Lies, Damned Lies, and Google
Another reminder that "plugging Google in a story has become almost a telltale sign of sloppy reporting, a hack's version of a Rolodex. Journalists, especially ones from highbrow publications like The New Yorker, should be sourcing hard stats, not search-engine evidence, to bolster their stories.
Feb 19, 2004 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(8)
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8 comments about 'Lies, Damned Lies, and Google'What happened to the integrity of google. They are becoming another corporate greed machine even before going IPO. I expect it would be best for google to just sell out to MSN or Yahoo since they have the experience and knowhow to make it happen. Google is a grave disapointed to all online searcher. I know use "I'm gonna goog" instead of "I'm gonna google" You can take a guess in its meaning - but a hit - it does not mean searching,
Mike Wallace
Posted by Mike Wallace at February 20, 2004 12:29 PM
People need to stop googling themselves to death trying to find some relevant results on the has-been called Google. Everybody knows that Google is Garbage. When I hear someone say they "googled" something, I immediately think "I searched in vain for". I have also hear a lot of tech people at work using "googled" in place of "getting stoned or drunk" - i.e: we got seriously googled last night!
Posted by andre mclaren at February 20, 2004 12:57 PM
I hate google. Why? Because they hate me. They hate the fact that I want to monetize my website. They hate the fact that my optimized web site comes up first in search results, and that I am profiting from this fact. They hate the idea of a playing field where those that invest time and money can achieve better ranking than other web sites. They hate the fact that I can "manipulate" their search results to display my own website - regardless if it is relevant or not!
Meanwhile Google has no problem "monetizing' thier own website and services. They have no problem COMPETING with their own search results. How they can speak of integrity when their entire search engine revolves around generating revenue from commercial websites.
Why do commercial websites never seem to come up in searches? Because google demands you pay 25 cents to $25 PER CLICK for traffic. With google it's all about money.
Posted by bert at February 20, 2004 1:05 PM
I used Google adwords and it never worked - I had to switch to Yahoo. Yahoo has been going great. Yahoo seems to care about thier customers more and have a better overall system.
Posted by daug brown at February 20, 2004 1:09 PM
I have determined that Google currently has 156,970 different penalties that can not only drop PageRank™, but completely eliminate a website from search results. Google has a team of 24 employees working day and night on developing new penalties. Google typically introduces between 5-25 new penalties each week. If you want your website to receive traffic, you must learn what these penalties are and avoid them at all costs. Penalties usually start accumulating immediately once a web site is indexed into Google.
The Google Team believes that in order to maintain relevant and dynamic search results, that it must move beyond analyzing the simple code of a web page. In order to properly identify and rate a website, a comprehensive profile on the web page creator and other involved parties must also be reviewed. For instance, a website on surfing created by a teenager in Kentucky who has never seen a beach in his life would be immediately and swiftly punished by the GoogleBot. Google's logic says that this kid simply does not have the education, background or experience to competently maintain a relevant website on this topic, so therefore Google is forced to remove it or assign a severe penalty. Keep this is mind when creating a website. If you create a website that does not match the interests, skills, experience and education that Google has gathered about you, then your website has little chance of being returned in a search.
Posted by Googled at February 20, 2004 1:12 PM
Google is good - Yahoo is GRRREAT. So what all this "I googled" stuff about???
Posted by susan townsand at February 20, 2004 1:19 PM
"I googled" is slang for "I screwed up". I am surprised not many know this. People in my office have been using this term for a couple years now. Personally, I have never googled anything. No wait, I remember I googled big time once when I spilled coffee on a prospective client. My boss said, "no more googling or your fired!"
Posted by andy at February 24, 2004 12:49 PM
This is amazing, all these people that dislike google (I personally love it but, hey, to each his own) but not a single comment about the actual article. Not one shread of actual though provoking commentary. Obviously people missed the mark here because the article wasn't about Google being good or bad, but reporters being lazy and treating google results as meaningful results.
No wonder you people don't like Google, none of you have any idea what you are looking for and can't comprehend things when you read them, such as the point of an article.
Posted by Shawn at April 27, 2004 1:55 PM
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