@bb1webs 170522 wrote:
You type in looking for “casinos played while holding on foot in toliet” and you get results returned that are going to be closest to what you searched … and not be a redirect to 888.com.
I’m not saying that Google go to paid links to gambling sites – but after finding 1000 results that sort of match your specific search … I believe that commerically viable content (adwords) or own content (at google) then gets extra ranking points to rise to the top.
Internet advertising is a multi-billion dollar enterprise – google leads it – and it’s all adwords. Google categorises content and prefers to display content which pays them.
@bb1webs 170522 wrote:
I always respected them for returning results that might be spammed but I never thought the results would be tainted by google itself.
Get where I’m going with that?
I sort of get where you’re going with that – except for the “tainted” by google part – it’s all Googles own work and rankings – it’s all produced by google.
The whole search algo is Google’s proprietary research, run on Google’s hardware, sucking up bankwidth paid for by Google.
The fact that a small (but important) part of the calculations in their complex algo reflect the commerical reality of making money doesn’t surprise me … or particularly offend me.
@bb1webs 170522 wrote:
But it won’t take long for word to spread if they keep up this behavior.
Word might spread – but all FREE services do this. All search engines. All free-ware. It’s all advertising supported.
Can you find a better SE set of results?
I looked at Cuil.com – it’s bad.
Want to try yahoo? They just signed up to re-sell Google’s adwords and probably did their own algo rejiggle. (in an attempt to avoid Microsoft’s takeover).
Perhaps you prefer MSN? Fancy Microsoft now being held up as a source of truth and non-profit? I suspect that they’re just the same as the rest.
In the end mate, I guess I’m agreeing that it is not pure – but I’m old enough and jaded enough to not be surprised about it … and if I was given three choices :
a) a pay Google search engine that is not “commercially adjusted”.
b) a free Google search engine with “commercial tweaks”.
c) no google at all …
THen I’d rather choose option B. The free search.
Wouldn’t you?