8 ms·

It will be interesting to see how this impacts the Android/iOS battle. Search revenue funds almost all of Google's other activities so if people start using oth

It will be interesting to see how this impacts the Android/iOS battle. Search revenue funds almost all of Google's other activities so if people start using other search engines or find alternate ways to get their content it could impact the level they can spend on phones. With a push to a mobile first world the Android model is especially sensitive to spam. On a full size browser you have a lot more context and results for a given search. 5 Results may be spam, but you can work around them. If the average phone screen shows 3-5 results and all of them are spam you will quickly find alternate tools. Google ignoring spam is like Microsoft ignoring the cloud.

petervandijck 16y ago
"Google ignoring spam is like Microsoft ignoring the cloud." Great line!
- zachrose 16y ago
  That's the kind of line that I wish I could email to people in 1960 as an important business insight from 2011.
  - petervandijck 16y ago
    To them, it would sound like "Bla ignoring bla is like bla ignoring bla."
    - AngryParsley 16y ago
      They would parse the words, but not the correct meanings. The impression they'd come away with would be something like: (Extremely large number) ignoring canned meat is like (random company name) ignoring the high-altitude water vapor.
  - VMG 16y ago
    I just got mail from someone in 2060 saying "Scroomz is ignoring zork like Yooka ignored mulk"
    - simonsquiff 16y ago
      More like "Scroomz is ignoring twinkies like Yooka ignored the tree."
    - tel 16y ago
      Ignoring the damage of incentivized false-positives in searching our highly-connected global compendium of human knowledge and activity is at least as stupid as major producers of low cost consumer information goods and services failing to capitalize on the on-demand delivery and storage capacities of said compendium. Avoid both, please. This is like writing stuff for the Voyager's Golden Record.
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
The article calls out two specific companies as "landfill in the garbage websites that you find all over the web." Reasonable people can disagree over whether such content is truly spam or low-quality content, and thus how to respond.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- replicatorblog 16y ago
  What is the difference and how should they respond? It seems to be a rising frustration among power users that Google is increasingly becoming a wasteland populated by spam. For example, Marco Arment recently commented on his podcast how hard it was to find answers to simple questions on Google these days. He was saying that the content farms have basically created a page for every PHP function with thin content and rendered it useless. For a company whose goal is to index all human information it is a pretty big warning flag. What is the appropriate user response? Go to Stack Overflow? Find a branded knowledge base like O'Reilly's Safari? I'm genuinely curious to know what we can do.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Disagree on the PHP function thing. For nearly all function names the php.net page is the top result, even when there is a C function of the same name. Occasionally there is a w3schools or similar close to the top, but it's not like those guys have just wholesale ripped the docs.
  - Matt_Cutts 16y ago
    I was referring to how Google should respond to content farms. Historically, Google has been willing to take manual action on webspam. With the rest of search quality and ranking, Google tries to use algorithms as much as we can. So the distinction of whether something is spam vs. low-quality is an important one within Google.
    - robryan 16y ago
tomjen3 16y ago
It won't. Whoever comes up with a better search engine is going to get a large check from Google, and a monster check if he can make MS and Google go into a bidding war over the business. A better search engine is not what will do Google in, because they would understand the danger it posed to them. What will do Google in is a business which they don't understand that can kill search engines as a place to do business.
- EGreg 16y ago
  <cough> facebook </cough>

petervandijck 16y ago

"Google ignoring spam is like Microsoft ignoring the cloud." Great line!

zachrose 16y ago
That's the kind of line that I wish I could email to people in 1960 as an important business insight from 2011.
- petervandijck 16y ago
  To them, it would sound like "Bla ignoring bla is like bla ignoring bla."
  - AngryParsley 16y ago
    They would parse the words, but not the correct meanings. The impression they'd come away with would be something like: (Extremely large number) ignoring canned meat is like (random company name) ignoring the high-altitude water vapor.
- VMG 16y ago
  I just got mail from someone in 2060 saying "Scroomz is ignoring zork like Yooka ignored mulk"
  - simonsquiff 16y ago
    More like "Scroomz is ignoring twinkies like Yooka ignored the tree."
  - tel 16y ago
    Ignoring the damage of incentivized false-positives in searching our highly-connected global compendium of human knowledge and activity is at least as stupid as major producers of low cost consumer information goods and services failing to capitalize on the on-demand delivery and storage capacities of said compendium. Avoid both, please. This is like writing stuff for the Voyager's Golden Record.

Matt_Cutts 16y ago

The article calls out two specific companies as "landfill in the garbage websites that you find all over the web." Reasonable people can disagree over whether such content is truly spam or low-quality content, and thus how to respond.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
replicatorblog 16y ago
What is the difference and how should they respond? It seems to be a rising frustration among power users that Google is increasingly becoming a wasteland populated by spam. For example, Marco Arment recently commented on his podcast how hard it was to find answers to simple questions on Google these days. He was saying that the content farms have basically created a page for every PHP function with thin content and rendered it useless. For a company whose goal is to index all human information it is a pretty big warning flag. What is the appropriate user response? Go to Stack Overflow? Find a branded knowledge base like O'Reilly's Safari? I'm genuinely curious to know what we can do.
- robryan 16y ago
  Disagree on the PHP function thing. For nearly all function names the php.net page is the top result, even when there is a C function of the same name. Occasionally there is a w3schools or similar close to the top, but it's not like those guys have just wholesale ripped the docs.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  I was referring to how Google should respond to content farms. Historically, Google has been willing to take manual action on webspam. With the rest of search quality and ranking, Google tries to use algorithms as much as we can. So the distinction of whether something is spam vs. low-quality is an important one within Google.
  - robryan 16y ago

tomjen3 16y ago

It won't. Whoever comes up with a better search engine is going to get a large check from Google, and a monster check if he can make MS and Google go into a bidding war over the business. A better search engine is not what will do Google in, because they would understand the danger it posed to them. What will do Google in is a business which they don't understand that can kill search engines as a place to do business.

EGreg 16y ago
<cough> facebook </cough>