at #5. That article mentions that "The new road will lead into a 147,465-square-foot Walmart, which has been planned with a possible 57,628-square-foot expansion" Then I did the search [walmart supercenter size square feet]. The #1 and #2 results are both pretty good, e.g. the page at http://walmartstores.com/aboutus/7606.aspx says that an average store is 108K square feet, and supercenters average 185K square feet.

As a human, I can deduce that 147K square feet (with 57K square feet of potential expansion) implies that it will probably be a supercenter, but it's practically impossible for a search engine to figure out this sort of multi-step computation right now. My guess is that in a couple months when the store opens up, this information will be more findable on the web--for example, somewhere on Walmart's web site. But for now, this is a really hard search because there's just not much info on the web.

I appreciate you sharing this search. I think it's a pretty fair illustration of how peoples' expectations of Google have grown exponentially over the years. :)

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#222

Post by jmount » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 6:37 PM UTC

drm237 wrote: post #150

jmount wrote: post #69

Google AdSense for Domains ( http://www.google.com/domainpark/ ) really makes a lie of not wanting useless content. The designed a revenue source for parkers/squatters.

How often have you searched Google and been sent to one of those pages? They don't want useless content in their serps. If someone goes directly to the domain, that's in no way related to search quality.

It is very related. Google made span sites and splogs profitable (through their various add networks). Therefore they are the major funder of spam sites- even if they themselves do not promote them.

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#223

Post by Benvie » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

For the love of god just give us the tools for effective persona blacklists. With Google's constant changes to the search site and the difficulty in efficiently and effectively monitoring live search results via browser extensions, it's been at best hit or miss. Whether that comes in the form of some API that can be tapped to make a good extension or having it built into the browser, I don't care.

Google of all companies I would have thought would understand and respect the important of giving people the power over their own technology experiences.