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Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

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Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#51

Post by ludwigvan »

A few months ago, I was talking about the Stanford ai/ml-classes to one of my friends. He asked me if there were any more classes and I said "Yes, take a look at the front page in Hacker News, there are some links. I visit that site frequently, it's very helpful."

There was one little issue though.

The poor guy didn't know what hackernews was, so found that site (hackernews.com). He then scanned the Twitter stream over that site several times to find those links and started visiting the site for several days to find those other helpful links.

When I saw him again a few days later, he told me: "What a silly site HackerNews is! And I couldn't find the links to those classes over there."

He also told me that he was disappointed of me for visiting such a silly site.

Now, can you guess the look on his face when I told him that he was visiting the wrong site for the last few days?

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#52

Post by ig1 »

hahla wrote: post #29

Does anyone else find it disturbing that google employees are bending over for pg/hn? Seriously, if any other webmaster blocked googles bots they wouldn't change their algorithms to accommodate, or see how they could use less of our resources. Its pg's fault not googles, and I dont see why they should care. Maybe from their standpoint it would be more beneficial to google users who are used to typing in 'hacker news'…

If you use Google Webmaster Tools it will in-fact tell you all of this information without having to ask someone at Google.

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#53

Post by GigabyteCoin »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #9

I think I know what the problem is; we're detecting HN as a dead page. It's unclear whether this happened on the HN side or on Google's side, but I'm pinging the right people to ask whether we can get this fixed pretty quickly. Added: Looks like HN has been blocking Googlebot, so our automated systems started to think that HN was dead. I dropped an email to PG to ask what he'd like us to do.

Apparently the page in the top spot now hasn't been updated since: 2011.07.08

It now only consists of ads, a twitter feed, and a "Abba-da-dabba-da-dabba-dabba Dat’s all folks!" line.

So what if Googlebot thought HN was dead? Why would it opt to show a "more dead" page in place of it?

I think you're fibbing.

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#54

Post by MarkMc »

hahla wrote: post #29

Does anyone else find it disturbing that google employees are bending over for pg/hn? Seriously, if any other webmaster blocked googles bots they wouldn't change their algorithms to accommodate, or see how they could use less of our resources. Its pg's fault not googles, and I dont see why they should care. Maybe from their standpoint it would be more beneficial to google users who are used to typing in 'hacker news'…

Interesting, but not disturbing. I think it's just a consequence of people at Google initially reading HN for the stories, then finding that the HN community forms a useful 'brains trust'. I for one am glad to see that HN has a hotline to the Kremlin ;)

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#55

Post by pbhjpbhj »

w1ntermute wrote: post #22

Out of curiosity, how did the OP even find out that this was going on? He appears to be a long-time user of the site, and therefore would have no reason to Google "Hacker News". The most common other reason would be that some people use Google as their URL bar - instead of typing "hackerne.ws" or "news.ycombinator.com" into the URL bar, they type "Hacker News" into Google and click on the first result. However, I wou…

Sometimes I want to find HN but am using a different device, sometimes that device is also a touchscreen and typing is a pain. Usually Google is very close to hand and the autocomplete saves typing out a full address or full set of keywords.

So I'd only need to type "hacke" in google and click "I'm feeling lucky" in the drop down rather than type "http://news.ycombinator.com/ into an address bar.

Didn't know about the hackerne.ws domain name however.

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#56

Post by njloof »

hahla wrote: post #29

Does anyone else find it disturbing that google employees are bending over for pg/hn? Seriously, if any other webmaster blocked googles bots they wouldn't change their algorithms to accommodate, or see how they could use less of our resources. Its pg's fault not googles, and I dont see why they should care. Maybe from their standpoint it would be more beneficial to google users who are used to typing in 'hacker news'…

If you don't know somebody that works for Google at this point in your career, you're working in the wrong industry.

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#57

Post by metaprinter »

wgx wrote: post #45
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotcha--thanks, Paul. I'm about to get on a plane, but we'll get this figured out where we're not sending as much hostload toward HN.

If only we could all get our Google woes fixed in such a manner.

seriously. i can't get a hospital to show up in google maps... no human for me to talk to. HN is number 4 instead of 1 google page one, they're right on it.

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#58

Post by felipe »

unreal37 wrote: post #33
hahla wrote: post #29

Does anyone else find it disturbing that google employees are bending over for pg/hn? Seriously, if any other webmaster blocked googles bots they wouldn't change their algorithms to accommodate, or see how they could use less of our resources. Its pg's fault not googles, and I dont see why they should care. Maybe from their standpoint it would be more beneficial to google users who are used to typing in 'hacker news'…

It's not disturbing at all. I am glad Google is a company made up of humans and not uncaring robots. Human nature is that people want to help others when they are in a position to do so. I would do the same if HN needed my help. Of course, there are people who want to take advantage of people like Matt to give themselves an economic advantage, and I have no sympathy for those people if they can't get someone in Googl…

> I am glad Google is a company made up of humans and not uncaring robots

That's exactly the problem. Google is notorious for providing horrible customer support, so why some people get personalized help, while the rest of us are stuck with the uncaring robots?

Re: Suddenly, Hacker News is not the first result for 'Hacker News'

#60

Post by umarmung »

hahla wrote: post #29

Does anyone else find it disturbing that google employees are bending over for pg/hn? Seriously, if any other webmaster blocked googles bots they wouldn't change their algorithms to accommodate, or see how they could use less of our resources. Its pg's fault not googles, and I dont see why they should care. Maybe from their standpoint it would be more beneficial to google users who are used to typing in 'hacker news'…

Damned if you and damned if you dont.

All the people in this thread, including Google-related users, are trying to do is figure out what changed. That could just as easily have been at Google or HN's! It could also just as easily been a correct change.

If it turns out it was something HN changed and they did not use or even aware of the proper Google tools available for everyone to optimize their site, then I hardly think any reasonable person could object if it is pointed out to them - even if it's by Google personnel.

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