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Google algorithm change launched

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google algorithm change launched

#111

Post by NyxWulf »

daleharvey wrote: post #98
optimusclimb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully - Sites like yours ruin the internet. You admit it yourself: you produce no content of your own. I do NOT want to see results from pages of that ilk when I google for things. Google made the right choice to de-index it.

Google (in the context of search) produce no content of their own, are they ruining the internet?

It depends what you think the goal is. I expect Google's goal with searching is to get you to the source data. What is the point in going to an aggregator for a query? Isn't that what google is in a nutshell? I'm not advancing a position, just genuinely posing the question. What role should aggregated results play in a search query if any at all?

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#113

Post by endergen »

Matt would you comment on the thought process of Google on curation. There are sites that are generally strongly disliked.

Examples: Demand Media in general. Or say w3schoolS.com for JavaScript/CSS/HTML.

I can understand that there would likely be a deluge of legal action against Google if this was done in a heavy handed way.

Or is it a principled thing where everyone should be treated equal? If so isn't that a lot of algorithm ideology. In practice hard rules without human judgment leads to ridiculous edge cases or bypassing the intent of the rules.

I always assumed you curated in a way via having teams that specialized in creating topic specific search techniques which then all get combined together via topic detection or some other meta algorithm. This would be a good balance between manual curation and having it be a scalable approach.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#114

Post by cloudbrain »

tlrobinson wrote: post #101
optimusclimb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully - Sites like yours ruin the internet. You admit it yourself: you produce no content of your own. I do NOT want to see results from pages of that ilk when I google for things. Google made the right choice to de-index it.

I'm curious, what is your opinion of TechMeme?

Techmeme, like Google, is a great and valuable resource.

However, the debate is whether or not these aggregators sites should show up in search results instead of the original source.

I use Techmeme all day long, but don't expect it to ever show up in a search result when I am looking for a specific topic. I want to the original site. I can always go to Techmeme directly to get the "value-added" context on my own.

Aggregator sites are great destinations. They shouldn't be in search results (at least, not above the original sites).

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#115

Post by daleharvey »

NyxWulf wrote: post #111
daleharvey wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google (in the context of search) produce no content of their own, are they ruining the internet?

It depends what you think the goal is. I expect Google's goal with searching is to get you to the source data. What is the point in going to an aggregator for a query? Isn't that what google is in a nutshell? I'm not advancing a position, just genuinely posing the question. What role should aggregated results play in a search query if any at all?

I have often found myself landing on an aggregator for a particularly query that has been a helpful resource for related problems.

Of course original content has priority, the original poster explicitly agreed with that and there are some site who do produce no value at all, but saying every site who purely uses other sites content are all ruining the internet is obviously very wrong, considering this is google we are talking about.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#117

Post by LiveTheDream »

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?

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#118

Post by RealGeek »

xenophanes wrote: post #62
RealGeek wrote: post #18

Will this change effect sites like filestube.com and freshwap.net? FilesTube ranks for majority of the long tail keywords, even those not related to downloads/torrents/rapidshare. I see filestube's auto-generated search listing pages ranking on Google all the time. Pages like: http://www.filestube.com/m/matt+cutts http://www.filestube.com/g/google+scraper Same goes for freshwap: http://www.freshwap.net/387/dl/Google+…

There's some really annoying torrent sites like this. I mean, sites that pretend they have search results for whatever torrent you're searching for. Those show up on a google a lot and they're useless.

It is acceptable to rank these websites for keywords related to torrents and downloads. But, those auto-generated pages has been ranking even for keywords not related to torrents/downloads.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#119

Post by modeless »

daleharvey wrote: post #98
optimusclimb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully - Sites like yours ruin the internet. You admit it yourself: you produce no content of your own. I do NOT want to see results from pages of that ilk when I google for things. Google made the right choice to de-index it.

Google (in the context of search) produce no content of their own, are they ruining the internet?

No, because Google search doesn't intentionally pollute other sites with aggregated content. I don't see Google search pages in Bing's results, outranking original content. I only see Google results if I go to google.com and specifically request them. That's the difference.

Re: Google algorithm change launched

#120

Post by mythobit »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #36
miah_ wrote: post #31

This is awesome! Now if only I could completely remove certain sites from my search results ala the Google Wiki stuff. I'd love to drop swik, and expertsexchange and a few other annoying sites. Its possible this algorithm change will make these sites less annoying to me though.

Second that. WTB ability to customize my search results by blacklisting certain sites. Big change I know, but would be a hugely useful service Google could provide.

I created a site that uses Google CSE to do just this. The link is: http://blacklist-search.appspot.com/
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