Can Google please fix my search?

What google needs is some type of page ownership claim. Similar to claimid or technorati, but with google, you can control the pages that show in searches. Google gives you a code, you place it in your site, the claim is positive, and then you can say, “This is my site, but I don’t use it anymore, instead, this is my main site now.”

I know I am going to get slapped around by some google fanboys for saying that, or SEO freaks, but damn, I just want to be able to control what shows up and what doesn’t, I don’t care how high it shows.

Robert,

You are ignoring the real issue, Google is not the primary problem in this case, it’s your cyberjunk!

Why isn’t your old blog content integrated into this blog and the old blog shut down? It’s because blogs are generally web 1.0 beta software and the creators are not focusing on what customers need and want to be good net citizens.

If we allowed littering everywhere in nature the way we currently do on the web, we’d all be living under giant piles of garbage! It’s time for people to start picking up after themselves on the Internet where possible and for others to provide the tools to make that easy to accomplish.

I’ll write more on this later today if I have time.

However, if anyone would seriously like to fund a more relevant search engine than Google, contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the person with the business plan if the person is a qualified investor.

one easy answer … no

Why not change the old page to do a 302 redirect? Google will follow these and update the link. My website is hardly close to the popularity yours is, but I am able to get google to update my links within a few days by doing this.

Then again it is possible you have no control over the old blog, and in that case you are going to have a tough time getting the links to update – until you can get more links on external pages pointing to the new site with similar keywords.

Steve,

Robert probably does not remember password to his old blog and now is blaming Google for this.

Hi Fanboys – the questions is *NOT* ‘why google is not listing correctly’ but ‘why google is not listing correctly is .FR when it can do so in .com’.

It’s not like Robert’s old blog has a ‘redirector’ visible to google.fr

Hey blogger@wordpress – why the Fanboys comment? (I’m getting sick of that word.)

And actually the question in this post was “why google is not listing correctly”.

Google has always displayed slightly different results when you go to the different google country sites – I believe it places more emphasis on links/results from that country. Perhaps there are more people in the French “google world” that link to scobleizer.com/wordpress.com than in the global “google world”.

@8 You are guessing and justifying google’s actions here.

The question in the post linked here is about the difference between the fr and com results.

I am not a google hater. I feel this could simply be a mistake in google’s algorithm or in result pruning

But you would rather justify things on behalf of google than to even think that this could have been a mistake. Why?

Whatever be the problem and your explanation on how Google technology works, the bottom line fact is that Google does find a 12 month old and stale link. This must be embarrasing for Google. And should be a proof that Google is falling behind in technology.

Search on a more advanced search engine, such as, live.com for the same query. You will get a relevant link on the top.

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-us&q=robert+scoble&FORM=TOOLBR

Disclaimer: The commentator works for Microsoft and may have biases in the subjective part of the opinion. The objective part of the opinion can be verified publically.

Kamal,

It’s interesting that http://www.msdewey.com and link you provided aren’t in sync on these results.

Did you change the ranking this morning on live.com or does microsoft/msn/live.com/msdewey.com have the same syncronization problem that Google has?

Live.com still brings up the old blog in 3rd place, that’s still a failure IMHO

Just doing a bit of testing and did a search for pizza and live.com comes up with http://www.kyzo.com/ as the number one entry? – kyzo sells computers

One wrong set of results will not prove that ‘google is falling behind in technology’. May be its true. But cant conclude based on ‘robert scoble’ query alone.

Google search is ultimately ‘software’ and it is bound to make some mistakes. But whats strange is this leads to one of the ‘extreme’ stand
(a) Google can never make a mistake. So scoblizer hasnt done what he needs to
(b) THis marks the end of google.

Obvioulsy neither is true.

(BTW, it would be great to have a discussion on google/apple/play station without having to bring in Microsoft)

Phil: no, that’s not a failure. Someone might be trying to find my old blog when they type “Scoble” into a search engine. It’s just that my old one probably isn’t the most relevant result.

I think it’s a case of does newness always determine relevancy..

In this particular case, you’re searching for “robert scoble” thus, BOTH links are highly relevant.

As to whether or not newness or age rank higher, this is still an ongoing question in search and it seems to vary by query.

Google has long held that an older site is more trusted than a newer site, while MSN has recently started giving a ranking boost to newer sites (as somebody who launches new sites often, I see them do really well in MSN, then poorly, then somewhere in the middle over time)

For a news query, new is better. But for a query like “buy cds” new isn’t the best. You’d probably want an established merchant here.

This is a problem that can be fixed by classifying queries as informational, transactional or navigational.

For informational, new is usually better. For news new is always better. (searching for proposal 2 michigan still shows me last election’s proposal, not this one’s) For transactional, new isn’t always better. For navigational, it can depend. I’d have to go with newer her too.

I just wanted to show how problems can occur when you assume anything based on age.

But if it is your old site that has all the linklove, what do you expect? Maybe you should have move your content and just provide a redirect?

Well – a 301 redirect (NOT a 302) would help – though I remeber Robert said that he for some reason can’t do this.

> It’s just that my old one probably isn’t the most relevant result.

Robert, didn’t you have your old site (http://scoble.weblogs.com/) for many more years than your current site? such that, there is much more material on yr old site and many more links pointing into yr former site from other sites when compared to your current site? so perhaps google is weighting the sheer volume of those links and the volume of yr content more heavily since they represent so much more of “scoble” on the web than does http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/? Btw the oldsite having much more content and having more links into it, isn’t google making a reasonable decision in terms of saying where a majority of scoble’s thoughts are represented on the web today?

Regarding the original complaint of Stéphane Rodriguez’s at http://www.arstdesign.com/BBS/BulletinBoard.php?qs_id=1761.

Stéphane cites a google study that says returning 10 results per page is more desirable than returning 30. He then takes that and turns that into what i think is a completely different point than google as making, and says “I can only wonder whether anybody would trade speed for quality results. If Google spends twice more time but comes up with much better results, I am absolutely ready to take that because it means the stuff I am looking for are more likely to be not just in the first results page, but also among the first top 5 (excluding ads on the top of course).”

Perhaps i don’t understand how google works, but i assume at least this:

- were google to return 30 results instead of 10 on one page, it would be the same results on one page as they now return on 3. So it’s not a matter of any of the later results suddenly jumping in the ranking and becoming #1.

- returning 30 results instead of 10 on one page has nothing to do with “spending time” to come up with “better results”. Google’s point was that people didn’t like the page loading time on 30. google wasn’t saying they weren’t spending the time they want to to perform a search.

It seems to me that Stéphane took a google comment about time to return html results on a single page and twisted it to be a more general statement about time to perform a search.

He also says:

“Let’s debunk another myth about Google : quality and consistency of results.”

a) i don’t expect different search engines for different countries to return the same search results. I would certainly hope they do not!

b) I don’t even expect that search engines in the same country will always return the exact same results. google’s localization engine falls into this.

Once i drop these two expectations, i’m not sure what arguments are left to say that google does not present “quality and consistent results.” i’m not saying they are “perfect” but what the hell does “perfect” mean anyway? it is the best search engine software i know of; that’s my only criteria.

Yes, one search result does not say much. It is true that on some searches Google performs better on some Windows Live. The point to note is that the number of queries on the latter category is increasing.
Each new query in the latter category is a proof that Google is falling behind in technology.

One can explain why Google performed worse than Live on Robert Scoble, but the explanation does not change the bottom line fact. Relevancy of a search algorithm is mathematically described by the set of assumptions the algorithm makes.

Assumption which were true five years ago may not remain true anymore. For an example when Google was created, a link represented an authentic vote of relevancy from one website to another. Now a link may be a paid link, such as links in payperpost or even adsense/adwords links. Nothing is wrong with this, except it violates Google’s assumption. In certain cases in the past when Google’s assumption is violated, Google tried to punish the violators instead of changing its own set of assumptions. Google forgets that its job is to evaluate the web as is, and not dictate the web and its business models. That’s not openness. In fact may hurt the open web and prevent the evolution of competing business models to Google.

In the case of query Robert Scoble, may be one of their assumption is violated. For an example the old webpage might have been evaluated to be more relevant because it may have more links coming in. Google has to figure out how to evolve their assumptions. A query like Robert Scoble is a proof that as the web evolves, the underline assumptions of search engines must evolve to keep the pace with it.

How about Search within Search?

Search for any popular keyword in Google. You will get…more results than you can handle.

Imagine, if you can lock this search result and search again, INSIDE IT. And do it all over again, and again, with multiple filters…

The results are likely to be fantastic.
http://ideaburger.blogspot.com/2006/11/making-google-better-2.html

Sergey and Larry, are you listening?

Jay, from Bangalore

It’s because you left your old website dangling with more links than you’d believe pointing to the old site. Plus Google hasn’t done any manual hand-coding for this search.

Typically when you move sites, you should do a permanent (301) redirect to the new location. Just ask Matt Mullenweg to fix you up with a permanent redirect.

I read Stéphane Rodriguez’s post, but that post has nothing to do with speed. It’s true that Google shows different results for different languages and countries. That’s intended, and it’s a good idea. The query [football] in google.com is not the same as in google.co.uk, and that’s as it should be.

“Typically when you move sites, you should do a permanent (301) redirect to the new location. Just ask Matt Mullenweg to fix you up with a permanent redirect.”

You mean Google can’t do the heavy lifting? It can’t learn by itself? Wow, that’s not what I expect from the best search engine.

“I read Stéphane Rodriguez’s post, but that post has nothing to do with speed.”

The post Scoble linked to was a follow-up of another post about Gmail speed. Also the statement from Ms Mayer on speed (twice the time for 30 results) led me to inspect quality and consistency.

I am afraid I will have to debunk two more myths about Google : neutrality, and organizing the world’s net information.

Matt: unfortunately my old blog is on a UserLand site and I no longer have control of it.

That was a really clueless post by Stéphane Rodriguez. Robert, are you simply blogging everyone that mentions your name?