Something Is Broken at Google

Cotse.Net ^ | 05-16-2006 | Steve Gielda

[mkjessup]

COTSE is a privacy service that I subscribe to and heartily recommend, and this morning I discovered that the COTSE proxy servers are indeed being blocked for some unknown reason by Google, which owns Blogspot. This is another example of Google playing God with the Internet so far as controlling what people are able to view, access and search for via their service.

[Echo Talon]

I hardly ever use google, i mostly use Yahoo... yes I have blogspot site and tried to use their adsense program but they kept using liberal ads even though I would set them to be filtered out... I have since removed all ads.

[Flavius]

i wish there was no google

but that does not seem likely

[Kieri]

I frequently do a search for a handful of very specific terms. About two weeks ago the normal -- and expected listings -- changed dramatically. I kept getting irrelevant pages and links for sites that had nothing to do with my search terms. I've tried being more specific under advanced search but it just turns up even more bizzare listings.

This kind of nonsense is going to drive away business very quickly.

[clyde asbury]

ping

[saganite]

I entered "privacy service with quotes and coste.net came up # 5. I don't know what the complaint is here.

[SauronOfMordor]

I just entered "privacy service" (with quotes around the phrase) and cotse shows up as #7. Taking away the quotes results in over 3 billion hits and cotse does not show on the first page

Them's the breaks

[toddlintown]

Google's busy writing checks to MoveOn.org.

[Northern Alliance]

Getting gateway pages instead of useful information in the search hits is becoming a major problem, but I switched to Yahoo a while back and it does not seem to be any better.

[caver]

I've noted too that some things I search for seem to become less relevant. I didn't know that it was Google, but it seems like they are not near as good as they used to be.

[SauronOfMordor]

About two weeks ago the normal -- and expected listings -- changed dramatically. I kept getting irrelevant pages and links for sites that had nothing to do with my search terms.

Spammers have branched out into spamming search engines. Disk space is cheap, DSL service is cheap, so somebody generates gigabytes of web pages with common search terms featuring his spam ads

[dawn53]

Google is self-editing (on the free side). You can apply to be an editor. These so- called "editors" evidently set the priority of sites that show up in a search.

I manage online bidding for a company, and try as we will, we can't figure out how Google figures our bill. It's definitely not straightforward like Yahoo/Overture pricing for ads. Of course, Google has agreed to settle a huge class action lawsuit, acknowledging click fraud has been going on.

But Google won't disclose how they "calculate" your charges or your placment among the "free listings."

Personally, I think people are starting to use other search engines because I'm noticing "impressions" overall, are significantly lower than they were this time last year.

Also, Amazon has just decided to go with MSN powered searches instead of Google powered searches. Google may have peaked...time will tell.

[martin_fierro]

COTSE

Whatever you do, don't Google GOATSE.

[csvset]

He'll be happy to note that Clusty listed Coste.Net first when searching for privacy service.

I use Clusty as much as possible. A fellow Freeper recommended it a few months ago.

[mkjessup]

Whatever you do, don't Google GOATSE.

I am not going to ask why, nor am I going to tempt fate.

Of course you understand that telling someone not to do something is like telling them not to think of a purple elephant.

[BlessedBeGod]

Same thing with their news searches. Their news search used to produce more articles than any other. Now it produces way fewer than alltheweb.com.

[colonialhk]

THat is when I dropped them

[harrowup]

"Whatever you do, don't Google GOATSE."

I am not going to ask why, nor am I going to tempt fate.
Of course you understand that telling someone not to do something is like telling them not to think of a purple elephant.

As hard as I try I cannot think of a purple elephant...'course, I'm colorblind; but I'm now going to google GOTSE.

[mkjessup]

As hard as I try I cannot think of a purple elephant...'course, I'm colorblind; but I'm now going to google GOTSE.

I would urge you not to do so.

[samtheman]

gateway search engine

What are these?