

Google Can’t Get You Lucky Anymore: It is Search Result Impotent - gmyachtsman
http://blog.thatwayhat.com/?p=467

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SethMurphy
I tried "sun hats" and got the ad from coolibar and only one other result out
of ten on the first page. So, I ask for some more facts, not just anecdotal
evidence of failure. Do you visit coolibar regularly? were you logged in or
incognito? I tried both and got similar results. How many searches did you
perform to come up with these anomalies? Have you seen this behavior before or
perhaps it was just a bug?

UPDATE: It appears we have been spammed. To answer my own question, I think he
has been on coolibar. This person is launching a site that is a directory for
hats (first link above blog post). His lack of any response says it all.
Clever ploy ...

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gmyachtsman
I posted the pdf's of the results (linked to the search terms). I see google
giving me results like this a lot. I signed out of google, cleared my browser
cache and history, and still the same results. I never joined google plus.

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travisp
This may be the result of some weird personalization specific to the author,
which I suppose may be interesting itself. I do not see similar results at all
(one result from coolibar for sun hats and 1 result from amazon for womens sun
hats).

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gmyachtsman
I am getting this kind of result all the time from google. Interesting you are
not.

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13rules
I am getting similar results as travisp ... definitely not 34 in a row from
Alibaba. Definitely some personalization from Google going on here.

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gmyachtsman
Here is the url from google search. I should have given it originally:
[https://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=sun+ha...](https://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=sun+hats&oq=sun+hats)

~~~
13rules
Here's what I get for your comparison:
[https://img.skitch.com/20120814-j2xu3wswpure3aji84ah63566g.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20120814-j2xu3wswpure3aji84ah63566g.jpg)

~~~
gmyachtsman
13rules, are you getting 10 results on a page or 100? I can't see if there are
more than 10 or see the url. The problem is only happening when displaying
more than 10 search results on a page.

~~~
13rules
Oh weird ... I see what you are talking about now. The num=100 does nothing to
change the number of search results apparently, you have to change it in the
settings.

With it at 100 results the first 19 are for coolibar.com and the next 8 for
amazon.com

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lomegor
Unfortunately, I can't reproduce these results. I'm not saying they are false,
but that maybe they have to do with personalized results for the author. Did
you try logging out and doing the same searches? There was a maximum of
results from the same page that could be shown (I think it was about five), so
I'm not sure how you can get this results.

Also, there's another issue. Even if you get the same webpages all the time,
that doesn't mean that those aren't the same results. Especially when webpages
today have a lot of different content. I.e. diversity != quality.

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gmyachtsman
From what everyone here is saying, it is clear to me I am being put in some
kind of fish bowl with the results I am getting while other people are not in
my same fish bowl. I can't explain it, since (as I mentioned above) I cleared
my history and cache, signed out, restart browser and still the same outcome.
Personally I care a lot about the results both for my business purposes and my
personal searching, so this upsets me a lot.

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binarysolo
Weird I have pretty different results to your search. Odd outlier outcome of
Google personalization or perhaps even malware?

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gmyachtsman
hmmm, I had not thought of malware.

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binarysolo
This might be a long shot, but consider doing an online antivirus scan such as
housecall.trendmicro.com and see what's up.

In my younger days of downloading things from the Internet, I've downloaded
malware that hijacks your search results to be spamtacular -- for fun and
profit on their end of course.

~~~
gmyachtsman
Hey binary, if you still care -- I realized that these google search results
of link after link from the same domain, happens only when you have the search
setting to return more than 10 results per page (worst problem at 100
results/page). Change your settings to 100 and you will see the same.

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gmyachtsman
I solved this problem -- I had my search preferences set to return 100
results. If I change it to return 10 results, I no longer get duplication of
results. Seems like google really wants to push users to refresh their ads.

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jervisfm
gmyachtsman, if you are searching specifically for products, try using
Google's shopping search : <http://www.google.com/shopping>

~~~
gmyachtsman
Thanks, I do know google shopping and even list my products there. I wonder if
other people are having the same problems for things that they search for
frequently -- whatever that is.

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gmyachtsman
What do you think, am I right about this?

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davewasthere
Here's what I see (with personalisation). Without is roughly the same, only
the two ads top right are missing and replaced with something that looks more
generic.

<http://i.imgur.com/xwoOP.png>

~~~
gmyachtsman
Hey Dave, if you are still interested -- I figured out what is causing my
funky search results. If you set your google search to return 100 results on a
page, you will see the same: multiple results in a row from a few domains. (I
edited my original post too, so that people can see how to duplicate the
problem).

