What if Google Had to Design For Google?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google were really designing for Google, they'd use CSS rather than font tags, and they'd wrap a big H1 around the Google logo (with appropriate alt and title tags). They'd also use lists for the... lists.

Re:This guy clearly doesn't know HTML

[VGPowerlord]

title is also an attribute [w3.org] and that's probably the sense he meant it in, considering that it was paired with alt.

Re:This guy clearly doesn't know HTML

[Bogtha]

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.

Re:

[grahamd0]

And that keeps the rest of us working! Do you think I'd make any money building web sites if I went around speaking clearly and telling everyone how easy it is??

[WARNING: This preceding content may contain sarcasm. Use with caution.]

Re:

[cayenne8]

"...keeps people at the "copy code, bash it until it works or ask for help" stage."

Wait...are you insinuating that there is some other method of coding things?????

Re:

[ShieldW0lf]

Heh. One of my GFs clients constantly refers to something called "H-Tags". Any design update will be referred to in a very serious tone as "Fixing the H-Tags". I believe the people whose money she brings to us consider her very technically minded as she assures them that we can fix their H-Tags for them.

Re:

[KlomDark]

Give me >head<

<Ooops!>

(No hidden meanings there!) ;)

Brilliant, but...

[gbulmash]

He only did the surface optimization. Missed keywords and description in the headers, didn't bold enough stuff, and didn't use H1 and H2 enough. :-)

Re:Brilliant, but...

[gt_mattex]

Also forgot a sitemap, alt text image tags and breaking the backend down structurally so all of your *important* text is at the top.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Google don't design for Google, hence they aren't even on the first page of results for a "search engine" Google search. I guess they went down the route of designing a good product without caring about what search engines want.

Re:

[gt_mattex]

For most companies the web site it just another place for customers to gather more information about the company without taking up an employee's time. There will not be any updates to the site save for the odd PR release or company milestone. Why not draw a little extra traffic by getting it ranked higher on the SEs?

Re:

[ShieldW0lf]

There are two ways you can look at your site.

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 si

The Fezzik of Search Engines

[HTH NE1]

Of course, Google don't design for Google, hence they aren't even on the first page of results for a "search engine" Google search.

Of course they aren't on the first page; they are the first page!

Now if you search for Google on Google, they are the first result (and the first sponsored link).

Re:Brilliant, but...

[FinchWorld]

I think this [youtube.com] is closer to the truth.

Re:

[Aladrin]

I think that's kind of the point, though. The meta tags and stuff are the easy bits and don't make your site look like trash. To get ahead of all the others already using meta tags, you have to trash your site to increase your Google ranking beyond that.

I actually learned some stuff about Google ranking there... I've never tried to optimize for that (well, not in many years) so I wouldn't have thought of some of that. (Including other tips in the other reply to your post.)

Re:Brilliant, but...

[Hatta]

I hate meta tags. If I search for a string, I want that literal string to be in the results.

Re:Brilliant, but...

[Jellybob]

In that case you'll be glad to hear that last I checked they are given almost no weight by search engines - many years of keyword stuffing in meta tags has made their content completely worthless.

The real question is...

[ivan256]

If people designed their websites to serve their users instead of GoogleBot, would it matter that their pagerank was a little lower?

Re:The real question is...

[multipartmixed]

Would they HAVE any users if their PageRank was a little lower?

Or - if a web page is put up on a server, and nobody is there to surf it -- does it make an impression?

Re:The real question is...

[DragonWriter]

Would they HAVE any users if their PageRank was a little lower?

Sure. There are otherwise to get business other than free results in Google indexes. Advertising, word of mouth, etc. All designing for GoogleBot is is a way of spending money on advertising -- only, instead of paying the palce you want the advertising placed, you are paying a web designer, etc., who sells their services based on their claimed ability to get you ranked well in search results.

Re:

[AvitarX]

It's really closer to a prisoners dilemma (hawk dove?) where optimizing for google is great if your the only one who does it, but if everyone does it it leads to a lot of ugly sites.

Also, google encouraged linking to there site buy having little search boxes (providing a useful service) and getting in the media. These are things that should increase page rank.

Considering if someone farts and it sound like an idea for a new "revolutionary" search engine, it will get in the media. I would propose what googl

Not the prisoner's dilemma

[Rix]

The term you're looking for is "tragedy of the commons". Fortunately, Google can update it's bots to clear out the overgrazers from time to time.

Re:The real question is...

[tknd]

There are other techniques for promoting a website other than using Google. One way is through word of mouth. For example there is no way I would have found slashdot because of a Google search. Rather, I found slashdot because I saw a friend browsing the site. Word of mouth is actually better than Google because it builds a trust relationship. For example if you go on Google expecting to buy something, how do you know that you should trust the first, second, or even third result on the page? You don't. But if a friend recommends a website to you because of their experience with it, you immediately have more trust in that website compared to some other random website.

But as geeks, let's ignore that. After all, it involves socializing and dealing with people. Eww. Give me my Google exploits.

Re:The real question is...

[garett_spencley]

The advantage of search engine rankings over word of mouth is:

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:

[HarvardAce]

For example if you go on Google expecting to buy something, how do you know that you should trust the first, second, or even third result on the page? You don't.

Actually, you probably can know that you shouldn't trust them...companies that spend all their money trying to get a high pagerank often are the ones you would want to otherwise avoid. There are obvious exceptions to this rule, but you can usually tell right away if the high pagerank is due to the pagerank algorithm working well or when it's being exploited. When it's exploited, that's when it's time to move along.

Re:

[ivan256]

The irony of your response is clearly lost on you, so I'll ignore it any ask another hypothetical question instead.

Are any of the users that your site has from an artificially increased pagerank actually worth anything to you if all they do is click, see that your site is crap, and then go back to google to click the next link down?

JSTOR / Elsevier bait and switch

[epine]

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who know where they are going, and those who don't. The second group of people are easily engaged by the first oasis of flashing lights and bright sensations they stumble upon, and they probably bumble through a few "pay per click" turnstiles in the proces.

When I seriously looking for something, I can almost always tell from the result page synopsis which sites have rank they didn't deserve, and pass over these quickly.

Right now the ones that are killing me

Re:

[JamesTRexx]

if a web page is put up on a server, and nobody is there to surf it -- does it make an impression?

Seems like it. Not sure how, but mine went from the 12th page to rank 4 on the search for "nystrom", (just checked) rank 8 on "setup terminal server trueview 2007" and hardly anyone looks at it (except for plenty of visits from msnbot and Yahoo! and I'm not even in the top 10 there).
The only thing I can imagine is it did because of the links in my signature here and on OSnews.com. I do have a sitemap XML fil

Re:The real question is...

[dryueh]

You mean like this [google.com]?

Re:

[ivan256]

Of all 5 responses to my comment, you're the only one who "got it".

Re:

[madprof]

Very good point and I understood you too. But it's a fact that Google got popular because they seriously improved search performance at a time when it was pretty dire.

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:

[moderatorrater]

No, because pagerank has more to do with what sites link to you and the "buzz" you're getting on the internet. If you can get noticed without optimizing for google and you have a good site that gets linked to, your page will come up higher.

Re:

[John Hasler]

That works for that minority of sites that exist for some purpose other than achieving pagerank.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Depends on their business model.

If they rely on drive-by surfers, that would put them out of business. If they target a tightly knit market, where people who shop also communicate, it's a different matter.

Basically... well, it depends on whether they rely on search engines. Duh.

Re:

[ivan256]

If they rely on drive-by surfers, that would put them out of business. If they target a tightly knit market, where people who shop also communicate, it's a different matter.

I know I'm not alone in this: My definition of the ideal search engine is one that never links to that type of site.

Rather than working on increasing their pagerank, they should work on their business model.

Must really be bad....

[magarity]

...my company's webfilter says I can't be shown it because the site has fallen in the "tasteless and/or gross" category.

Re:

[aj50]

It's pretty close on the tasteless side, although it's not as bad as the MS design for the iPod.

Re:

[I'm Don Giovanni]

The difference being that the MS iPod video was made by MS itself; Microsft was calling itself out in order to improve their packaging of future products (and Microsoft has indeed used simple uncluttered packaging since then). Google is way too arrogant to do anything like that.

Re:

[n dot l]

...my company's webfilter says I can't be shown it because the site has fallen in the "tasteless and/or gross" category.

You don't happen to work for Google, do you? :)

Re:

[Arathon]

I dunno...the final rendition of the page definitely has some NSFW (live) links on it. Just as examples, to be sure, but nevertheless, NSFW.

NSFW Links in article.

[RandoX]

FYI.

Re:

[WrongMonkey]

HAHA, did you actually click on the "Hillary Dildo Bushwacker" link?

Should read: What if Google was a useless site...

[skiingyac]

...and had to design for Google?

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.

Re:Should read: What if Google was a useless site.

[Lost my low ID nick]

Exactly. The only people I hear constantly bickering about Googles metrics and pagerank, are those who have sites that no one would miss if they were gone tomorrow. If you really put social networking spam links on your page to up your pagerank, you're just an attention whore. That's not bad per se in a attention economy, but don't complain if I just laugh in your face if bad bad evil google sorts your petty site to the bottom of search results for "witty blog". Create something unique, needed. Like, say, a good search engine.

Re:

[tendrousbeastie]

What about the millions of small businesses who have a legitimate product to sell in a competitive market? Fedex and UPS would be at the top of Google's list if their page was nothing but a white sheet with their phone number in the corner, but small company must genuinely worry about every little increase in the page ranking.

Re:

[Knara]

The small company is probably better off paying for traditional advertising and perhaps *paying* for ad-words, rather than trying to rely on their page rank to generate business all on its own for them.

Re:

[khallow]

Again, if you offer a real service, page ranking is less important than usability of the web page.

That's because

[Rix]

99.999% of small businesses are 100% irrelevant. That they don't show up easily on Google means it's working.

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:That's because

[Mattintosh]

Your rude manner aside, you're absolutely right.

Why should I care about Joe's HVAC Repair in B.F., South Carolina? I don't live in SC, much less that particular part of SC. In fact, I've never been to SC. So why should I (or anyone else not in the area) care about Joe's HVAC Repair? 99.999% of small businesses are 100% irrelevant. Only the 0.001% that are near me and pertain to my search are relevant. Google Local was great for this, and integrating it with Google Maps has made it even better. If you want your business to be found by Google 100% of the time, register it with Google Maps as a local business. It's even free.

Re:

[geekoid]

because Joe's HVAC repair also includes direction for DIY repairs? Has an excellent reputation for answering questions?

Basically, you are correct.

However, what happens when you consider small online business where location isn't an issue?

Re:

[Knara]

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.

Re:

[imstanny]

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.

I think that's very presumptious of you. Traffic to a site is a major factor in determining its relevance on the Google results. An established business like Fedex would inherently have high level of traffic. A start-up business, that may very well be legitimate, and useful for users searching for it, may not get indexed appropriately or may not be displayed as a relevant hit on google's results page, unless it has a lot of text and other 'clutter' that google bots search for.

Re:

[moderatorrater]

Traffic to a site is a major factor in determining its relevance on the Google results.

That's exactly his point. There are enough legitimate means to get people to your site and get noticed without being a google attention whore that if you can't get the traffic through other means, you don't deserve it. If you're a good shipping company, you don't need to be linked to on digg and you definitely don't need to do link farming.

Re:

[imstanny]

If you're a good shipping company, you don't need to be linked to on digg and you definitely don't need to do link farming.

Right. However, my point is that you can be a legitimate company but with no traffic. In which case, you would have to compensate for that lack of traffic. That's why things like advertising and sales people exist. A great product doesn't necessarily sell itself.

Re:

[skiingyac]

Right, so you pay for some ads. The current system also lets people play games with their content to a reasonable extent to try to get exposure for free. So who cares if someone is whining because they are too cheap to pay up to keep their pretty layout?

Re:

[DragonWriter]

A start-up business, that may very well be legitimate, and useful for users searching for it, may not get indexed appropriately or may not be displayed as a relevant hit on google's results page, unless it has a lot of text and other 'clutter' that google bots search for.

So, what you are saying is, that a site that is not a well-established business will have to rely on something other than free indexing by Google to get the attention it would have if it were an established. successful business in the fiel

Re:

[hesiod]

> Anyone who actually goes to a search engine is doing so because they don't want www.fedex.com or www.ups.com. Those are simple enough that no one needs to search for them.

You need to meet more average Internet users (or maybe I need to meet fewer...). Their browser's home page is whatever it defaulted to when they bought the PC, and they _never_ type out URLs. If they wanted to find google, but their home page is Yahoo? They really will search for Google via Yahoo. If they want Fedex, they will sea

Re:

[skiingyac]

A start-up business, that may very well be legitimate, and useful for users searching for it, may not get indexed appropriately or may not be displayed as a relevant hit on google's results page

So what you're saying is, a small and/or new business with little traffic won't be ranked high? And the alternative is what? Rank everyone high?

I think there are 3 real options:

1) rank by $$ paid only, you pay more, you are higher, just like the paid ads on the right side of Google. want better rankings? pay up.

2) rank by number of sites that link to you, or some metric that tries to guess how important your site is based on its content. want better rankings? convince people to link to you with littl

Re:

[imstanny]

What I'm saying is your taking my quote out of context. The OP's point was that if a company is legitamite it does not need to rely on 'clutter' methods to increase its position on Google's results. Whereas, my point was to demonstrate an example of a legitamite company that would benefit from employeeing such tactics.

Re:

[skiingyac]

No, my point is the tactics are questionably legitimate and are attempts to game the system. They aren't necessary. A company can either be good in its own right and legitimately get a good rank, or they can buy ads, or some combination. Google is neither forcing nor encouraging anyone to do the stupid things the article talks about. If people want to try to get some free/cheap exposure on the sly then that's fine, but I don't want to hear them whining about it.

Its like the people who are too cheap to r

Re:

[I'm Don Giovanni]

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.

Um, maybe because UPS and FedEx are already well-known shipping companies, whose page rank for a search on "shipping" would be high regardless of what their sites looked like? But companies that aren't a

Re:

[Rashkae]

Google isn't about "getting you known",, google is about telling the user, (who initiated the search) which sites are already known.. If you want to get known, buy adwords like everyone else. Will probably cost you less than a consultant to come up with every changing google page optimization.

If nothing else...

[Arathon]

...this article(?) was helpful in explaining to me why so many sites *do* look as disgusting as all that.

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... ...as evidenced by my email address, for one.

Re:If nothing else...

[mstahl]

As a web developer, I can honestly say that my arch nemesis in any workplace is always the search engine optimization "expert". I have had to do so many stupid things because of those idiots it's insanity. I've actually written a couple of Daily WTFs about SEO folk.

The truth of the matter is that if you bother to play by the rules, Google will index your site just fine and if your site is popular you will end up high in the page rankings. If you want to become more popular through your page rank, you can always buy keywords, too. It's a really simple, non-mysterious process, but people get caught up and obsess about it and start paying consultants to torment their web designers and developers for no obvious gain.

( Interestingly enough, the company that had the SEO guy who didn't know his ass from his elbow was pretty much the only business doing what they did, was a Fortune 50 company, and absolutely refused to use metadata in their web site; instead of metadata they opted for super ridiculously long URLs. )

Re:

[emurphy42]

Company name plz?

For those not already familiar, The Daily WTF is known nowadays as Worse Than Failure [worsethanfailure.com] - obviously as a SFW backronym, but also as a concept in its own right. [worsethanfailure.com]

Re:

[mstahl]

Company name plz?

haha I got in trouble once before for blogging about this company, but then again I don't do any work for them anymore (worked for them through an agency). Check out this bizarrely long URL: www.firstdata.com/product_solutions/pc_internet_solutions/internet_processing_solutions/virtual_point_of_sale.htm. The WTF was that the URLs became so long that their server (IIS) wasn't able to handle how long the filenames were. Then I had to go back and forth with them not once not twice but three times to get new

Re:If nothing else...

[GeoSanDiego]

Wouldn't a surefire way to find the best Search Engine Optimizer be to google "Search Engine Optimization" and pick the first rank ?

And in first place is...

[Xebikr]

Sigh. Google [google.com]

Re:

[mstahl]

What company is this and are y'all looking for a new graphic designer/programmer?

Re:

[R_Dorothy]

It's funny because it's true.

I have to sit through a monthly meeting with our SEO consultants reminding them why we aren't making out site look like the end product of that demo and that the technical reasons for not doing certain things haven't miraculously changed since last month.

the final product link

[us7892]

The last page of this dude's site.

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:the final product link

[MontyApollo]

It actually reminded me somewhat of Yahoo's page, but without all the advertising.

Re:

[theskipper]

I felt really smug and proud of myself halfway through:

"Aha! I know what the punchline is...the last page will transfer to Yahoo!"

Sigh, back to my anonymous cubicle.

Re:

[notthe9]

Yeah. Really, this was still better than most websites.

Doesn't look bad? Are you insane?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Compare it to the original and dare to ask WHY google beat everyone else in the market, because its design was (still is) by far the cleanest. It is simple, it is to the point, it is what people want.

The end page looks a lot like all the other search engines out there, bloated pieces of crap, and this guy didn't even include annoying ads and popup requests to signup.

No, if google had done their original search page like this, they would have been just another search engine.

Hillary dildo bushwhacker?

[megaditto]

On that last page under recent searches I am getting:

Recent Searches

waikiki vacation
al gore nobel prize
hillary dildo bushwhacker

Click the link....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

http://hilldill.bigcartel.com/ [bigcartel.com]

Just in case you wanted a dildo with Hillary's face on it.

Does it remind you of another search engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it looks like Yahoo. Perhaps Yahoo is trying really hard to remain relevant.

Re:

[Jarjarthejedi]

So you're saying that Yahoo is striving to have a good Google Pagerank...wait...it all makes sense now!

Re:

[steelfood]

If you do a search for search, [google.com] you'll find Yahoo at #11, and Google at #21.

Metasearch, Live, and MySpace take up the top 3, respectively. And quite frankly, that last page looks strikingly similar to results #1 and #2.

You could just design...

[John Hasler]

...a site that works for your customers.

Oh. Wait. That assumes that you have some customers.

Underscores is not SEO URL

[sobolwolf]

http://www.meangene.com/google/ [meangene.com] google_internet_search.html

Well not to be an ass, but just in case people get the wrong idea about how to do a seo url, one needs to know that:

Google sees hyphens as dividers in URLs and body text, and ignores underscores (underscore is not considered as a divider by Google). [webrankinfo.com]

Actually, I'm not sure that stuff would help them.

[jonadab]

You can't believe everything SEO consultants tell you. I'm not convinced all that garbage would really significantly improve their indexing. Indeed, I tend to think some of that stuff would actively *hurt* their relevancy ranking, especially the link-farm malarke -- I mean, seriously, linkshare? That just screams, "Our site doesn't have any actual content to make it relevant, so we're swapping links with other irrelevant sites so that we can pool our irrelevance and be obscure together!"

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.

looks like iGoogle

[nikqu]

The last page [meangene.com] looks like iGoogle [google.com] to me.

Heh.. google for google.

[zippthorne]

So, basically, it would be Yahoo! then?

...

It seems it would be, "dogpile" [google.com] but Yahoo! [yahoo.com] isn't far down the list, and strangely is a spartan search page like Google.

Interestingly, "Google" isn't even on the first page, so I guess they're not optimizing for Google. Or they figure that if you're using Google to search for search engines, you probably already know about Google...

Digg??

[KlomDark]

Arre youu fuckingg withh mee, Brendonn?

They already do.

[Egdiroh]

Google already does code for google. They're the first hit.

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?

[MBHkewl]

Am I missing something here?!
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!

Re:

[Stormx2]

Your post would be completely accurate a few years ago. Back then, flash was new and shiny and everyone wanted a piece of the cake. Of course usability suffered, but back then it was the trend. Today's accessibility trend moves away from that, at least most modern developers (not ye olde dot-com-boom devs).

All you seem to be focusing on is linking, and that's not how indexing gets done; Meta tags, content, image titles, ALT text.

Uhhhggg... sort of. Linking is actually a very important part (and, unfortuna

To those griping about google indexing algorithm

[blhack]

Google is so good because they are good at deciding what pages matter! Leave your page as it is and fill it with content. It isn't like all of the sudden *POOF* google appeared and now we all have to conform to their model. They evolved in parallel to web pages...meaning THEY ALREADY KNOW HOW TO INDEX YOUR SHIT!

Design for users, not search engines

[Dracos]

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.

I don't, because having good content and using correct semantics does most of the search engine work for you. Google and the other searches eventually figure out how sites game them, which is why Google ignores meta tags and penalizes sites with hallway pages. Many other tricks are harder to detect, though... for now.

If Google was the king of search, and al

Final result

[HTH NE1]

I particularly liked how after all the redesign, if you tried to search for anything from the result you got a 404.

Do you HAVE to do that?

[Opportunist]

Let's see, what did he do? Create phony links to himself, create links to crap (that might be "good" search words), create a "blog" (I still think bloogle is something google should register soon, it almost begs to be a parody site) and a lot of other crap.

Bluntly? If you "have" to do that to rise in the pagerank, it's probably better if you don't rise. What is actually on the page that could remotely be interesting? Phony links? Phony references? Phony "partners"?

Do you have any CONTENT for crying out loud

Correction:

[Kupek]

What if Google tried to game their own system?

The most important thing

[geekoid]

is to have a product or service that gets constant recognition...just like it has always been.

Demanding to be put in the number one spot is ignorant, and expecting to be their is just stupid.

The yellow pages has rules about how many A's it will allow in front of a name, why isn't anyone crying about that?

Reputation is important, as it a moderate view of any opinion of a service or product online.

SEO != Good Design

[Peganthyrus]

I haven't done anything like that to my site. I just wrote clean, minimal HTML with proper mark-up. And I end up in the top ten results for searches for properties I've done art for.

No keyword stuffing, no social link buttons, no SEO bullshit. Just clean code and quality content on a regular basis.

search result for Google

[Traa]

but, but, if I search for "Google" using Google, then the first hit is Google. So why would you redesign it? :-)

Re:

[808140]

Wow, do you guys live in China?

Re:

[Kadin2048]

For the Coral Cache you just append .nyud.net to the end of the domain.

E.g., "http://www.meangene.com/google/design_for_google.html" becomes "http://www.meangene.com.nyud.net/google/design_for_google.html"

I don't think you can connect to it directly using an IP address, since it uses the domain portion of the URL to figure out what page you're requesting. Although all .nyud.net sites resolve to 132.239.17.225 for me (which happens to be the node in Princeton), you can't just connect to that and get the cach

Re:

[inca34]

If you can't see the Coral Cache, just use Tor:
http://tor.eff.org/