
Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail - cwan
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/12/dishwashers_dem.html
======
akamaka
I don't see anyone addressing the question of whether good content actually
_exists_ for certain keyword searches. How can you blame Google for giving you
bad results when they are the _only_ results?

For example, if you search for "digital camera reviews", the first hit is
dpreview.com, a fantastic site. Is there an equivalent site for appliances?

The real message here is that keyword optimized sites are addressing a real
need, but doing it poorly, which suggests that there might be big
opportunities for people who can beat them by producing better quality
content.

------
tptacek
The top search results for "Dishwasher" are EnergyStar and ConsumerSearch,
followed by major manufacturers and retailers (ie Best Buy), followed by How
Stuff Works.

The top search result for "washing machine" is ConsumerSearch. The second and
third results are spam. The fourth is Wikipedia.

The top search results for "dryer" are the same as "dishwasher", but in a
slightly different order.

The top search results for "refrigerator" are the same as "dryer", but in a
slightly more vendor-friendly order. Again, no spam.

No spam on the first SERP for "microwave oven", either.

~~~
robk
But as soon as you search for a specific model, the spam gets out of control.
Try to find a review on a particular model, or whether it's comparatively
good, and you'll get very little material but tons of price shopper sites and
other spammy reviews sites.

~~~
tptacek
"Long-tail" SEO is definitely a weakness in Google quality control. It is
remarkably easy to get yourself into the first search result page by
autogenerating specific pages for specific models, a trick I learned recently
from patio11, and for which I surely owe him a drink (my mom, a teacher,
already has enough bingo cards).

~~~
patio11
The 45 second explanation of this: Fat head SEO is dominated by the link
graph, which is (by design) difficult to influence in a scalable algorithmic
fashion. Long tail SEO is dominated by on-page factors, domain authority, and
information architecture [+]. If you have a reasonably trusted domain name and
a way of generating hundreds or thousands of pages of more than minimal value,
you'll tend to rank for those subjects by default.

This doesn't have to harm the user experience, incidentally. I am fairly
upfront about what I'm doing: there are about 700 pages on my website which
cost me about $3 each to write, and they are all designed to rank highly for a
single search term or small basket of search terms. Probably 95% of them
deserve the #1 ranking on Google because they are the best content for that
search term on the Internet. (Better than 80% of them are the _only_ content
for that search term on the Internet.)

Similarly, the context the discussion I had with Thomas was also about
creating user value out of a resource he already possessed but wasn't
surfacing in a manner optimal to either searchers or his business interests.

[+] Edited to add information architecture, which I forgot to mention because
I haven't worked on improving it in a while. Effective content siloing and
interlinking is a major factor in why my site works as well as it does.

------
albertsun
I see the problem as Google having reached a large enough scale for them to
affect the web in the same way that you affect the price of a stock if your
trade order is large enough.

When Google first wrote their search algorithm, they tailored it to the web in
order to produce good results. Now we're in the opposite situation where
everyone tailors the web to fit the algorithm. I believe this is a worse
world. I would rather see site creators focus on creating the best experience
for visitors to the site instead of trying to play the SEO game, either white
or black hat.

In addition, it probably creates a feedback loop that stifles innovation in
search algorithms. Google issues recommendations on how to do SEO, so sites
follow those guidelines, which in turn leads to the web conforming to what
Google's algorithm wants the web to look like.

A concrete example: Newspaper editors used to pride themselves on writing
witty and clever headlines for their stories. But SEO guidelines dictate
putting lots of search keywords in the headline and page title, leading to
bland and boring headlines. Google could change their algorithm to accomodate
the way headlines are written instead of the reverse.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a bit (way) overblown. To me it sounds like a rant looking for a place
to happen. I will freely acknowledge that people are creating content that
provides little value to the searcher but rank highly in result-listings and
picking up the ad money. But even if you get to a good appliance site,
manufacturers are _also_ gaming the review process so that you're unlikely to
be able to tell the difference between somebody who really liked a product and
some shill from corporation X.

Simply because sites appear in the listing that you don't like doesn't mean
they are spammy. People are also writing good content for the same reason. If
folks are searching for material and you can provide something unique and
valuable (which is really only determined by the consumer), there is a role
for additional content providers in any area. Heck, there was a HN article a
week or two ago about a company that is making huge bucks providing random
video instruction. Remember these guys?
<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/>

Finally there is existing content that is gaming Google's system to gain
ranking where it probably doesn't deserve it as well, keying off of strategic
partnerships and other things that just make them look better.

Once again, boys and girls, Google is an algorithm, not a way of life.
Whenever you put an algorithm at the center of your company people are going
to manipulate it. Google doesn't get to have the "magic" or right algorithm
that is somehow non-game-able any more than Microsoft or anybody else does.
This is an evolutionary process and we've got to expect change and adaptation.
Seeing a lot of spammy sites in your results just means that the system is
gearing up for the next evolutionary leap. Can't wait to see what it is.

As a personal story, I have a massage chair that gave me fits when I bought it
a few years ago. So I put the name and model in my blog.

To this day I get about a comment a month with somebody asking questions about
the chair and somebody else responding. Was that a spam article? Would it have
been a spam article if I had purposely targeted that particular chair's
keywords?

I think it's just content, and I think the rest is just content, and I think
people write content for all kinds of reasons. If you incentivize it, people
are going to do more of it. Search-by-keyword incentivizes creating content.

~~~
NathanKP
_Once again, boys and girls, Google is an algorithm, not a way of life._

It seems obvious yet profound at the same time.

------
josefresco
"...churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you're done. On the web, no-
one knows you're a content-grinder."

Spoken by someone who has never run an active content-based advertising
revenue business. What you don't see behind that site with crappy content are
100's if not thousands of links pointing to that site. And THAT my friend is
the real problem with Google search. Simply cranking out content is only a
small part of the equation and will get you no where.

------
csmeder
I have never understood why google doesn't have a down vote button next to
each link. If a domain gets too many down votes (from valid Gmail users) it is
marked as spam. -- at the very least allow users to block the bad domain from
coming up in their own personal future searches.

Any google search employees have an answer?

My only guess is that google seems to be anti crowd source and pro algorithm?

~~~
bigiain
Don't you pretty much get this in the [comment] [promote] [delete] links after
the cache link if you're logged in with a google account when you search?

(I haven't got time to go looking to see what the button class="w5" does, but
I'll be good money Google records everytime you click one of those buttons)

------
jimmybot
_Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail_

What the heck is this supposed to mean?

Is it just a catchy title or is there some unintuitive but turns out really
appropriate metaphor going on here that I missed?

~~~
josefresco
Is there a reason why you can't read the article? It's pretty clear what the
author means.

~~~
jimmybot
What indicated that I didn't read the article?

I understand there are content grinders out there that are made to rank high
for Google (but see, they are _not_ made _by Google_ nor are they _Google
itself_ ). It sounds a lot more like giving a snake what it likes to eat--say
rats--rather than a snake eatings its own tail, but since you say it's clear,
please do enlighten me because I honestly don't get how the metaphor is
supposed to work.

------
pmorici
I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. This guy obviously
read the TechCrunch piece along the same lines and then wrote some idiotic
blog post about a problem that doesn't exist.

~~~
barrkel
The problem is very definitely real. "Helpful" comparison and review sites
come up far too often, filled to the brim with affiliate links and, if you're
lucky, excerpts from and links to reviews only tangentially related to the
product at hand, when you go searching for a product that doesn't have
dominant niche sites.

And I don't see how Kedrosky is a black pot in this case. He is not a search
engine, nor is he a spammer, nor a purveyor of affiliate-linking review sites.

~~~
pmorici
"Find some popular keywords that lead to traffic and transactions, wrap some
anodyne and regularly-changing content around the keywords so Google doesn't
kick you out of search results, and watch the dollars roll in"

Is he not doing exactly what he describes? He is writing about a topic
popularized earlier in the day by TechCrunch. There are no objective
measurements of the assertion that searching for dishwashers produces spam. As
comments here note, searches for "dish washer" product pretty good results.
Face it, it's the HN equivalent of Google spam.

