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Went Hot: November 24, 2008 - 11:14 am
Posted By: styletime 223 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.wolf-howl.com)
Category: Google
42 Comments
Went Hot: November 24, 2008 - 11:14 am
Posted By: styletime 223 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.wolf-howl.com)
Category: Google
42 Comments
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Comments
Good think for GreaseMonkey. I cannot stand to see those vote up buttons. Hopefully someone will take note of this lack of consideration for users.
I agree 100% - I twittered that "People will just add spam comments on pop sites" when I first saw the service last week. Great article.
I as I stated in another topic on Sphinn, I really don't like SearchWiki, I don't get the point of it at all from an SEO perspective... First impressions from the majority of people are not all that good...
I would delete the first 'I' in my above post if I could figure out how to edit it.
Regardless of what 'we' think...it seems like the general population likes "SearchWiki". My recent article on how to remove searchwiki was front paged in digg...but after going through the comments i'd say the majority of the people -either didn't bother to have it on..or some of them actually said that they love that feature. Some even came to my blog and argued on the favour of SearchWiki.
Reference URL: http://digg.com/tech_news/How_To_Disable_Google_SearchWiki_from_Firefox_and_Opera
Much like "&pws=0" to turn off personalized search and then users getting to like personalized search, I think lots of people will like SearchWiki. I've found that after using it for a few days, it's really nice. There are unofficial ways to turn it off (e.g. Greasemonkey), and I've passed on the feedback that people are asking for an official way.
I think this is one of those areas where you're going to get criticized for both not moving forward and for moving forward. Michael Arrington has done posts saying that he doesn't like SearchWiki, but he did a post in May arguing that he wanted to see more and faster innovation in the search industry. If you're going to be criticized either way, I'd prefer that Google keep exploring ways to improve search.
@MattCutts - Well Until people can really get to know its 'benefits' i think it should be made 'optional' for users. Something like what you guys did with - Google SearchWiki Sound Effects - http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-searchwiki-with-sound-effects/
My comments on SearchWiki have been from an SEO perspective so far, I can imagine that others would find it more beneficial from a personal/home use perspective.
I think even I will use it with my personal Google account, I am sure it will prove beneficial for me. I won't be using the feature at all within SEO however... Not yet anyhow. I guess there may be more to come from the feature.
@MattCutts: Incidentely, even by using "&pws=0" it still doesn't appear to turn off SearchWiki - It is possible I might not be doing something correctly however...
i trust google to give me the results i want when i search... when i have to wade thru affiliate crap, MLM crap and stupid whiney people complaining... then i shall find another place to search...
you should add &hl=all
@mattcutts I'm going to go out on a limb and ask if you think it's so great then why "force" everyone to opt in? Gmail was a great service you didn't need to force ppl to want to use it. I bet if you made it so ppl had to choose to get search wiki we'd have much differ adoption rate. The same is true for personalization, you made it opt in didnt get the adoption rate you wanted so you forced it on everyone.
* going to get criticized for both not moving forward and for moving forward*
Ambiguous at best.
I don't think anyone would critize anything if all these self-serving,additional pageview producing advanced features were offered as opt in as opposed to by default but you can turn it off simply by adding (4iosu(UY^%$RWONS(USMM)ODNN GSWIYESY^Y&ASOOSBB + search) OR if that is too hard just go download a bandwidthheavy program that will remove the feature you didn't want in the first place.
@graywolf, I think Gmail is a great service, but if we gave everyone the ability to pick-and-choose whether to go with each change we did to Gmail, we'd be supporting a bunch of legacy code and user interfaces instead of moving forward with some of the nice things you can do in Gmail now. I take your feedback that some folks want a way to turn it off though, and I passed that feedback on to the team.
@mattcutts dont want to put words in your mouth here but could you clarify that it's going to be standard operating procedure for google to opt people into things by default now, cause that's kinda the way that sounds.
If that is the case how does that work with the "do things for the users" stance google has taken in the past?
Seems to me like letting users pick and choose what features they want is a user centric approach, and opting people in by default seems more company centric.
My vote is FOR search wiki. I think it *could* be a useful way to increase the accuracy and value of search. Unfortunately, everyone on this site is all too aware that it will be used by the spammers of the world for dubious purposes. As for turning it off...why? I haven't had much trouble ignoring the two tiny boxes. Maybe I'm missing something there.
Maybe I don't understand it, but it seems to me that this feature is inherently "Opt-In." If you don't vote something up or down, your results arent affected. Yes, there are some unused icons on the page if you don't participate, but it sounds like Matt and G are working on a way to remove them for those that would rather them not be there.
Also, RE: auto-opt-in. I agree that there should be an option to remove this feature, but I'm generally supportive of anything that gets people to try something new when it comes to technology and business. It forces people into considering the possiblity that there may be a better way of doing something and can lead to a more efficient world.
@timstaines I get you point about getting ppl to try new things but I just dont see auto opt in as a user centric behavior.
Building a great service that people want to opt into is another thing entirely ...
I really like search wiki. I think users voted sites will give it google a better edge in terms of providing search users with what they are looking for. I do think that spammers could use this, but it could also be a benefit to searchers. Personalized search could be scary for SEOs and make our jobs just that much harder.
I'm kind of torn about it as you can tell. One thing I am sure about is that google jumped the gun on this one.
Now all we need is a nice XSS hole in Google and we can automatically make our sites rank #1 for thousands of keywords. Great idea!
"could you clarify that it's going to be standard operating procedure for google to opt people into things by default now"
@graywolf, it's always been that way. When we rolled out PDFs in our search results, some people wanted to opt out of those, but we felt a) that the PDFs would be useful and b) giving options for every change would quickly lead to a complicated set of options, plus regular users could easily customize themselves into a bind where they don't get the best results. These days, you don't really see anyone asking for Google not to return PDFs.
Likewise with Update Fritz in summer 2003 when we switched from a batch index updated every 30 days or so to an incremental index that was updated every day. Go back to that time and you saw a bunch of people asking "Can you just make it the way it was? We liked the old stable search results. This everflux thing is annoying." But we felt that having a fresh index was the right thing to do, so we didn't provide an opt-out. Now if you asked someone "Hey, do you want a stale index where the data hasn't been refreshed in 30-45 days?" almost no one would want that. But if we provided users the option, we might still be supporting ancient code instead of minty fresh indexing.
That's not to say that we can't listen to feedback and respond to it, but we need to make changes that we feel are the right ones for our users. Luckily with UI changes, people that want to hack around and make their own changes can use tools such as Greasemonkey and customize things on their own.
thanks for the clarification.
All I can say is WOW.
How deciding things like everyone is now opted into personalized search because mom and dad ... err google decided it's best is good for the users is mind boggling.
How deciding everyone is now opted into search wiki follows a build it for the users is really amazing.
Sorry I just don't see how this is even close to adding in PDF's.
Matt, I think it's exceptionally bad that Google seems to rely on Greasemonkey as a way for uses to make Google do what they want to do. It means people have to go to third party apps that they might not want to trust, just to use your search engine in the way they want -- when opt-outs should be easy to implement.
You have a search preferences page. You let me set the number of results, subscribed links, get query suggestions and other things. I can control SafeSearch. SearchWiki is a dramatic change to the Google UI. Just let the people who don't want to see the control boxes appear opt-out of seeing them.
I agree with @dannysullivan - make this a preferences choice and don't confuse people. Everything I've heard that "average users" were immediately worried that the search results were no longer as reliable because they were being influenced by, in their words, "competitors." There was very real "doubt" that they could trust the SERPs anymore!
One even asked me if they should ask their friends to vote for their site or if competitors could "vote them down"...yes yes, we in the SEM industry know that scope is limited to a browser's own computer, but they clearly didn't get this.
Our preferences and advanced search page are (in my opinion) already quite long, and that's only with six options on the preferences page. Just to be clear, I'm not opposed to adding a url parameter or some other way for people to show/not show SearchWiki, and I indicated to the team that that's a fine idea. But we're not going to add opt-out options for everything Google does (PDFs, incremental search, universal search) automatically, and I don't think we can or should do that for every change.
P.S. It's frustrating that posting this comment to Sphinn in Chrome doesn't work, so I have to start up Firefox to submit it. :)
Matt, I agree with you and think the service may be highly beneficial in the future. However I am also concerned as to how easy it can be gamed. GrayWolf is right. Spammers are going to be throwing porn, viagra, and who knows what kind of other crazy advertising or spam comments on even kid results. This makes me a little scared considering I have two kids which might accidentally see something they shouldn't. How will Google control comment spam on safe search? How will you protect my kids. I'm a big fan Matt, I really am. But how will Google protect my kids?
The fact that there isn't an 'official' off switch for the google search wiki makes me wonder WHY google doesn't want us to be able to turn this off? I can choose to turn off a gazillion different things in my gmail but I can't decide that search wiki isn't for me right now? Why? That's what I want to know.
"When we rolled out PDFs in our search results, some people wanted to opt out of those"
Is "some people" code for "one guy at the office"? For the life of me I can't imagine that 99.9999999999999% of the world's population would want to opt out of having pdf's in the results. SW is present 100% of the time you're logged in...pdf's show up in the top 10 of how many queries? I bet a lot less than 100%. Apples an oranges.
p.s. although the 'eating a live cobra heart' analogy was maybe a BIT over the top? more like choosing google over msn and then being told, oh by the way, there's no go backsies....
@Matt - Maybe I'm missing something, but can't botnets manipulate this whole thing?
"It's frustrating that posting this comment to Sphinn in Chrome doesn't work, so I have to start up Firefox to submit it. :)"
Yeah, I think Michelle is still checking on that for you. I have no problem using Chrome and submitting. If anyone's having problems with commenting (I think Rae was, as well), please use the contact form so we can follow-up on it.
On the opt-out, I can understand that you don't want to let people opt-out for each thing. But this was a major, dramatic change to how Google works. Failing to provide an opt-out sends three messages, none of which is reassuring:
1) You didn't spend the time and effort to build and opt-out ahead of time, and implementing one now would be difficult
2) Google has some uber-plan for the data, one that's so important you have to shove this down everyone's throat (as you did largely with personalized search)
3) Google knows best, so we should just do what you tell us
I think it's three, and so I'm with Michael -- it's like having your parents tell you what to do. The follow-up I'm writing will reflect this more. I'm not a kid, and I don't want to be treated like one. And for the record, I think this is largely a useful feature and don't want to opt-out, myself. I just don't like being prevented from it, if I should so choose.
As for preferences being too much, why? Why should there be less? That's what it's there for, so we can customize Google to run the way we want to run it.
Anyway, there's another opt-out feature Google ought to keep in mind -- that people will trot over to Microsoft or Yahoo.
@mattcutts I don't see how we can compare apples and oranges. Gmail and Search are completely different spheres of Google - and you can easily opt out of Gmail, by not using it. However, these search results lend too much leeway for spammers delight.
When scour launched a few months ago eveybody thought was a good thing, now with google doing the same time everybody thinks it's not so good. I think this is because google is perceived as not simply a search engine but sort of like a public service, natural resource, etc. Something that shouldn't change, not so much anyway. People are afraid of big changes and always want to be able to chose.
The problem is: google is not a democracy. Weak up people!
The next problem is: google is trying to fix a spam problem by allowing more spam into the system. How is this going to work? we'll see...
What I don't see is why do SEOs complain about this? Seems like gaming the system just became easyer.
I think it is completely ridiculous that people can simple move results where ever they want by only looking at how attractive the title and description are. Google gives webmasters zero control on how your title and description appears in the SERPs yet this is how most that use Search Wiki will judge. No one is going to go back and forth from SERP to website to take the time to rank websites. They will be moving websites around by the way they appear in the SERPs. I think that problem alone is not getting enough coverage and is far more troubling than the fact that this feature is being force feed to the webmaster community. I say webmaster community because let’s face it, how many other really have a Google account anyways.
i find this major change to the way search results look a huge and total surprise after reading how such minute changes are tested before launched:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/search-experiments-large-and-small.html
how can cutts brush this off as just another improvement when we are lead to believe the result pages are tested for changes consisting only of a few pixels?
above all, these icons are the first elements, for as long as i can remember, on a google search result page that change color on mouse over--even before you even elect to use them!
simply fascinating.
I'm all for trying the cobra heart, but then again at least I don't have to have it.
Many people have gmail accounts so anyone that thinks this would be restricted to a few in the know are sadly mistaken. More importantly as anyone can leave a comment how do you moderate these comments? Surely this leads to more than just SERP manipulation? This is a possible concern now! Are there laws in place to protect you? Sure... in some countries I guess.
@matt I’me with Grey wolf and Danny you are adding alot of complexity to an already crowded and complex area - when we talk to people about search a large majority don’t realize that those sponsored links are adverts
And its not the same as indexing pdfs as greywolf said and @Jeremy i would want to opt out of pdfs as clicking on a pdf link can kill a lower spec average pc dead.
@Mattcutts - Something about this just stinks.
Your reasoning comes down to...
a) You don't want to keep legacy code.
b) You think the preference page is too long.
The legacy code argument is b.s. because if you log out of Google then the results go back to pre-SearchWiki mode. So those SERPs are there and always will be - There is no legacy code to keep that you are not already keeping.
And the preference page is too long? are you serious? That's not even a valid reason. Make the preference page a 1000 pages long and give us a table of contents if you need to. We are not retarded. We'll figure it out.
I think @dannysullivan is right on his #2... "Google has some uber-plan for the data" So I think you should just be transperent about it and if we all choose to opt in then you will have a bunch of happy users rather than a bunch of conspiracy theorists.
I hit one of the down buttons by accident today and I think other people may do the same, only they will probably not realise it and on future searches they may be left trying to find a site that is no longer ranked.
Wondering if I'm going to wake up tomorrow and only be able to search Google or check my gmail if I'm using Chrome.
(Which, incidently I'm using to post this comment, just in case!)
(And incidentally I've never had a problem posting comments here with Chrome, only problems posting via my iPhone.)
If the up and down buttons bother people so much, they should just use another search engine.
I spend alot of time surfing the internet from my blackberry, and now with the searchwiki icons of "promote" and "remove", all I get on my mobile browser are a bunch of submit buttons, 2 per SERP, kind of frustrating... I sure do love Chrome though, this comment was written from the most recent version (0.4.154.25)