http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/10/google_microsoft_redux/ I thought this was a great article you guys might want to check out, if you haven't already. It illustrates the idea that if there is a lot of spam in the top SERP's that Google makes more from users clicking on 'relevant' ads. Kind of disturbing that eventually everyone will have to pay to get any kind of results in the Big Bad Search engine. That is, unless you are a spammer.
Not entirely true. It's all about how adept you are at searching. If you don't search right, you get spam.
search right? didn't realize there was critera on how to search. When you search for something...the most relevant sites should appear. You should not have to "trick" the search engine into giving you what you need.
It is kind of ass backwards, but some of it seems to be powerful theory. After all, with all of the market share they have, in terms of search, why not. Seems to be a good business model, whether ethical or not.
I don't buy it either. If google did that, they would become less relevant and less people would search there leaving room for other search engines to take over market share. It's not like they can kick their heals up and put in a little extra spam to make money without serious repercussions. Plus, the article didn't give any examples. It is pure speculation. Meanwhile, Matt Cutts has given examples about how the Big Daddy update is cracking down on spam by indexing less pages from sites that engage in questionable linking practices. All evidence points to google wanting to become a better search engine, not a worse one.
A Blackhat guy openned my eyes to this. The real key is that Google could eliminate much of the spam at the source by having Adsense sites go through a simple approval process. They could wipe out an entire industry. Someone does a search on MSN and clicks some spammy site. Whenever they click on an Adsense ad, Google makes money. So Google makes money on MSN and Yahoo searches. As long as their search technology is better than the competition they are quite happy. P.S. If I never post here again you will know why.
When will people figure out that people do not use Google because it is the best search engine. They use it because it is the most marketed. They took Gorilla marketing to a new high (or low depending on your point of view).
Personally, even I don't buy that conspiracy theory.Google is a very structured and better search engine than others.
Very structured indeed. SERPs,PRs, page saturations, backlinks, all are fluctuating for at least 6-7 months. Sandboxing very valuable sites for stupid aging filter excuses. Because there are spammers all around the world will not make all newcomers, bad websites. Google was a better search engine before it got bigger, now the only thing, they care about is adding more revenue through adwords and that's all it's about.
Google's bread and butter (in terms of what brings users back) is, and always has been it's search results. So I don't think they would risk losing their market share to drive more people to their Adwords links by purposely mucking their search results. Google has openly said that they're making an effort to shift 'commercial results' to their adwords program. And why shouldn't they! Adwords accounts for the bulk of their revenues and businesses don't get free advertising anywhere else, so why should they w/ Google. That doesn't mean that the unpaid results aren't relevant. Remember, they claim that 85%+ of the searches done on Google are 'informational'/'non-commercial'. So they need to keep them 'clean' if they want people to continue using their search.
i find searching for academic articles pretty accurate, but for casual things it seems that it's all kinda screwed up...SEO's fault?