Let's get real about Google

1. 84

   Pcunixposted 13 years ago

   I've seen a number of silly things said about Google and even a few hubs complaining about how they have ruined everything.
   
   One:
   
   Let's focus some reality on this.  As I said at http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/68938#post1504541  , do you REALLY not want Google to TRY to stem the tide of spam and dishonest backlinking that goes with it?
   
   If you are writing decent pages, do you REALLY want to compete with junk?
   
   Yes, everything is topsy turvy right now. I hope and assume that it will straighten out and that things will actually turn out better.
   
   But if it does not, please do remember that content is content. If the days of mixed content sites are over, it may well be that the days of focused sites will rise again - and your CONTENT is fungible somewhere else, whether HP remains or not!
   
   Two:  The Evil stuff.
   
   Some folks seem to think that Google has "sold out" and that we little folk will be pushed into insignificance by the Big Guys.
   
   Let's pretend that is true: your pages and mine will never be above page 700 in the SERPS.
   
   If that came to be, don't you realize that is the PERFECT opportunity for an honest upstart to make serious inroads into Google's business?  That's exactly why I think this scenario is utter nonsense, but if it had any truth in it, that is just what would happen.
   
   Many of you are to new to know that Yahoo was once the king of search. Google took that away from them by doing it better.  If Google "goes corporate" and "sells out", the same fate awaits them.

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      earnestshubposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with all of this. Just makes sense.
      
      Google are not about to leave a hole in the market you could drive a semi through are they?

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   Aware1posted 13 years ago

   If google sells out and goes Corporate they lose. The coporate sales would drop out of the bottom, because the little marketers buy when they are earning... There are too many little fish. If the internet becomes as corporate controlled as the outside world, I see the day of total global collapse...

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   1. 84

      Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      And do you really think they don't know that?
      
      I bet Google has the same attitude that I have: it's better to have lots of small customers than a handful of big.
      
      I make less than $1,000 a month from Adsense, but there are millions of sites like mine.  If we all disappeared, Google might initially get just as much from the remaining KingPins, but what do they need Google for?  They are big enough to make direct deals with advertisers and cut Google out.
      
      Google likes small, I'm sure of it.

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         Aware1posted 13 years agoin reply to this

         yeah, I do think they know that!  And I hope that is the way things go. But, I have to say we have ALL seen the effects of Corporations get greedy.
         
         I guess seeing stats of how Amazon, Target, and Walmat (not that I know of affiliate marketers for Walmart or Target) drastically rose, can be alarming. Many Affiliates rely upon Amazon and if they are at the top of all the Serps, that's not good.

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         1. 84

            Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Well, frankly a lot of affiliate stuff is crap.
            
            If all you've done is put up a "Best 17 inch laptop" hub and just listed specs for 4-5 models, you've not added anything of value to the Web - and that's all a lot if folks here and elsewhere do.  If they have lost out, they deserve it.

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               ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               I can assure you that my 'best laptop' hubs have not suffered in the slightest, my biggest casualties don't sell anything at all

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                  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  I can't say I have read all of your "Best whatever" hubs, but the ones I have read do NOT fall under the "just listed specs for 4-5 models" designation.  You add much more than that - at least in what I have read.
                  
                  I think I'd be happy if one of your hubs came up in my search for my next laptop (not that I would be searching -m I'm always buying Apple).

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                     ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     The majority of them are good and I do generally present a strong argument with the pros and cons (mainly pros) of the products that I recommend, but I admit to having a handful which are a little skelatal and basic and perhaps unnatural.
                     
                     If Hubpages were to set the bar as high as I personally want them too, I would probably be more than happy to personally pick out and delete about 20 or 30 of my Hubpages so that they don't have to
                     
                     But, for now, I am way above the bar set by the TOS and the flagging system!

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      2. 61

         Kdban101posted 13 years agoin reply to this

         How do you explain eHow, the most hated content farm of all gaining traffic after this G Upheaval while  sites like HubPages and Suite101 ( a much better moderated site) lose traffic.
         
         P.S: Digital Inspiration, one of the best Tech How To Blog in the world have lost massively. All the articles are written by Amit Agarwal himself, the site does not even endorse guest blogging.
         To know what his hundreds of readers are saying about this change one can go to this link :
         http://www.labnol.org/internet/blog-as- … arm/18750/

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         1. 84

            Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            I'm not "explaining" anything.  Go back and read what I wrote.

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            SiddSinghposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            I was really surprised to see DI at the very top of the list. Probably what an article called "collateral damage" in the Google war against bad stuff.

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            sunforgedposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Not that I think "digital inspirations" is deserving of any specific demerits.
            
            The hundreds of readers (at least the comments) show a general weak understanding of the english language and when I read two "how-to's" that I specifically have recent experience in(using amazons3 for hosting and  using LAN to control multiple systems with one keyboard and mouse) I was left disappointed.
            
            I have read the exact same tutorials in lifehacker over the past months also and DA was not the original source.
            
            The blog has been specifically highlighted in adsense success stories so if he was actually penalized im sure he can get a reconsideration. But as an english reader (user of google.com) I could persobally do without it in my returns.
            
            Seems like an honest value intended project and not something that should be hit with drop due to something that was supposedly attempting to raise quality, honor original content creators and intentionally thin content creators.
            
            This case could point out a possible increased weight in "readability" and user interaction quality.
            
            Granted Its WAY better than most tech blogs (on my quick look around) but it cant be called "best" to a native english reader.

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               SiddSinghposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               Does this make a case for disallowing comments on blogs/websites/hubs?

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                  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  Definitely not.
                  
                  But it might mean disallowing junk comments.. which I have been doing for some time now.

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               2. 75

                  sunforgedposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  If you own websites you should be seeing dozens, hundreds, thousands of spam comments that automatically post and attempt to be unique through synonym exchange weekly.
                  
                  here is one from my email:
                  
                  Author : Christiana Posten (IP: 173.234.26.126 , 173-234-26-126.rdns.ubiquityservers.com)
                  E-mail : Boese2997@gmail.com
                  URL    : h ttp://male-breast-reduction.tumblr.com
                  Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?que … 234.26.126
                  Comment:
                  Solid post, nice work. It Couldn't be written any improved. Reading this post reminds me of my previous boss! He usually kept babbling about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a superb read. Thanks for sharing!
                  
                  (btw - the post is a tv ad, created primarily via datafeed in a store section of a site )
                  
                  one week as a webmaster with any traffic in desirable keywords using a platform that is well established (wordpress etc) and you will see hundreds of these
                  
                  
                  
                  if a site has these comments, they may be naive, unattended or intentionally using their own sites as link sources while trying to show activity via comments.
                  
                  
                  if your site/page fits the profile - it may be something that could hurt you as google tries to fight back on spam commenting

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                     waynetposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     Male breast reduction!! I could use that, but on second thoughts I'll just exercise more whilst wearing my bra!

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                  2. 84

                     Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     I use my own filter code, so never even seen these any more (they get automagically whisked away to a happy land where they bother no one), but I still switched to requiring comment approval anyway.
                     
                     It's just not worth the risk.  I usually get to approve legitimate comments within a day at the most, and if something is so urgent that it cannot wait, they should send me email.

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                     Aware1posted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     I've had a mass hit of spam coments on my sites the past few weeks and though annoying, I know it came as these sites have become highly ranked and well optimized.  Luckily I use akismet and all comments have to be approved. I've just added captcha to all sites since it seemed many were auto generated.
                     
                     
                     I have to say, getting into micro niche sites has been a major positive for me.. It took me a great while to come around the learning curve.... now in the a-ha moments, and still leaning.
                     
                     Anyway, the spam is obnoxious and way our of control!

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            2. 84

               Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               I would agree that DI is lightweight and if they formerly had great success, it may have been undeserved.
               
               I have not seen any fall off at my site, but I have plenty of "light weight" stuff too - perhaps a bit more of the unusual and geekish, but enough that I was (and still am) worried that it might affect me yet.
               
               But, as Ryan said, if I have to go delete or beef up 1,000 sub-standard posts, than that's what I'll do. That's what all of us who are actually capable of quality will do. Yes, we've all had our off days, our moments of laziness, but we aren't the problem: it's the people who always write crap that have caused this change.

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            3. 61

               Kdban101posted 13 years agoin reply to this

               Many of the comments in poor English were left by "native" English readers/speakers.
               
               You may not like the posts but you can't find  fault with Amit's English, that's for certain. For eg. craps can be written in perfect English (though perfect articles can't be written in crappy English).

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                  sunforgedposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  Actually, yes I can. Its clearly ESL and that is fine and "native' speakers publish much worse examples of poor sentence structure, Im not jumping on any grammar police/style editor podium here.
                  
                  But I can say that I can clearly find issues in syntax and composition and perhaps google has upped the ante on that factor
                  
                  Im not in the witch hunt game and dont wish this obviously popular site to be damaged for its readers (although its readers and 109k subscribers should have no problem going to the site via rss, email, facebook, bookmarks etc) or owners.
                  
                  Just have been trying to gain observations from the "case studies" of what has been effected.
                  
                  No one said that comments (or forum posts) needed to be perfect examples of the language .. youtube proves that - but my observation from scanning the blogs comments was that these are ESl readers

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                     Kdban101posted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     Oh well, in that case I have to admit I didn't myself first read the two posts( regarding amazon s3 & Lan...) you are pointing out, since I not into tech stuff regarding site hosting et all. Now that I have read those posts, there are indeed some problems with the language. I have actually read DI a few times based on the very simple searches regarding tech stuff on Google, and I didn't find any problems in those post. Based on the success stories I have heard and I even saw a link on Wikipedia, I had tremendous faith on DI. Next time I will be careful !

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      2besureposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Come on Aware1,stop scaring me.  I earn my living on line.

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         Aware1posted 13 years agoin reply to this

         oh, it's not meant to scare... just be aware
         
         
         being in the know is a good thing. I personally think that this is a shake up of some undergoings of how the system gets manipulated. And this is not new information..
         
         Funny enough, even though I really do not participate in hub discussions anymore, I do still read here. I've read many comments lately from hubbers about " what would you do if Hubpages disappeared" or near that sense.. I think some sort of shake up has been felt prior to consciously accepting it.

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            2besureposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for you clarity about the situation.  I am aware and will try to remain flexible.  Nothing stays the same!

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3. 75

   skyfireposted 13 years ago

   My only complaint against G is that this update was supposed to be against DS. How come all the other sites got stacked devaluation whereas DS got clean cheat ? lol. That's not fair. If this is the way they're going to work from now on then instead of autoblogs the site with original content will get penalized.

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   dianebowlingposted 13 years ago

   I was wondering if all this had anything to do with the JC Penny snafu.

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   1. 84

      Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      No.
      
      According to Danny Sullivan, Google has been working on this for more than a year.
      
      They can't make changes like this without long, long internal testing.

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      skyfireposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      To some extent i think so.

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      1. 84

         Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         http://searchengineland.com/google-fore … date-66071
         
         "While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January."
         
         Feb 24, 2011 at 9:50pm ET by Danny Sullivan

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   sunforgedposted 13 years ago

   the comments dont go live and the notifications are sent to a specific folder and only bother me when i choose to look.
   
   i use the spammers keywords to get ideas
   
   that particular anchored link when ran through the keyword tool shows terms with Ecpc between $10 and 30 USD
   
   This one aint  my cup of tea, but sometimes it can be a good research tool

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   1. 84

      Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Machiavellian..  and admirable

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