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More human editors needed at Google
Do a search for reel mower in Google. Now tell me how many domains occupying the top positions are owned by the same greedy person?
Is it fair to have one person owning multiple positions in search for the exact same phrase if he has multiple sites?
How does this help the searcher, do they know that all the sites they are visiting are owned by the same person? How do you bargain shop in that?
Is there such a thing as a “doorway domain”? Darn right there is!
How is a doorway domain different than a doorway page?
The above example is where I believe Google is failing, their algorithms DO NOT detect multi-domain ownership and this is why they need more human editors until they can figure out how to detect greed.
It would also be nice if someone took what we point out as webmasters seriously like Vanessa Fox used to.
Read:
The Roll of Humans in Google Search – by Matt Cutts
I am not going to even bother to read the New York Times article (linked in Matts post) on this subject because I am sure they do not have a clue, to have a clue it would help if you sell a product and compete in organic search. You want to find out what is wrong or right about search today? Ask a webmaster!
Google is currently getting owned by those who have multiple domains, human intervention might be required in this area but so far I see no traces of it.
Update: Forced myself to read that New York Times article about human edited search engines and just wanted to note that Google is still the better search engine by far, we just expect more from them. Go Google!
June 25th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Google has been a registrar for some time and I’ve seen some of our unpublished domains get picked up by the Googlebot. If your domains don’t have privacy then Google knows who owns them.
June 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Fair? What’s that got to do with it? If I build 5 quality sites targeting a keyword (and all within Google’s guidelines) why is that unfair?
Geez I’ve already got to work at these domains by going out my way to add in decent (non-duplicated) content! :)
It’s hardly black hat :)
June 29th, 2007 at 11:08 am
I do not think Google intended it to be this way.
July 7th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
It’s just thorough SEO. Multiple domains for the same product is standard practice for the beginnings of a successful business. It requires work as Shaun said, and shows that the owner of the sites is enough of an authority on the subject to provide non- duplicated content on multiple sites.
July 8th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
I agree that more human editors seems like a good idea as far as fairness goes. Then again as one of the earlier comments stated, just because someone targets a keyword with 5 non-duplicate domains, that doesn’t mean they should be penalized.
I would like to thank you for making my stumbling that much more enjoyable.
July 8th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
It is not fair to say that domains own by the same person should not rank well. Where as publishing companies and corporations have hundreds of domains ranking well due to their interlinking networks.
Google should strive to deliver the best search results and leave domain ownership out of the algorithm.
July 9th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
If someone is selling a reel mower as an affiliate for Amazon.com and ranking in the top 5 positions in Google with 5 different domains for the same exact phrase this does not deliver the best search results. That is exactly what is happening, look around, in this example it was two websites taking the top 3 positions but there are greater extremes…
Now if Google places one or two of these sites (owned by the same person) algorithmically as an authority in position #1 they got a real problem if the domain owner is a snake dressed in home and garden apparel.
I play fair in this same area and expect others to do the same, if Google is true to it’s “guidelines” they will clean it up.
I think the problem is they rely on stupid algorithms and believe they can do it all, the last time I checked the humans are beating the robots in this game of chess…