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How Google Killed Search

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KenR:
This page has some very insightfull comments and suggestions on how to fix "the mess that google has created".

It's official. It is now completely impossible to find things on the web using a search engine. Try this out. Go to Google and see if you can find a cheap hotel in new york
What comes up? Any hotels? Not really. Just page after page of spammy affiliate sites that promise to find you great deals, but will really just send you off to other affiliate sites. Click along and you'll fall down this black hole of non-content and Google Ads with no hope of ever finding a real website where you can book a cheap hotel in New York.
I blame this phenomenon on Google's Pagerank algorithm and its reliance on link counts. The quickest way to get to the top of the rankings is to produce tons of empty pages all across the web, all linking back to your thing.

--- End quote ---

http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/how-google-killed-search.html

tranglos:
Oh well, the author can only blame himself. First, try wrapping the terms in quotes: "cheap hotel" in "new york". Ignoring the sponsored links (which should not be ignored, since they are actually what he's looking for), the first link goes straight to a page where you can make a reservation. And if that site doesn't look trustworthy enough, it's only a click from there to travelocity.

Second, I don't know about actual hotel owners, but just imagining myself as one, I know I wouldn't advertise my place as "cheap". Cheap is nothing to be proud of. Try "budget" or "inexpensive" or other, more elegant synonyms, and you'll fare better.

Third, forget about the basic search. Go to Google Maps, use the exact search phrase they give as an example: "hotels near <location>", and you'll get locations, reviews and hotels' own pages with pictures, descriptions and reservation info. No spam, no linkfarms at all.

Google may have issues, but inadequate search results is not one of them :)

f0dder:
This does show one big point, though: you need to know how to search :)

tranglos:
Yeah, that helps :)

(And linkfarms *are* a pain, I do realize that.)

mouser:
Personally i think there are some good points here.. In the early days of the internet, everyone's goal was to have the most "relevant" results at top.  Now every force in the universe is trying to put the most "profitable" paying sites up top.  There is so much money involved in getting your business to the top of google results that a whole industry has been created from it, and a huge swath of the internet is creating content for the sole purpose of getting high ranking google hits.

Go check out adsense forums and you will see post after post of people discussing what the best kind of content to write about to get high google placement and big money from google ads.  In other words - people who will write about whatever will make the most money, without any regard to whether they have background or interest in the subject.

Google's whole business model is based on advertising money.  What's better for them to put at the top of search, the page with adsense on it or the page without adsense.  They've demonstrated some integrity but they are a big corporation now, i don't for a minute doubt that they would tweak their "algorithms" however they had to to insure a big growing profit.  If it means ranking some non-commercial sites down and some commmercial sites up, so be it.  It's a vicious circle all driven by profit.  Everyone has the same incentive - to milk the most money from driving people to pages where money is going to change hands between the search engine / portal and the advertisers.

We've recently posted some articles about newspapers rewriting headlines and stories in order to get highly ranked on google.  This is where we are headed im afraid - all content being written and massaged in order to please the search engines and sites like digg.  It troubles me greatly.. only im not sure what a better solution is.  I guess my core solution for most of these things is the same answer i have for politics - take the money out of it.  But that's just heresy in the modern age.. No one wants to take the money out of search, they want to "monetize" it more. .

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