I'll give Google 5¢ for 100 shares

[mardigras]

I've been #1 for a gay search term for at least a year. Suddenly my page is nowhere in the 45,000 pages it says match that term. A number of results from pages that link my page come up but then Google says there are no pages linking to my site. DOH!

The site that is at number one now says it is a gay site according to a very similar title to the one I used but is nothing more than a straight gallery with a straight popup hell. There is nothing at all gay on the page. (Way to go Google, you sure optimized that one...NOT. It's algorithms not AL GORE Rhythms! ). What really sucks is that people will be beating down the door to get stock in what they think is the greatest search engine ever while behind the scenes changes make the only way to return to being listed is outbid everyone else and you can even lie about your content. Hey, maybe they will even start to charge hundreds of bucks to even "consider" your site for inclusion, I always loved that plan. I guess Google will eventually become one of those multi-level marketing search engines that give you the same results despite what you put in when some company who decides to roost the internet buys enough keywords.

While I'm on it, can anyone tell me what the function is of keywording a page and it's title to come up in a gay search when it is a 100% straight page? I get that crap in e-mail too. Do gay guys really buy straight porn from you if you lie in the search engine and e-mail spam and tell them that it's gay?

What's even funnier is that 2 sites I update every day with on-topic to the keywords content have a page rank of 1/10 while a place-holding page I slapped together a couple of weeks ago and haven't touched since and has no traffic is rated at 2/10.

I changed my mind... I'll give Google for those 100 shares

[mardigras]

Oh, and the page that is 2/10 pagerank was a domain that up until yesterday was using domain forwarding with a frame, so there was NO description in the search engine nor title, just the URL, go figure.

[eatapeach]

it looks like google has screwed the pooch and is trying to cash out at the top of another tech stock bubble.

if google doesn't get control of the spammers really fast then in 5 years we'll be talking about google like we talk about altavista today.

[johnbosh]

I hope they find a way to stop those evil spammers

[eatapeach]

Originally posted by johnbosh
I hope they find a way to stop those evil spammers

it's one thing to optimize your sites for relevant search terms. it's something totally different to optimize your sites for terms that have nothing to do with your product.

yesterday i was doing a search for a very specific home audio component. of the 9 results that came back on google 4 of them were porn sites on expired non-adult domains - hardly relevant to my search.

if a search engine can't return relevant searches people will stop using it.

google became #1 because all the other SEs sucked at the time. now the time is ripe for another SE to step up because google is starting to suck.

[KraZ]

Well, sad but true - I was loyal to Altavista till 2002 and the last 2 years were very hard on me...

Ultimately SE serve US (the webmasters) and not the surfers and in doing so destroy their original image ... I guess I could write a book called brand shifting... or brand shitting rather ;-)