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I don't understand why Google doesn't sort results by distance from original author? Is there no technological way to do that? In my head it'd work like this:

I don't understand why Google doesn't sort results by distance from original author? Is there no technological way to do that? In my head it'd work like this: Original: 100 points Someone who the original links to: 10 points Someone else completely unrelated to the original, but housing their content: 1 point They're constantly crawling. Is there no way for their crawlers to determine the originating source of content?

andrewflnr 15y ago
To help The Oatmeal, in particular, it would have to analyze a ton of large images. Basically, it would have to analyze every image on every page and compare to all its other images. That would be pretty hard. I do think you might be on to something. If anyone is in a position to help with this issue, it's Google. Wouldn't it be awesome if they did something to help this problem in a big way?
- protomyth 15y ago
  Google developed and has been hugely successful with the business model (Ad Words) that makes profitable this bad behavior. It would seem a technical, automated means is extremely difficult to impossible. The mechanism under the law of the US is the DMCA notice. Removing a site from search and adwords that continually gets such notices would fix the problem. I have had searches where such notices were mentioned, so Google would seem to have the means. Cut off the money and the behavior will stop.
  - andrewflnr 15y ago
    Actually, I don't know now how hard it would be. Check out this thread going on now: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2614797>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2614797</a> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2614797>http://news.....
maushu 15y ago
And the "Original" is? Don't forget, computers are smart but dumb.
- jtheory 15y ago
  In theory, the original is the one that appears first. In practice, this won't work, because a targeted spider of, say, the Oatmeal website will be able to grab new material and post it elsewhere (with modified headers a bit earlier than the original...) long before any generalized search engine swings back around again to check for new content.

andrewflnr 15y ago

To help The Oatmeal, in particular, it would have to analyze a ton of large images. Basically, it would have to analyze every image on every page and compare to all its other images. That would be pretty hard. I do think you might be on to something. If anyone is in a position to help with this issue, it's Google. Wouldn't it be awesome if they did something to help this problem in a big way?

protomyth 15y ago
Google developed and has been hugely successful with the business model (Ad Words) that makes profitable this bad behavior. It would seem a technical, automated means is extremely difficult to impossible. The mechanism under the law of the US is the DMCA notice. Removing a site from search and adwords that continually gets such notices would fix the problem. I have had searches where such notices were mentioned, so Google would seem to have the means. Cut off the money and the behavior will stop.
- andrewflnr 15y ago
  Actually, I don't know now how hard it would be. Check out this thread going on now: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2614797>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2614797</a> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2614797>http://news.....

maushu 15y ago

And the "Original" is? Don't forget, computers are smart but dumb.

jtheory 15y ago
In theory, the original is the one that appears first. In practice, this won't work, because a targeted spider of, say, the Oatmeal website will be able to grab new material and post it elsewhere (with modified headers a bit earlier than the original...) long before any generalized search engine swings back around again to check for new content.