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Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"
- jbrooksuk 14y agoWhat doesn't make sense is why it's ranked beneath a Government site? www.doioig.gov Plus, the content of the homepage doesn't even contain anything about Stack Overflow.
- nnpodz 14y agoGovernment sites may get a higher pagerank because of the .gov extension
- mherdeg 14y agoConversation from three days ago at http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169405/google-indexing-issue-for-keyword-stackoverflow http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169405/google-indexi... suggests that the best hypothesis is that at some point in the past, www.doioig.gov was compromised and maybe redirected to StackOverflow. (This hypothesis is supported by a Google cache of doioig.gov showing the message "Due to security concerns, our website will be unavailable until transition to the Department of the Interior web domain occurs. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and are working to speed up the transition. The following contact information is provided to assist you.")
- crgt 14y agoEven if it had been redirected, why would it outrank the actual site?
- Sujan 14y agoGoogle obviously puts high trust in this domain as it has many high trust links, typical for .gov domains. In this case this seems to have been enough for the algo to assume, that doioig.gov is the more important domain and should replace StackOverflow.
- mherdeg 14y ago(Actually the explanation at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5311430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5311430 looks a lot better. I do wonder what's up with the DoI's recent "security concerns").
- protomyth 14y agoThey have a rather long history of security concerns. Many times ending up in front of a judge.
- manojlds 14y agoAlso, here : http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/31827/stack-overflow-is-www-doioig-gov-if-not-then-i-could-be-infected http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/31827/stack-over...
- mike_herrera 14y agoI'm suspiciously seeing, "2,643 people +1'd this." While I would be excited to see such enthusiasm relating to a government property, this doesn't smell kosher.
- lancefisher 14y agoLooks like it's a cut/paste error. If you do wget www.doioig.gov, this is the page you get. Notice the meta refresh that points to stackoverflow.com. <!DOCTYPE HTML> <html lang="en-US"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;url=http://stackoverflow.com"> <script language="javascript"> window.location.href = "http://www.doi.gov/oig/index.cfm" </script> <title>Page Redirection</title> </head> <body> If you are not redirected automatically, please click the link to continue to the <a href='http://www.doi.gov/oig/index.cfm'>U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Inspector General.</a> </body> </html>
- pmylund 14y agoAnd here's why: http://stackoverflow.com/a/5411601/620239 http://stackoverflow.com/a/5411601/620239. Forgot to change that first occurrence after pasting it in. "Oh, it works. I'm done."
- buttscicles 14y agoThat's brilliant, surprised that Google managed to rank them so highly because of it though!
- cleverjake 14y ago.gov domains have a ton of link juice.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- signed0 14y agoAnother good reason why you should always use "example.com".
- fidz 14y agoI'm surprised http://example.com http://example.com is reserved by IANA.
- ComputerGuru 14y agoGoogle's algorithm has gotten so big and so complicated over the years, that there are so many cracks and special cases that can cause sites to disappear from or be poorly ranked in search results, unless you're lucky enough to be huge in the tech scene or post here and get your comment seen by a Googler (as I have on occasion). <plea>Any Googlers reading this, I'm looking into rebuttals of false DMCA requests being ignored by Google for months...</plea>
- moonlighter 14y ago"Google's algorithm has gotten so big and so complicated over the years". Agreed! Just like the US tax code...
- 3pt14159 14y agoAlso, the internet has gotten bigger, so the possibilities for cracks or errors have widened greatly. That being said, I do think this specific failure has no reasonable explanation. No matter how I think about it, or look at it, the only explanation I can come up with is essentially: "What percentage of people would need to see a wrong version of a search result before it is reported" or "How long would it take us to fix a knowingly wrong result".
- ma2rten 14y agoI don't think that a simple algorithm would lead to less poorly ranked search results.
- wilfra 14y agoAgreed. A hacker put some malicious code on one of my sites over a year ago and it was quickly buried in search results after ranking 1-3 on page one for years. I fixed it, changed hosts, notified Google and have tried everything else I can think of and it's still nowhere to be seen - even though it ranks near the top of both Yahoo and Bing. If a Googler sees this, the site is http://starbuckslocations.com http://starbuckslocations.com - please look into it!
- rmp2150 14y agoStack Overflow ranks #1 for Bing Search for "Stack Overflow".
- fabm 14y agoPeople actually use Bing?
- rmp2150 14y agoI was lured by Bing Rewards. I plan to use it as my default for a month. So far, I'm content.
- officemonkey 14y agoI earned my $5 Amazon gift card and then switched back to google. I'm using DDG now and I'm very happy.
- calvin 14y agoYes. And DuckDuckGo. And Google. Why give all your searches to one search engine and one company? Depending on what you're searching for, Google doesn't always provide the best results.
- rmp2150 14y agoHow do you allocate your searches? Does the better quality of results justify the inconvenience of using several engines or is there a mechanism I'm unaware of?
- magic_haze 14y agoWell, most of the time I already know the site best suited for my queries (e.g., SO for programming, amazon for shopping, wikipedia for facts, Wolfram Alpha for calculations etc), so DuckDuckGo's bang syntax really comes in handy. Google is astonishingly good at parsing vague queries, but otherwise DDG or Bing are pretty much OK.
- fidz 14y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=stackoverflow&aq=0&oq=stackover&aqs=chrome.0.0j5j57j0j62.3537&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=stack+overflow&oq=stack+overflow&gs_l=serp.3..0l4.4882.4882.0.5337.1.1.0.0.0.0.135.135.0j1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.5.psy-ab.gWmJt4vWzvg&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43148975,d.dmQ&fp=c1794afd088c3d78&biw=1440&bih=795 isn't that too long just for https://www.google.com/search?q=stackoverflow
- kristopolous 14y agoI've often wondered what all those extra bits of information mean and whether there's information encoded in there that I may not want to give someone.
- Andrex 14y agoHow about this? http://googl.com/#q=stack+overflow http://googl.com/#q=stack+overflow Source: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-shortest-google-search-urls.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-shortest-google...
- martin-adams 14y agoThat link sadly does not work for me who uses iGoogle (for now) on google.co.uk. If it's a short URL you want, then http://bit.ly/YUJZLu http://bit.ly/YUJZLu. But you'll have to trust me when you click that as you've no idea where it'll take you to.
- dangrossman 14y agoRight click and copy link, paste into address bar, add a + to the end to see where it goes. http://bit.ly/YUJZLu+ http://bit.ly/YUJZLu+
- nkorth 14y agoAnd that doesn't work on mobile, because they have a "forgetful" mobile site :(
- ajasmin 14y agoI don't see the Stack Overflow home page at all in my search results. http://imgur.com/3WHKhGv http://imgur.com/3WHKhGv Second link is the login page
- michool 14y agoIt's 3rd on google.co.uk, after www.doioig.gov and Wikipedia
- Axsuul 14y agoThe power of .gov backlinks.
- protomyth 14y agoGiven that the Department of Interior has been forced to take the whole department (expect for vital services) offline multiple times, I would not be surprised if it were hacked. I am hoping this doesn't get in front of a judge anytime soon as it can have some consequence for people caught in the way. One such consequence, at one point a judge (curse his or her soul) decided since the DOI needed to be off the internet then all "affiliates" needed to be off the internet. This includes the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs). Which included both the .gov and .edu domain. At the time many Tribally chartered Community Colleges[1] were told to disconnect from the internet mid-semester. Even those colleges who paid for their own internet connection and had a .edu domain of their own. Imagine having two weeks with no internet (most of our students don't have home internet) with classes going on. Finally, someone got the order rescinded for the schools. I am not very fond of how the DOI handles its internet[2][3]. 1) accredited just like state or private colleges with transferable classes. 2) don't even get me started about sending mail from a subdomain with no DNS entry for the sending mail server or subdomain and expecting us to not reject it. 3) http://www.doi.gov/archive/news/08_News_Releases/080523a.html http://www.doi.gov/archive/news/08_News_Releases/080523a.htm...
- xxpor 14y agoWait what? Why does the DOI disconnect from the internet on a regular basis? I feel like there's a backstory here.
- protomyth 14y agoGoogle the Cobell v. Norton lawsuit. It basically is a case study in how not to do internet anything along with some interesting physical site security problems.
- antoncohen 14y agoSo, apparently in 2001 a class action lawsuit accused the Department of the Interior of mismanaging Indian trust accounts. As part of that lawsuit court appointed hackers broke into DOI computers. The judge ordered all DOI computers to be disconnected from the internet. Some parts of the DOI came back online quickly, but others remained disconnected for over 6 years. Employee desktops couldn't even access the internet, so they could only send emails within their intranet. http://www.nextgov.com/technology-news/2008/05/interior-allowed-to-reconnect-to-internet/42094/ http://www.nextgov.com/technology-news/2008/05/interior-allo... http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/2002/02/pressure-builds-on-interior-to-fix-indian-trust-fund-system/11120/ http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/2002/02/pressure-builds-...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- bdcravens 14y agoGotta wonder though: should StackOverflow.com rank high for "stack overflow"? After all, a "stack overflow" isn't necessarily related to programming questions. Yes, you can ask questions on StackOverflow.com about stack overflows, but that's missing the point. So if I have a domain name that's a thing, but my site has very little content related to that thing, should I rank high for queries about that thing?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dangrossman 14y agoThere are more links on pages with the words "stack overflow" near the link, or with the anchor text itself "stack overflow", pointing to stackoverflow.com than to any other page on the web. Lacking additional context, the web teaches Google's algorithm that when someone is talking about "stack overflow", they are referring to stackoverflow.com more often than anything else. If you made a website called "Nikon Cameras" today but the site had nothing about Nikon Cameras on it, it would not rank well for the search "Nikon Cameras". Other people writing about Nikon Cameras would not link to your site more often than something actually about Nikon Cameras.
- aaron695 14y agoSo are you saying people searching for "stack overflow" want the definition more often than the web site stackoverflow.com? Because that doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps an upcoming engineer once or twice needs the definition in their life. And they will mostly go on to use the site as well. Lazy people like me often type the approximate of a web site into Google rather than trying to guess the exact url / bookmarking it. And we do this continuously. I can't see the definition being more popular than the site.
- lobster_johnson 14y agoWould a person struggling with a stack overflow actually google "stack overflow", though? Surely only a very fresh programmer would need to google it, and only if he/she knew what the concept was. But here's what an infinite recursion in a C program prints if I run it: Segmentation fault: 11 Well, that's C for you. If I try Ruby: test.rb:2: stack level too deep (SystemStackError) Ok, still not the same nomenclature. Python: RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded Nope. How about Go? ... Actually, an infinitely recursing function in Go never completes on my machine. I wonder why. Perhaps it's not using the stack the way I expect. If you do the same thing in Java: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StackOverflowError Ok, there it is. But if do you get that, would you not google "StackOverflowError", as opposed to "stack overflow"? (Then again, my Google searches are perhaps uncommonly precise. If a function "foobar()" in library "libfoo" overflowed when processing HTTPS URLs, I would probably google for "foobar stack overflow libfoo https url".) The Wikipedia entry for stack overflow (the concept) is the fourth hit on a search for "stack overflow". Should be acceptable to a newbie.
- spullara 14y agoThe Wikipedia description of a stack overflow should probably be the best link and it ranks 5th. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_overflow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_overflow
- matthuggins 14y agoThat's pretty subjective. Why would that be the "best" link?
- Nursie 14y agoBecause it describes what a stack overflow is, rather than being a site named after the thing? That would be my thinking. Ok so maybe wikipedia doesn't have to be the top result, but I'd rather have results relating to the thing I'm searching for come above sites just named after it.
- icebraining 14y agoMaybe people are actually searching for the site, and not the thing that named it?
- Nursie 14y agoOh maybe, and maybe they search for that more often than they search for the thing it's named after, and maybe more people would find it more useful that way. I'm really just expressing a preference :)
- spullara 14y agoYou'll notice that people search for facebook not "face book" when they go there.
- magicalist 14y agoStack Overflow is officially named "Stack Overflow" (with the space)[1], though it's common to refer to it as stackoverflow (no space), of course. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/about http://stackoverflow.com/about
- halayli 14y agoThe power of a .gov domain authority in google's algorithms.
- itchitawa 14y agodoioig.gov ranks highly for both "stack" and "overflow" separately. That site is about stacks and overflows afterall. Perhaps that's why combining the two gives it superpowers.
- Tloewald 14y agoVictory for Bing!
- arikrak 14y agoGoogle thinks doioig.gov is StackOverflow.com. See what happens when you do a search for info: http://www.google.com/search?q=info:stackoverflow.com http://www.google.com/search?q=info:stackoverflow.com Note what site shows up as the result and for the links for "similar" and "link to".
- Mahn 14y agoThis may be well the first time in my life I'm able to see a bug in Google Search.
- geargrinder 14y agoEveryone seems to be focusing on the .gov site but if you take a look at the Stack Overflow home page, the page that would normally get indexed highly, there is very little telling Google what it is. There is no <meta name="description"> tag in the header. The H1 tag, important to Google, says "Top Questions". The content of the first page constantly changes. Plus, I would bet that most of the links into Stack Overflow are to individual articles, not the home page. Any particular article probably doesn't outrank a popular .gov site. This is just very poor SEO on Stack Overflow's part.
- stormbrew 14y agoI disagree it's necessarily poor SEO. They should do everything they can to ensure that pages that answer questions have better pageranks than their largely useless homepage. That's what gives the name stackoverflow power, questions actually getting answered.
- geargrinder 14y agoCertainly the individual questions and answers should rank highly. They do a somewhat better job at SEO on those pages, although there still is no meta description tag, leaving Google to guess what to put on the search results page. They could do a lot better on those pages too. The real content is buried below lots of javascript and other code. The higher on the page your real content is, the better. They do have pretty good titles and H1 tags on those pages, and the urls are okay, although I would move the name of the article up at least a level. Here is one: /questions/15181744/twitter-number-of-tweets-not-updating-testing-on-local But the original topic here was a search for "stack overflow" and for that search there could be no better page than the Home page (well, maybe the About page, although if they did their job better they would get one of those results with lots of sub-section links). There was no real attempt to optimize that page for search engines. Optimizing it for the keyword "stack overflow" isn't going to hurt the rank of those question/answer pages.
- Evbn 14y agoToo good, even. Google has a bad habit of ranking a question page lower (for matching keywords) than some random other (more popular) question page that links to the relevant question page.
- zaidf 14y agoThe preferred .gov page has thousands of google plus likes. This seems like a fascinating example of google plus' terrible impact on google search and perhaps google corp.
- LolWolf 14y agoIt's just wrong, overall, the actual Stackoverflow page was the one that had that many +1s.
- 6ren 14y agoIt's #3 if you use quotes https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Stack+Overflow%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Stack+Overflow%22 (wikipedia is #2)
- mwsherman 14y agoUnfortunately our plan for disrupting the Inspector General market got leaked a bit early.
- afshinmeh 14y agoSomething strange happened here. Google displays `stackoverflow.com` content in `doioig.gov` description. For example I can see `careers 2.0` in the description of `doioig.gov` that really doesn't have.
- shrikrishna 14y agoWell actually, "stack overflow" should ideally refer to the programming error. The site being talked about is "StackOverflow", and if that term is queried in any search engine, it should, and will provide the correct result.
- sublimit 14y agoDon't be silly, that's just the way their logo is stylized. Their FAQ states it's indeed "Stack Overflow", and their mobile version has a logo with a space.
- momchenr 14y agoAaaaaaand, looks like it's back to normal. :) http://googl.com/#q=stack+overflow http://googl.com/#q=stack+overflow
- ck2 14y agoNot sure if they fixed it since this post went live on HN but I am not seeing that. For me SO is first with six "breakout" links below it, and then wikipedia entry about it. But I don't allow javascript or cookies on google search which may get me a less filtered result.
- largesse 14y agoI love how this post points out a problem and fixes it at the same time.
- piyush_soni 14y agoMay be someone fixed something, but I'm seeing stackoverflow as the top result now for both with or without inverted commas.
- jan_g 14y agoYep, it's ranked #1 for me too, but this could be linked to regional and/or personal data (I'm not based in US).
- anotherbadlogin 14y agoAlso ranking highly: Bullshit sites that simply scrape StackOverflow and re-present its content in a tiny column surrounded by ads. And of course Google was supposed to add (or restore?) the means to block sites from search results, but month after month they still don't do it.
- miga 14y agoNot any more...
- mtgx 14y agoIt ranks 1, 2, 3 and 4 for me - in the same time.
- nkurz 14y agoDo you have your preferences set to return more than the default 10 results? When set to the max of 100, I get a lot of suboptimal results. It's getting better than it used to be, but the worst case I found had slots 1-70 all occupied by the same site. I think it there must not be much testing for the non-default settings. I much preferred the earlier interface where results from the same site were grouped, capped at a small number, and there was a "More results from this site" link.