I don't know about 'broken' per se, but I know that Google is providing less 'relevant' results now than it was 9 months ago. The shift appears to be because of the harsh penalization of newer sites. While in theory this may be a good way to block spammers and link junkies, it also hampers the ability of great new sites to get listed. This hurts the whole web because when sites with great content and great material (that's also TIMELY - because it isn't a year old) get pushed out of the index, no one visits them. If no one visits, the webmaster's and content developers don't get money and they can't continue making great content. The whole web loses out. Yahoo and MSN should have picked up on this, but I think right now Google's big advantage is in how much they can crawl and how fast they can do it. I don't know enough about spider technology, but I know that Yahoo and MSN are so far behind that they haven't been able to catch up or even narrow the gap with indexing. I think their algos are probably better already...
Yahoo's duplicate content filter (if any) is terrible. MSN's new SE sounds promising but is taking way too long IMO. I was hoping for a speedier reaction, especially when yuo look at the money they are throwing against the project. They should buy a copy of G's index to start off with...
Yahoo also seems to be extremely slow at removing non-existent pages from their index. Maybe we should start a Yahoo is broken thread.
SEbasic, why so sensitive about PR? If one day your browser showed only websites as they were many months ago, wouldn't you call it broken? And if it turned out that someone did it deliberately, would that make any difference?
It would make a difference. If something was done intentionally, it's not broken, it's simply not as it was before.
So if someone were to break a glass intentionally, you would not call it broken, but just "not as it was before"?
It isnt the same comparison. Google blocking use of the Toolbar is an intentional act to make it more difficult for people who do SEO. Now, if they broke the glass intentionally to make it more difficult drink out of it- then there would be a purpose behind it- and yes, it would be, "Not as it was before"
Of course it would be "not as it was before", but I don't see why you would not call it broken, "if they broke the glass intentionally". Must be either my lack of SEO expertise or my ignorance of the English language. Please help to remove my ignorance.
I disagree with the statement 'PR is Broken', simply because it isn't... Toolbar PR (That is what we are talking about here), is simply not being updated. It works just fine. They just haven't updated it. Simple as that.
It appears that that is changing before our very eyes... Not for all of my sites, but I do see some pages showing pr that did not previously. Again, I don't give a rats a** about pr, but it's one of those nice touchy feeley things to have green show up for your own pages
Unreal- love this update. It seems to be from about 8-12 days ago. Have a category with No PR added around that time, while one just two days before is a 5.
I have a new site, 5 pages. Internal pages: 0, 0, 2, 3 Home Page: 0 How can the two internal pages have their PR when the index page is zero? There are no IBLs pointing to those two pages. Only links from the home page. Can anyone explain this? Thanks.
I have an internal Category with PR6 and all 50 sub articles PR5- while the front page is PR5 also- pretty odd on this end too.
It is a strange update... It will take a while to figure this one out I think At least we know that toolbar PR works now
The original statement was that Google is broken. Not just PR. PR is only a tiny part of what we know is Google. Even now the PR is updated, there still remain questions.
I am much bemused by the posters here who assert that "Google isn't broken because it still returns good search results." My reliable desk dictionary shows, of course, many nuanced definitions for good, but the #1 is as a general term of approval or commendation, meaning "as it should be" or "better than average". That does not fit Google's results. (Well, the first part, which is what is material, does not: "average" has no context here.) I have said essentially this same thing countless times here and on other forums: Having most leading results relevant is not satisfactory performance; satisfactory performance is having most relevant results leading.There is a huge difference between the two conditions. As it is, Google consistently, on almost any topic, buries good to excellent sites down in the #100+, #200+, even #300+ range. That is not "good" performance. You don't have to take my word for this: as I have also said countless times, do it yourself. Pick three or four topics that you feel confident you have expertise in, and do a search. Go through the links down to at least #500. You will, just as I have said, find numerous--not odd occasional, but numerous--sites buried so deep an archaeological dig team is needed to find them. That should not be in the least surprising to anyone who has even the most elementary grasp of how Google works. I'm not going to rehash that yet again, but the setup is such that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and an awful lot of excellent sites are set up by folk who are expert in their field, but not in web-site promotion, and so are "poor", in this context, right off the bat. Take it from there. Till this insane "links are votes" hebephrenia is abandoned, and real, on-page content is used to determine relevance, SEs will continue to do a grave disservice to their users.