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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'

#61

Post by apetresc »

AznHisoka wrote: post #40
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'…

Yes, it's VERY disturbing, no question about it. Matt can sound all helpful, and cuddly, and oxytocin-inducing all he wants, but he's basically stepping in and helping 1 site over another, when the whole process should NOT favor anyone. There are lots of webmasters out there that do stupid stuff like override a robots.txt accidentally, yet I don't see Matt sending them an email, asking them to check up on it.. Come'n…

Are you kidding? Matt is basically a superhero who helps anyone he can find. He's solved problems for people complaining on Twitter, on Google+, he hosts regular video office hours when anyone can come to him with problems, etc. It may be the first time YOU'VE seen him rush in to help someone, but this is Matt Cutts' standard MO.

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

#62

Post by test5625 »

Don't link to Google search results!

It's personalized - everyone sees different results. Even if you don't have a Google account.

For me http://news.ycombinator.com is the top page. But when I use TOR, http://www.hackernews.com and http://thehackernews.com/ are on top.

I don't think it's possible to get a real "invariant" result page. It all depends on which computer you use (cookies, language setting, ip address).

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

#63

Post by blhack »

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'…

>Does anyone else find it disturbing that google employees are bending over for pg/hn?

Umm...no. They're not tweaking the algo, they're explaining to PG that he should stop blocking the crawlers, or that he should verify the site in google webmaster tools, then change the crawl rate.

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

#64

Post by billpatrianakos »

blhack wrote: post #47
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.

Seeing threads like this remind me that HN is still a pretty tight-knit community of real people doing real things. It's good to see this stuff sometimes. Thanks, Matt! edit: And then reading some of the other threads on this topic is a bit...something. Guys, can you calm the conspiracy theory nonsense a bit? Please? If you're not on this site very much, you might not realize that Matt pops into almost every thread w…

It really is but I was personally kind of glad not to see HN have that high of a ranking on Google for the term.

I remember when I first started visiting HN I saw all these smart people and the tight community and I was amazed that something that felt so close-knit and exclusive yet was still open could still exist these days.

I was a lurker for a long time before I actually signed up and participated because I honestly felt like I swasnt entitled to be part of "the group" and I should somehow earn my wings. Then in late 2010 I signed up but didn't submit for a bit and didn't join discussions. I still felt like I didn't have enough to offer. I now feel like I've somehow earned the right to be part of this community though in hindsight I'm quite embarrassed of my first few submissions.

So this story does have a point that I'm about to get to. I first heard of HN through an article in GQ and then forgot the link. I couldn't find the site again after searching Google for "Hacker News" as easily as I thought. This frustrated me slightly back then but now I think it's a good thing.

As the size of a community gets larger the quality of comments and submissions usually decreases. Letting people join HN freely and openly is a great thing but I fear that if it became a huge sensation then we'd be inundated by garbage submissions and comments way more frequently. I know about the post on how newbies often say HN is becoming Reddit and all that so I do try to remember that.

So the point is that not everyone respects communities like this and are thoughtful about joining and how they choose to interact on communities like HN the same way I was and I feel like maybe it's okay if Google isn't giving us the best ranking for certain terms. I mean, HN is easy to find still, just not that easy to stumble over.

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

#65

Post by [deleted] »

metaprinter wrote: post #57
wgx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by seabee »

ashishgandhi wrote: post #23
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.

Does that mean at Google you can manually set the system to treat different sites differently? I don't mean the ranking but other aspects - like you guys blacklisted some domains which produce low quality content in wholesale. (I don't know if the algorithm was tweaked to detect and filter such sources or if it was a manual thing.)

Does that mean at Google you can manually set the system to treat different sites differently?

Webmaster Tools has a crawl rate slider which operate on a site-by-site basis, and that's existed for quite a while now.

If you're asking if they can manually boost a site's ranking, hopefully that isn't what's being suggested.

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

#67

Post by petercooper »

metaprinter wrote: post #57
wgx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why I don't understand the anti-promotion crowd who think promoting oneself and building an audience is a bad thing. Having the implicit threat of an audience you can address is a major lever to getting decent service nowadays.

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

#68

Post by xd »

njloof wrote: post #56
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.

~30k employees at google .. what makes you think they hold all the keys to the millions of web developers across the globe?

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

#70

Post by Tichy »

AznHisoka wrote: post #40
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'…

Yes, it's VERY disturbing, no question about it. Matt can sound all helpful, and cuddly, and oxytocin-inducing all he wants, but he's basically stepping in and helping 1 site over another, when the whole process should NOT favor anyone. There are lots of webmasters out there that do stupid stuff like override a robots.txt accidentally, yet I don't see Matt sending them an email, asking them to check up on it.. Come'n…

Google should simply deliver the best results, no matter what algorithm they use to do so.
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