Angry Robot

Not Statisfied With the Goog

My hosts (who are excellent, BTW) have switched to a new website stats program, and it has thrown up a few surprises about this site’s traffic. First thing is that I am dangerously close to exceeding the traffic allowance. Second interesting thing is search engine referrals. The biggest one is not “Julius Caesar” (which is no. 2), but puma blowjob with a staggering 2059 referrals over a week-long period. Third on the list is “reality porn” (with 1188 referrals) which leads to the same entry about the puma ads. Of course, interest in puma-related blowjobs will surely fade, yet then again this entry will soon show up in Google… Read on, but it gets kinda boring.

At first I was shocked to see that “GTA3 radio” was low on the list with only 361 referrals, placing it barely ahead of “skull fucking” (323 referrals). Then I realized the list I was using was only search strings, i.e. more than one word; a separate list of top search words has “GTA3” firmly in first place with 3583 referrals over this same week period. The game-cracking teens have still got the magic.

Other referrals of note: Sigur ros video, in which my entry comes in at #1 ahead of some MTV pages. And “blogs save lives” (248) – who searches for that?. <http://www.sankey.ca/y”>Y gets a few for visionary philosopher – he comes in at #6. Of the top six results for that search string, only one is not a weblog. Hockey Night in Canada ring tones seem to be popular, but my pages are sure to disappoint. My attempt to become a google magnet for Russ Meyer searches is a total failure; people are searching for “tap that ass”, and they are getting me in 3rd place; I also fell victim to the http://homeland.fbi.gov/Watchlists/suspect/view.jsp?record=235270 referrer prank; other good search strings: “sankey trailer”, “my IQ is 126” (yeah, right, dumbass), “am I shaved or not”, “shame on me shame on you”, “my sister’s ass”, “gorilla sex woman”, “smoking weed causes breasts?”, “i hate this stupid town”, “its a fucking sick world we live in.”

All in all I am starting to resent Google. Bandwidth from the googlebot alone is 240 MB over the week, and I shudder to think how much all the stupid referrals add up to. Let alone bandwidth theft due to people (usually livejournal users) finding my photos and using them as background images. Google favours blogs, that much is clear. But does this actually help either blog owners or google users? Typical example: I search for “puma blowjob”, eight of the top ten results are weblogs linking to the blowjob ads. Wouldn’t it be better if Google could figure out the link and put it at the top, cutting out the blog middlemen? Furthermore, don’t middlemen usually get paid? Why are we doing Google’s work for it, and paying with our bandwidth charges? I’m all for the free flow of information of course, but the problem is that the best information isn’t rising to the top. I figured my page on Russ Meyer was actually a good resource that Google searchers would be happy with. Yet it’s the 83rd result, behind all manner of uselessness and irrelevancy. Sure, I’m biased; sure, it’s harder to get to the top of a common search; sure, Google buying Blogger may mean it’s eager to improve the way it uses blogs. Let’s hope so.

At the vanguard of Google criticism is Andrew Orlowski, writing for The Register, about Google News treating press releases as news, the ‘googlewashing’ of the phrase ‘second superpower’, and then Google googlewashing the story about googlewashing. Remember also the Google trademark lawyer attack, Google’s privacy problems, Google’s mixup with China and Scientologists. Hell, I love Google, and use it constantly, but we’s gots to keep an eye on the New Web God, who keeps its heavy spidery eyes on us alway.

2 comments on "Not Statisfied With the Goog"

  1. anon says:

    You don’t restrict the referer for an image, and you don’t have a robots.txt. What do you have to complain about???

  2. D says:

    Pal, I wrote that a year ago and in the meantime I have indeed restricted referrers. As for robots, are you suggesting I secede from google? That’s some mighty hardcore “love it or leave it” logic. Hope you’ve never complained about america, boy. I’m polishing my shotgun right now.

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