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What did EE do that was worth of scorn? Wasted our fucking time: I want to know how to do X, if you want me to pay for that knowledge fine but don't do some sh

by swang 13y ago

What did EE do that was worth of scorn? Wasted our fucking time: I want to know how to do X, if you want me to pay for that knowledge fine but don't do some shitty thing like cloaking the site so people would get tricked into paying while at the same time gaming Google to get these higher results. Manipulated people into paying for the site: It's high up on Google so it must have the answer right? OK I guess I'm going to have to pay or else my ass gets fired. But don't pretend like what EE did was "OK" because some Matt Cutts video said it was. Obviously it was not because it got hit and sank in rankings. SO wasn't what killed EE with it's "negative campaign," it was already well hated before SO came onto the scene. Good riddance.

andy_adams 13y ago
If you're running a company with 50+ employees that is having success on Google, and Google explicitly tells you what you're doing is OK, you'd probably make a similar decision. At the time of the Matt Cutts video, EE was serving the full content to users who clicked through - the answer was just buried at the bottom of the page. Crummy, sure. Definitely not going to win them many friends. Worth getting so angry over? Not in my mind. Clearly you disagree, and that's fine. I think your mind is made up and I don't have hopes to change it.
- taproot 13y ago
  > If you're running a company with 50+ employees that is having success on Google, and Google explicitly tells you what you're doing is OK, you'd probably make a similar decision. Google doesn't click on the links it shows, your customers do. What google says is "OK" for them, is not always going to be "OK" for your potential customers. Try giving this recent submission a read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6399494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6399494 Also, what does running a company with 50+ employees have to do with making a similar decision? You'd think with more employees you'd be more likely to find the guy that stands up and says "this is fucking retarded what are you thinking" > At the time of the Matt Cutts video, EE was serving the full content to users who clicked through - the answer was just buried at the bottom of the page. Crummy, sure. Definitely not going to win them many friends. Worth getting so angry over? Not in my mind. I don't know about you but when I have no idea how to fix a mission critical bug and need a fix ASAP and I search google but all I get is pages and pages of links to your site which "doesn't give me the answer" i get pretty pissed off, especially because you're giving google the answer in order to clutter up all those results pages and rank relevant. And I say "doesn't give me the answer" because, just so you know, I never knew there was answers at the bottom of the page until jeff pointed it out. Look, I get it questions and answers are just metrics on a screen to you, but questions and answers to the users are MUCH much more. You broke google, fucking with us when we least needed a fucking with. And to me, that is worth getting angry over.

by swang 13y ago

andy_adams 13y ago

If you're running a company with 50+ employees that is having success on Google, and Google explicitly tells you what you're doing is OK, you'd probably make a similar decision. At the time of the Matt Cutts video, EE was serving the full content to users who clicked through - the answer was just buried at the bottom of the page. Crummy, sure. Definitely not going to win them many friends. Worth getting so angry over? Not in my mind. Clearly you disagree, and that's fine. I think your mind is made up and I don't have hopes to change it.

taproot 13y ago
> If you're running a company with 50+ employees that is having success on Google, and Google explicitly tells you what you're doing is OK, you'd probably make a similar decision. Google doesn't click on the links it shows, your customers do. What google says is "OK" for them, is not always going to be "OK" for your potential customers. Try giving this recent submission a read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6399494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6399494 Also, what does running a company with 50+ employees have to do with making a similar decision? You'd think with more employees you'd be more likely to find the guy that stands up and says "this is fucking retarded what are you thinking" > At the time of the Matt Cutts video, EE was serving the full content to users who clicked through - the answer was just buried at the bottom of the page. Crummy, sure. Definitely not going to win them many friends. Worth getting so angry over? Not in my mind. I don't know about you but when I have no idea how to fix a mission critical bug and need a fix ASAP and I search google but all I get is pages and pages of links to your site which "doesn't give me the answer" i get pretty pissed off, especially because you're giving google the answer in order to clutter up all those results pages and rank relevant. And I say "doesn't give me the answer" because, just so you know, I never knew there was answers at the bottom of the page until jeff pointed it out. Look, I get it questions and answers are just metrics on a screen to you, but questions and answers to the users are MUCH much more. You broke google, fucking with us when we least needed a fucking with. And to me, that is worth getting angry over.