6 ms·

I'm gonna go out on a limb here: Who gives a shit? Everyone treats Google like this super police agent who's job is to keep our minds free from digital polluti

I'm gonna go out on a limb here: Who gives a shit? Everyone treats Google like this super police agent who's job is to keep our minds free from digital pollution. Yet 97% of Google's income comes from their ad network, which thrives on having publishers and SERP pages to serve up their advertising customer's creatives. Ultimately, I'm sure Google is fine with this Mahalo stuff, because it means they have more ad space to publish on. What Mahalo has going on is not much different than the major article directory sites like EZine and Associated Content. Search on one of those sites for corn on the cob and I bet you'll find a bunch of similar articles, all plastered with adsense. In fact, I have tools right now that can rewrite an article and allow me submit more corn on the cob articles in under a minute. But you never hear anyone bitch about those sites, because it's User Generated Content. Ultimately, how are they any different? Honestly, knowing what I know about Black Hat SEO Tactics (I know a good amount), I'd rather see someone building out massive crappy content sites than spamming their backlinks everywhere. At least they aren't polluting everyone else's sites by getting XRumer blasts and Blog Comment Spamming.

tptacek 16y ago
Look: either they're going to control spam or they're not. But they can't reasonably own all of Internet search and navigation and be capricious about enforcing their intentionally obscure ranking rules. Google demands the benefit of the doubt from the entire Internet. They set this high standard for themselves, and they profit e n o r m o u s l y from the perception that they live up to it.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ryanhuff 16y ago
Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific searches to sites like Stack Overflow. I really wish Google would address this issue.
- shadowsun7 16y ago
  I agree with ryanhuff. Recently I spent time searching for camera reviews - smaller, entry-level ones where there's less press. About 70% of the sites I got were these dumb contentless websites plastered with camera ads and affliate links (to stores like Amazon and Adorama). That's well and good, but after a couple of tries I began to be really pissed off at the lack of useful information. I see the same issues while searching for certain bits of news. Earlier today I ran a search for Spain's loss to Switzerland (soccer, in the World Cup). Amongst the top results was a small section dedicated to Google News. Two of the three on display led me to ugly blogs, plastered with ads, that had essentially copied content from other news organizations and reposted them. My point: somebody searching for actual angel cake recipes will be greatly annoyed every time they come across Mahalo's (content-less) pages. Sure, some of their pages have content, and are probably useful - but at what cost? I wish Google will address this, and soon.
  - frossie 16y ago
    I wish Google will address this, and soon. I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat. There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it. A lot of people switched from Altavista (remember them?) to Google overnight - because of better search results. They can do it again.
    - ddemchuk 16y ago
      "There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it." Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you? Google's algo is a huge step up from the days when you can stuff your meta keywords to get up to the top of the previous SE's. It's in Google's best interest to find the best content to return for given keywords. Now best to techies implies high quality, unbiased, trusted content. Good to an SEO implies highly optimized, well targeted content. Good to Google is high converting, ad-serving and user-clicking worthy content. It's not as simple as serving perfect, good quality content for Google. They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second.

tptacek 16y ago

Look: either they're going to control spam or they're not. But they can't reasonably own all of Internet search and navigation and be capricious about enforcing their intentionally obscure ranking rules. Google demands the benefit of the doubt from the entire Internet. They set this high standard for themselves, and they profit e n o r m o u s l y from the perception that they live up to it.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

ryanhuff 16y ago

Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific searches to sites like Stack Overflow. I really wish Google would address this issue.

shadowsun7 16y ago
I agree with ryanhuff. Recently I spent time searching for camera reviews - smaller, entry-level ones where there's less press. About 70% of the sites I got were these dumb contentless websites plastered with camera ads and affliate links (to stores like Amazon and Adorama). That's well and good, but after a couple of tries I began to be really pissed off at the lack of useful information. I see the same issues while searching for certain bits of news. Earlier today I ran a search for Spain's loss to Switzerland (soccer, in the World Cup). Amongst the top results was a small section dedicated to Google News. Two of the three on display led me to ugly blogs, plastered with ads, that had essentially copied content from other news organizations and reposted them. My point: somebody searching for actual angel cake recipes will be greatly annoyed every time they come across Mahalo's (content-less) pages. Sure, some of their pages have content, and are probably useful - but at what cost? I wish Google will address this, and soon.
- frossie 16y ago
  I wish Google will address this, and soon. I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat. There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it. A lot of people switched from Altavista (remember them?) to Google overnight - because of better search results. They can do it again.
  - ddemchuk 16y ago
    "There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it." Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you? Google's algo is a huge step up from the days when you can stuff your meta keywords to get up to the top of the previous SE's. It's in Google's best interest to find the best content to return for given keywords. Now best to techies implies high quality, unbiased, trusted content. Good to an SEO implies highly optimized, well targeted content. Good to Google is high converting, ad-serving and user-clicking worthy content. It's not as simple as serving perfect, good quality content for Google. They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second.