What if Google Had to Design For Google? 207
An anonymous reader writes "Web developers increasingly grow weary of having to put so much effort into designing their sites according to the whims of the Google search engine. When the most important thing is 'getting indexed' it is increasingly difficult for web site designers to offer the simple, uncluttered user experience they'd like to. Reminiscent of the famed what if Microsoft designed the iPod box here is a humorous look at what would happen to that famed, clean, uncluttered look if Google had to design for the Google Search Engine."
This guy clearly doesn't know HTML (Score:5, Insightful)
MeanGene (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The real question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Should read: What if Google was a useless site... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets see... counter examples... how about searching Google for the word "shipping". What do you know, UPS and Fedex are #1 and #2, and their front pages aren't a mess of useless, Google-pleasing crap. Maybe because they are real businesses and aren't pandering some direct ship junk or get rich quick scheme.
If nothing else... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was pretty hilarious, too.
Unfortunately, this gives me one more reason to be semi-disturbed by Google's obvious dominance in the web-o-sphere...
the final product link (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.meangene.com/google/google7.html [meangene.com]
Hey, it doesn't look half bad. I thought it would be much worse.
How about a greater level of hyperbole...
Re:Should read: What if Google was a useless site. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should read: What if Google was a useless site. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If nothing else... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should read: What if Google was a useless site. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Should read: What if Google was a useless site. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Must really be bad.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I'm not sure that stuff would help them. (Score:4, Insightful)
The best way to improve your ranking is to put interesting content on your site that people will want to look at, link to, tell each other about, and so forth. (Of course, what counts as "interesting" depends heavily on your target demographic.) The second best way is to make sure the search engine can actually read and index your content (that it's not, for instance, just a bunch of images without meaningful alt attributes).
Crosslinking from one part of your site to another can help, but Google *does* do that -- their main web search links to the image search, to the video search, to the news search, and so forth. And vice versa.
Re:Should read: What if Google was a useless site. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's because (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what does make your small business show up easily on Google, even if you're totally fucking useless? Buying a goddamn advertisement!
Problem fucking solved.
Re:This guy clearly doesn't know HTML (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that's definitely the sense he meant it in. I thought my irony was obvious, but I guess not.
The problem with mislabelling everything remotely related to the web as a "tag" is that it dilutes the meaning of the term to be practically useless. How is somebody who refers to everything as a "tag" supposed to distinguish between the title attribute and the <title> element type? More importantly, how is a newbie supposed to figure out in what sense it is meant when they are told to use "appropriate title tags"? This kind of stupid laziness only makes it more difficult for people to learn how to do things right and keeps people at the "copy code, bash it until it works or ask for help" stage.
They already do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, this article depresses me. The unspoken sentiment is that typical websites can't survive without google. Which implies that typical websites can't survive on word of mouth, aggregator sites, and features highlighting them on good websites. I can't think of a single site that I found through google. I use google to search large sites, go to sites with awkward URLs, or find one time use references. But apparently the good sites that can survive on word of mouth are not typical any more.
It really saddens me because it reminds me of TV. Shows that can that do well via word of mouth get canceled or messed with before the audience peeks, and many of the shows that succeed do so because they are they slightly appeal to many demographics rather then being really well received by a few. What happens when the start up costs for websites go up and you need substantial ads from the get go, will there be any new great sites, that aren't flukes.
In the end I don't think sites should be designed to optimize page rank, except for maybe online retailers that compete with other online retailers. If your site is good people will link to it and praise it and it's page rank will soar.
WTH? (Score:3, Insightful)
What designers are you talking about that are trying to do simple pages for their users????
From what I'm seeing so far, everybody's going for Flash-based websites, with no text to search around a page, and un-indexable pages, because of the embedded crap of Flash! And if it's not Flash, it's ActiveX From Hell. And on top of that mess, they still code for IE6, breaking almost every web-standard, and knocking on the gates of Hell!
All you seem to be focusing on is linking, and that's not how indexing gets done; Meta tags, content, image titles, ALT text.
Who ever wrote that page is clearly an idiot & has no clue how to design a website with a simple look & have ANY Search Engine Bot get it indexed.
YOU FAIL!
To those griping about google indexing algorithm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The real question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Relatively instant results if you know what you're doing.
2) (and perhaps most important) the results are MEASURABLE. You can see exactly how many users are hitting your site each day from search engines, you can see what they're searching for when they find your site, how your site ranks and you can use that information to further fine-tune.
However, the drawbacks with search engine traffic is that once you hit the #1 listing for a targeted keyword your traffic becomes fixed. So obviously it is also important to focus on other traffic sources such as word-of-mouth, returning visitors, paid advertising etc. What any commercial site wants to do is snowball and that only occurs with the type of traffic that you can only get for free (returning visitors and word of mouth advertising etc.). The issue is that those types of "free compounding" traffic accumulates a LOT slower if you don't get the instant stuff. Of course you can also replace search engine traffic with paid advertising. But search engine optimization is often times free (assuming you know what you're doing) or a one-time cost (pay to learn it and then be on your way... "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish...").
The other drawback is that if you're relying on search engine traffic then you are staking your business entirely in the hands of another business who has it's own interests. I've had excellent first page rankings getting thousands of unique hits from google every single day only to have it all snatched away one night without warning. Then a few months later it all comes back. For reasons that only google knows. I would not invest in any business that depends on search engine traffic alone.
In short, any webmaster who knows what he's doing understands that search engine traffic is not the be-all/end-all but also does not dismiss it entirely. Search Engine traffic is gold when you have it but if you rely on it you can get burned very easily. Not to mention, it has a peak and once you reach it how do you continue to grow ? The answer is in the other forms of traffic. But you'll find that without some kind of quality traffic to start with, it's rather difficult to spread via word-of-mouth.
Re:Brilliant, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) My site is just like everyone elses. I want it to be on top though. I need to figure out clever ways to make my site perfect for Google, then they will give me all the traffic.
2) My site is fucking amazing. I dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's, and it's just right. I told some people, and they told some people, and it's still growing. Those search engine guys sure are using a lot of traffic with their robots. They're lucky I let them spider my site, but it's an open Internet... I guess it comes with success.
Different people are after different goals, but I figure, it's not my responsibility to pay attention to Google and do their job for them. It's my responsibility to build something that is excellent and pays attention to the user.
If you build excellence, and Google doesn't find a way to index it, they become less relevant, not the other way around.
You can waste a lot of time that could have been better spent elsewhere trying to conform to other peoples idea of how to build for search engines and end up with a site that doesn't serve the user as well as it did before you started.
Re:If nothing else... (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the rub: most people (even educated ones) don't know those basic "rules" you are talking about. Good content? Foster an active community? Invest in your site? Amazingly, these are the things I advocated and the things people didn't know. I've had quite a bit of success with that method.
Oh, and making sure your keywords are on the page does wonders too...you'd be surprised how often people forget to use the terms people search for.
Re:The real question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is also, by dint of being a search engine, always going to be wildly popular compared to other types of site.
But you're right anyway - websites should try to serve their visitors better and not GoogleBot. The fact is all search engine bots try to think like a human being and thus optimising for humans is a good plan anyhow.
Re:The real question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's because (Score:3, Insightful)
Then they need to be spending money getting the word out.
Become relevant, then get higher page rank as a result. Trying to do it the other way around is what spawned this sort of nonsense in the first place.