[huridocs-tech] Google degraded?

Wired News
google Headline
By Paul Boutin[8]
3:19 p.m. Oct. 4, 2002 PDT

The inevitable backlash finally appears to have hit the world's most
popular search engine.

In recent years, Web addicts have praised Google as everything from
ultimate card catalog to panopticon[9] of the Internet.

But critics posting to weblogs and search engine discussion sites
claim that, for the first time since its launch in 1998, Google
results have been degraded rather than improved by the latest tweak
to its proprietary scoring algorithm for Web pages, known as
PageRank.

"Google's search results in general appear to be significantly
degraded in many key areas," Web developer Mark Pilgrim wrote in a
weblog entry that shot to No. 2 on Daypop[10]'s Top 40 list Friday.

Pilgrim added, "The forums are full of people complaining that spam
sites, doorway pages and obvious cloaking attempts, which Google used
to be so good at filtering out, are now popping up in top spots with
disturbing frequency."

Indeed, posters at Webmaster World[11] went so far as to proclaim
"PageRank is DEAD."

But search engine discussion boards tend to be populated by
webmasters and consultants trying to outfox PageRank in hopes of
getting to the top of Google results.

The practice, known as search engine optimization or SEO, can
increase a site's traffic -96 and hence its moneymaking potential --
several times over. In that light, complaints about PageRank often
come from hucksters thwarted by Google's latest refinements.

Pilgrim, who earns his living as a Web accessibility consultant, said
in a phone call that his concerns arose as a Google user, not a
traffic-monger. "I use Google literally 100 times a day, and I've
never seen spam on the first page before," he said. "And 404's in the
top 10? Hello? Page that are completely blank -- how did those get in
there?

"I use (Google) to find addresses. I use it instead of bookmarks. I
use it to settle arguments. If they're screwing with PageRank, I
can't imagine doing what I do now and being as productive," he said.

NTK newsletter editor Danny O'Brien agreed[12]: "Anecdotal evidence
suggests that search results for ordinary users seem to be a bit off,
too. Broken sites, obvious spams and irrelevant sites are dotting
people's first hits."

Google spokesman Nate Tyler dismissed the complaints as coming from a
small but high-profile set of observers who have journalists' ears.
"Just checked with customer service, they sit about two cubes from
me, and we haven't seen more user (complaints) than normal," Tyler
wrote in an e-mail.

"Google recently pushed its October index, which may explain the
discussions you've seen on the Web," he added.

Google has historically refused to discuss PageRank details, but
Tyler said changes are not made capriciously: "We always test every
index before it goes live, to ensure that Google search quality
improves with each release."

In fact, it may just be bloggers who are bothered.

Search Engine Watch[13] editor Danny Sullivan said he has received no
direct complaints about Google rankings.

"There's clearly been some significant change that's been done,"
Sullvian said in a call from England.

Most obvious, he said, was a sharp curtailment in the effects of
well-known "googlebombing" pranks, where mischievous page authors
linked terms like "go to hell" on their own pages to
www.microsoft.com -- making Microsoft's home page the #1 result for a
Google search on "go to hell."

"You may have people in the weblog community look at this and think,
'Google is trying to reduce our power,'" Sullivan suggested. "The
weblogging community has been convinced that they have this very easy
ability to put things to top of Google. I've never been convinced
that it's because weblogs are so special. Any kind of page that has
links can do this."

Pilgrim, whose blog dropped from first to sixth place in a search for
"mark," agreed that weblogs may have been overrated prior to the
latest index. "I was beating out Mark Twain before -- that's probably
not fair."

Copyright[14] co 1994-2002 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.



*** References from this document ***

[orig] http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,55597,00.html
[8] mailto:paul@paulboutin.com%3Fsubject=googleHeadline
[9] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/03/08/cory_goog\
le.html
[10] http://www.daypop.com/
[11] http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5646.htm
[12] http://www.ntk.net/2002/10/04/
[13] http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
[14] http://hotwired.lycos.com/home/copyright.html



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