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Google Problem

Various problems which are consequences of Google's mistaken ideas with the Google Updates

There's a big problem with Google. But let's look at the earlier problems with Google that have led up to the current (2012) woeful state of affairs.

Although in the early days (pre 2005), Google was a decent search engine, there came to be a problem that some people cheated. They called it "SEO" (search engine optimisation), but these things were less than optimal, and more like SEARCH ENGINE OBFUSCATION. Or to put it another way, cheating!

The second problem was that rather than dealing with the first problem, Google did some devious things which were called names such as "Panda update" and "Penguin update" and other things. These things were supposed to deal with the problem of search engine cheats, but there were two problems with that. 1 - It didn't work, but worse, 2 - it punished honest websites.

The Google problem with their Google Updates (which tend to give the impression they are named after near-extinct or endangered species) is they are producing a climate of fear and negativity. More about this later on this page.

The second issue, point 2, that Google updates punish honest websites, is something that's a BIG PROBLEM. Google has alienated many people. Google has alienated webmasters, and it's also getting a lot of flack from people doing searches and getting rubbish results. It is that reason which is starting to lose Google the imaged monopoly on the search market. People are moving to other search engines, especially to the new names such as Blekko, such places that have manifestos that point out that they are not Google and they are not going to make Google's mistakes.

It is this latter point which has then resulted in the big Google problem. It's a sort-of runaway effect, where because of the inexplicable algorithm and unfair injustice, I am seeing imaginary Googles.

I know I have not cheated, and yet I am the victim of the false justice which Google is inflicting on the world.

Google is like a child who has been stung by a wasp, unable to cope with the problem the child decides to vent wrath upon the tiny enemies by taking a can of flyspray and running around outdoors squirting poison at random. The result, numerous butterflies and other random critters come falling out of the sky, with no concept of what's hit them.

Google tries to blame you. They say things like "If you have been guilty of spam and you have repented of your sin, click here. If you have been guilty of being infested with malware but you are now sorry about it, click here. If you have been guilty of having loads of nasty keyword-stuffing but have now got rid of it, click here". It is like a multi-choice guilty confessional. Well, Google, I am not guilty of any of your problems. I know exactly whom to blame. I blame Google! And I say Stuff Google!

I don't say this lightly. I have been running this website for over twelve years, and I have written huge amounts of stuff, thousands of pages. The website has steadily been improved over the years, and it's not going to have radical changes because Google imagines it should. There was someone working for Google who said in public that people could just delete their websites and start again. Well I'd rather Google is deleted.

Google will be replaced. There will be other search engines. Google's position was got initially by merit but has now faltered. The world moves on. But this time, because of all the people alienated by Google, there is a hefty lobby of folks keen to get any new system up and running to depose the despotic pseudo-monopoly.

In my own mind, the Google problem is a serious multi-track escalation. It's something that goes on in paranoid schizophrenia where things quite quickly get out-of-hand.

Previously, before Google went bad, it was possible to create new pages and link them together and include loads of positive connections, the sort of things that people like to browse around. The fact that any good search also liked that was a bonus. But now, in the climate of fear produced by Google's puritanical false-justice, it is more akin to trying to survive in an stuffy theocracy where you have to avoid any suspicion of doing anything the authority imagines to be "wrong". In the case of Google in 2012, it is not even a set of rules which are stated. (The guidelines which Google publically states are not the ones it actually uses). It becomes more like trying to second-guess a corrupt God.

In the early days, before Google went bad, Google used to say things like "Don't put effort into search engine optimisation. Put effort into creating the best website material you can". I believed them and that's the way I behaved! In fact I created pages according to my own principles of what was right, and I didn't even read stuff that was going around about "seo".

Later, that has all been negated, as these days most websites are being heavily "optimised" at great expense, sometimes by well-meaning people but sometimes by charlatans, and they are having to put more time and energy than ever into the seo nonsense. I won't do that! If Google can't get it right, and include this honest website, I say Stuff Google!

Google has actually gone against what it says, because there is no point in creating loads of stuff for Google to floccinaucinihilipilificate it. Instead, the crisis induces people to put more time into beating Google and less time into working on content. Or to put it another way, emphasis has moved from sailing to bailing.

I had hoped to be able to raise the questions with people at Google and get some diplomatic solution. With many other large companies, and some governments, there has usually been a polite discussion, sometimes with a positive outcome, although not always. What makes Google a much worse offender in this is the fact that you can not talk to Google. You used to be able to do, as explained on the page about reporting cheats at Google. But now Google has become aloof, like a dictatorship that won't listen to any dissent. Imagine if the leader of a supposedly "democratic" nation did that. Some people arrive to present a petition signed by half a million people who wish their views to be noted, and the leader refuses to admit there's any problem, and has the security guards escort the people off the premises. This type of thing has happened before on the news, and usually about a year later there's a new report on the news to say there's been a revolution in that country and the leader has been hanged on a lamp post.

With being unable to write to Google, or to get an honest consistent line on what Google's policies really are, the climate of fear becomes an ongoing panic. I have even considered adding a line in my robots.txt file that says "disallow: GoogleBot". This would admittedly be bad for business because Google would no longer be allowed on my site and would no longer include any of my pages. However, if I did this, it would provide some peace of mind, as I would no longer live in fear of Google. I could then get on with improving my website for the real people out there in the wider world and the other search engines which have more reputable policies. Another reason for disallowing Googlebot is that it would prevent Google from displaying my pages with Google Bogus Page Names. I find this offensive. It is yet another of Google's mistakes.

One of the reasons I find this whole Down with Google matter so upsetting is that only a few years ago, Google was actually a good search engine. It was said by many people that Google was the world's best search engine. Note: It wasn't long before the faults in Google's algorithm started showing through and Google was unfairly banning various reputable websites for near-arbitrary reasons, leading to Google being dubbed The World's Worst Search Engine. However, the problem was not widespread. Well maybe that could have been said about the Black Death. When it first started it wasn't widespread.

Maybe that pestilential analogy is quite appropriate, as the problem of The Plague was not simply rats, fleas, and illness, but a religious set of bad ideas which resulted in bad decisions being made. For example, there were notions that for various "the devil" type of reasons, the disease was something to do with cats. People killed cats, which caused there to be more rats. Rats have rat fleas and that's where the disease is. So by killing the cats, people ended up being killed in higher numbers by the Black Death.

Google looks like killing its cats. We the honest websites are being damaged by Google's bad practice.

The mental problems to do with the Google Problem are more severe for me than for most people because of the schizophrenic mind-set. I have noticed that the Google trouble has resulted in a depressive situation where the incentive to create new pages is diminished. In the old days when Google was a decent search engine, it was usually worth creating a page because it might do some good and might appear in searches if it was well enough written. I write about things I am knowledgeable about, and I know quite a lot of diverse things. This is a matter of being eclectic. So, for example, a while ago I realised that nearly everyone knows satellites are "in orbit" and they probably know that being "in orbit" means the satellites stay up in space rather than crashing into the ground, and that they go around somehow. However, as far as I knew, the question of how this works, ie how satellites stay in orbit, was not known by most people, and yet if they wondered, they might like to know the answer. I knew the answer and so I wrote that page. However, now Google searches have become so rubbish, what point is there in writing such a page about something of that ilk when Google is unlikely to give it any credit. Google is more likely to put up silly adverts for things that have a name that's vaguely like "orbit", or other irrelevant or temporary things.

This problem of Google having killed off incentive has had a negative impact on some of the new pages potentially being created here. In other words, Google's misbehaviour is resulting in fewer pages being created here, and at the same time more panic going on trying to second-guess the algorithm, which can't possibly work, because it changes like the weather. The only hope really is that Google goes out of business and some other search engine (with more real-content-friendly policies and more long-term-prioritised policies and a few other things) replaces Google and becomes the new popular search. (This idea, of things replacing other things, has happened before. Remember a while ago Altavista was the default search engine? Also, only a few years ago, people used to talk of "Oh, if only I won the Football Pools!", which has now been replaced with "Oh, if only I won the National Lottery!". This could happen to Google, where instead of saying "I'll just do a Google search for that", it's "I'll just do a YaCy search for that"... or some other search engine name replaced in the phrase.

The matter of the second-guessing is a big problem for me, because the voices inside my head pass negative comment about any possible thing that might be judged by an unscrupulous unfair mistaken Google to be somehow deserving of condemnation. I don't suppose most people have that going on, but I am sure other people suffer from the loss of incentive to create new pages. Yet, really we should all be having our own websites and creating more stuff online! Google should be encouraging that, rather than discouraging it. Google's behaviour is environmentally detrimental in terms of the health of the Internet. All more reason why Google has to be replaced!

OK, I can't blame Google for its running analogues, any more than I can blame a person for what their persona does in a dream in my head. However, I can blame Google for damaging the world, and that damage also tends to include my own mental reactions to the bad behaviour of Google search, and the bad management of Google in not being open to discussion. Some people might say "You can't blame Google, because you appear on Google rather than not". Well it's a valid point, but the thing is, if there were no Google, there would soon be other new search engines which would take up the slack. Google continuing to exist is displacing new potential talent from emerging. If Google ceased to exist, people would search on other search engines instead, and that would be better.

Don't get me wrong; Google used to be good, and Google still has some worthwhile things, but the quality of the Google search results has fallen so badly that it is resulting in knock-on effects.

Here are a few paranoid ideas on what things Google misjudge sites on...

* Google doesn't like websites that are long-term reliable, evergreen sites.

Yes, we know that is the case, and yes it is DEPLORABLE. It's a very poor decision, and has been gone on about considerably at the page lampooning the ridiculous Google Updates

Note: I will NOT stop being long-term reliable just to cow-tow to Google's bad policies!

* Google doesn't like CAPITALISATION.

Maybe that's true, or maybe not. Note that capitalisation does not necessarily imply shouting. It may do, for example in the example at the page about street-credible hearing aids, but mostly the capitalisation at this site is used for EMPHASIS.

I have considered this possibility and have put quite a lot of work into taming the capitalisation at many pages at this site. Unfortunately there is no telling if this a true reason for Google's prejudice or not. So in a way the work can be considered wasted. It's a shame, because I could have been working on creating new pages!

* Google thinks that having a street address and a phone number on a website gives it more credibility.

So, this would immediately cause all of the webspam sites to put fake addresses and phone numbers up. I can't do that, partly because I tell the truth, so an address and phone number would have to be real, but also I am in a similar position to "famous people" who obviously don't publish their addresses and phone numbers because they would attract people to visit them inappropriately. Also, in case you hadn't guessed, privacy is important! If anywhere thinks we don't need privacy, they can get stuffed! See Down with Facebook

* Google imagines that text on a table on a background is invisible or hidden if the text and the final background are the same colour.

This has been confirmed to be the case. Admittedly it makes Google look stupid, like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, which is such a mindbogglingly stupid creature that it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you!

Although Google is right to ignore text that's "hidden" by being the same colour as the background, it's ridiculous to extend that assumption to black text on a white "e-mail taxidermy" table which is on a black background.

This particular piece of Google stupidity resulted in various valid things people should have been able to find on the page warning them about Nigeria Scams on the Rogues Gallery, but worse, the missing nature of Stamp Demon, as highlighted on the page about the Mystery of Stamp Demon was found to be a result of the site being with black text on pages whose real background colour was white, but Google assumed that as the page bgcolor was black (irrelevant as none of the page was black), all of the text on the site was "hidden". Stupid Google!

The problem of misinterpreting text colours versus background colours because of bugs in the programming, is actually a further problem because it means that if someone were so minded they could have invisible text that is classed as "visible", and visible text that is classed as "invisible". Or to put it another way, they could cheat something shocking and get away with it. Google is encouraging cheating by getting this wrong.

* Google doesn't like sites having reciprocal links

This may be true or it may not be. However, the Internet is what it is because websites link to each-other. If we all have websites and link to each-other's pages, the Internet becomes stronger and people can surf the Net, going from one place to another and then on to another and so-on. If websites didn't link to each-other, Google would have been out of business long ago, as it would have been unable to find all these websites in the first place. More about this at the page about Reciprocal Links

Google's prejudice against people who link to each other is another negative thing which Google has done to damage the Internet.

Why did Google do this? It's because at one time, various websites were cheating by having ludicrous numbers of links with other sites in order to boost their own position in searches. I've known this for a while, and I have a policy of encouraging links that have visitors (ie not just for search engines), and I also don't get involved with linking up with websites that have stupidly large numbers of link pages which are artificial and never get people visiting them.

After Google introduced their bad policy on websites being discouraged from having links, I noticed various websites which had previously had proper reciprocal link pages just deleted their link pages. This meant that they'd reneged on the deal.

I believe in having decent links with decent websites, and so I will continue to have reciprocal links. Good diplomacy with websites around the world. Shame be upon Google for being prejudiced against that!

More about the Reciprocal Links a this page: Reciprocal Links

* Google likes a website to be about one thing and not about "almost everything"

Well, Zyra's website is actually about almost everything, and it's not going to change for Google. I am not going to alter that for Google, nor for any other discriminatory arbiter. Stuff Google if it can't get this right! Some of us DO write about all kinds of things and publish such diverse content on a single portal website. Note: Wikipedia is such a site.

Most people's websites (if most people had website) would typically be about several different things. Most people have more than one interest. Admittedly, Zyra's website takes this to an extraordinary extent, with over nine thousand pages, about many different things, but that's what happens when someone has been working years on a website trying to educate the world's population.

* Google expects everyone to sign up

Google might expect that, but Google doesn't get what it expects. I am less likely to sign up to a system that is unresponsive and unhelpful. There is also no point in joining a system that makes false statements about its own policies.

For all we know, Google could in theory by punishing websites that join the "webmaster tools". After all, anyone who joins the Google webmaster tools must be trying to "optimise their site"?! Can you see how the paranoia takes an idea and runs with it?

I am not keen on "signing up" to things generally. Many of the places that insist on this are no good and are trying to get your personal details so they can sell you to other companies. I certainly won't sign up to Facebook because that's an appalling abuse of personal information. Admittedly I have signed up to various affiliate marketing companies, but I trust them. The affiliate business works by everyone having an incentive to be good for business.

* Google prefers video clips

This is an other naff Google policy. It is a ramification of Google having bought up YouTube. I always knew YouTube was a liability, for reasons which I consider obvious. Notably video is an inefficient way of transmitting information. There are a few things it's good for, but for most things it is not good. However, for a search engine, video is an especially poor choice of medium. Search engines can read text, but they can't watch video. So, why would a search engine with any sense at all try to encourage the use of unreadable and bandwidth-hungry video?

As a response to the idea that Google is biased towards websites that include video, I have made a special point of including some pages that have YouTube videos on. The film documentary Shades-of-Grey starring Zyra, is now on some pages here. Not that it's done any good in terms of search results. Google is still displaying totally bogus videos which are nothing to do with me! This again results in Google being demoted in terms of my opinion of it.

* Google is prejudiced against affiliates

This may be true, or may not be. However, if Google started banning pages that have the word "affiliate" on them, it would mean that affiliates generally would not say "affiliate" on the pages. In contrast, here, as a matter of honesty, all of the dedicated pages about affiliate merchants have clear statements that it's an affiliate program. They also include in text the destination web address. This is in case the affiliate links fail, people can still visit the place by using the web address.

I intend to keep up that honesty and public-spiritedness, and I won't let Google's prejudice about the term "affiliate", whether true or imaginary, get in the way of my own good policies.

My current belief (2012) is that Google does not have a prejudice against anyone saying the word "affiliate" on a web page. However, Google is probably against affiliates generally, because Google would prefer to grab all of the money rather than let affiliates make any money.

Having said that, to be fair to Google, Google has set up the "Google Affiliate Network", which is a bizarre attempt by Google to set up as an affiliate marketing company. In a way I admire their initiative, but I am sceptical about the Google Affiliate Network for various reasons. I believe it could potentially be a conflict of interests! It would also allow Google to be "judge, jury, and executioner", as any affiliates that behave in a maverick way by passing fair comment upon the merchants (as I do, because it's honest), could be summarily dismissed, not just from the affiliate network, but also from Google Search. This is an anti-trust matter, and it's dangerous, as surely as signing up to having Tesco as your majority customer. They can go to your bankruptcy auction. I warn against this problem on my page "How to Run Your Own Company", along with other things to beware of in business.

* Google doesn't like pages with affiliate links

I can understand it if Google doesn't like pages with loads of random irrelevant affiliate links on them. However, the dedicated affiliate pages at this site form part of an in-house structure and each page only has one affiliate link on it. These are also clearly identifiable.

I don't think Google would be so against affiliates that any page with any affiliate link on would be discriminated against, as that would remove all the pages with Amazon links on the Internet, and there are many.

* Google is prejudiced against websites that don't pay Google for adverts

I don't believe this is true. It may be true that Google gives a benefit to websites that buy some advertising, but it's far from proven that it is the case. It is more likely that websites which buy advertising on Google then get more fame online and therefore tend to get an advantage in the organic search.

* Google hates malware

Quite rightly so! Malware is very bad and is to be avoided. Also, for results in a search, it's good if people can be warned about malware-infestation before they click on a link. A more worrying question is whether Google has a faulty way of determining if a website has malware. For example, I have pages which warn people about specific viral infestations which arrive in e-mails. To warn people, I have copies of the offending e-mails published online on my pages. These are rendered safe, of course, by the harmful item being removed. However, for all I know, Google might falsely believe that the pages contain malware because the text is the same as bad e-mails.

* Google doesn't like duplicate content

Sounds fair enough. See, this is the sort of problem. The trouble is, though, that Google hasn't thought through the ramifications. I write original content, and because my style is unique, it's clearly different from the way other people write stuff. However, I have noticed sometimes a few people steal my stuff. Well, Google might say, that's duplicate content. The trouble is, Google will as likely suppose that MY version is the "duplicate". This was earlier a problem at Yahoo, as there was a Yahoo user who copied various of my pages. However, Yahoo since mended their ways! This was all resolved, but was only resolved after Yahoo got a telephone line and allowed complaints to be put in. Yahoo sorted it all out, and the copied content was removed.

The criticism of Google for encouraging copyright infringement is one of the big problems Google had with the Google Updates and has been explained at that page.

I'm not going to copy the stuff from that other page that I've written and put it on here as well. Google is right to demote sites that do that sort of thing.

* Google insists every page has a different title, different keywords, different description, etc

My pages have always had different titles, different keywords, and different descriptions. It is obvious to get that right. This has been commonsense right from the beginning.

Also, obvious though it may seem, a page has only one title, as in only one <title> ... </title> tag. This is so obvious it shouldn't even need mentioning. However, I heard there were cheats who were putting loads of different titles on the same page in order to fool search engines. I'm surprised it's not an html error.

There is no such nonsense here. All of the pages have different titles, only one title per page, and the automated in-house software checks the pages to make sure they all have different titles.

Also, here, the pages are not allowed to have duplicate site indexing entries. So, all of the entries in the site index are unique at the time of publishing.

* Google doesn't understand htmlisp and misinterprets to structure of Zyra's website as "unnatural linking"

I realised this could be the answer on 2012/07/15. The thing is, htmlisp.c is an in-house Linux program which manages the hosting here. The website is edited offline and then converted into the online version using various programs here, but the suspected problem could be that many of the pages link to the primary front page. That would be perfectly OK, except that a great many of the pages are at other web locations, and it is possible Google could mistake this for "unnatural linking" where the pages connect to the front page, where it's not the front page of the domain which the pages are on, and can include the primary front page www.zyra.org.uk

If this turns out to be what the problem is, it will mean Google has reneged on its original statement on the "Democracy of Pages" where a page can link to any page and be equally valid. If they have welched on this, then it shows Google to be at fault at a fundamental level.

* Google doesn't like websites that ask for links

I heard about this from a website that was giving away photographs and requested merely a link back. The webmaster was saying that other sites which charged lots of money for photographs were doing better than the site which just asked for links. The suspected reason was that Google somehow doesn't like people asking for links.

Now there is no proof that this was what was going on, but if it were the case, then it would be entirely counter to Google's stated policy which is "You should EARN links, not BUILD links". People have a free choice whether they want to link, so I would suggest this counts as earning links not building them.

However, it may be, yet again, that Google says one thing and does something else!

Meanwhile, this website has a Please link to this site suggestion. If Google doesn't like that, then Google is in the wrong.

* Google doesn't like being slagged-off, criticised, complained about, or commented upon negatively

Well of course they don't! No-one does! However, the question is whether Google takes it on the chin and behaves in a professional way about it like British politicians, or whether Google behaves like various dictatorial despotic autocracies and BANISHES/PUNISHES anyone for criticising them.

I believe that for all Google's faults, it is at least a place that is willing to cope with the good and bad of free speech, and that in fact Google does not punish websites for saying bad things about Google. Of course, it remains to be seen. If my website disappears from listings on Google you'll have a good idea it's been censored out because of petty-mindedness. However, I don't think Google is that bad. Plus, I say both good and bad because it's the truth. This is in contrast to purely negative write-ups of which I've seen many.

I have noticed on some critiques which say really bad things about Google, they often have phases in such as THANKS GOOGLE! (said in a sarcastic way). This could be because people who criticise Google typically write in that style, or it could be that Google censors out reviews that say things like "Google rubbish" and "Google scam" etc, and that leaves a higher percentage that say "Thanks Google! Thanks for ruining my business! Thanks for damaging the world with listing stupid irrelevant commercial stuff rather than listing the good stuff which you used to do!" or similar. If it is such a mode of censorship, it shows not merely an unstated bias, but also a flawed algorithm. This would also imply the main Google algorithm is likely to be flawed.

A good way to determine if Google is censoring criticism is to do comparative searches for "down with Google" on Google and other search engines. From the comparison of results it should soon be apparent whether Google is taking action against places that don't say "Google is glorious!" or stuff to that effect.

* Google doesn't like anyone to make any money except Google

Now that is just being cynical! I'm sure Google doesn't mind other people making money so long as Google makes more money.

* Google likes you to run the latest version of everything and is prejudiced against you if you don't

No, I don't believe that's true either.

* Google misinterprets website content

I am sure this is true. However, it's a far cry from misinterpretations about comments being made straight or with sarcasm or irony, to making crass mistakes such as assuming that because there's a page about spam at this site, that therefore the website is a spam website. Similar, there's also a page about viruses and so the fear is that Google might think this website is a virus website. Also, there are pages which have scams published for you to read and be warned against, so does Google assume that the site is actually guilty of these things? If that is what happens, it would be like the police having a public display where someone acts out the role of a burglar and the police dog grabs the character by the padding on the arm, ... but then the police actually arresting the actor because they were implied to be guilty by acting the part?!! No, I don't think Google is a stupid as that!

* Google doesn't like links that are too good

This situation was highlighted by Xytron the hard disc drive data recovery company. If links to a website are "too good" (whatever that means), Google assumes they are paid-for links and punishes the sites involved. This means that Google actually punishes sites where the links are simply good links and haven't been put there on a paid links basis at all.

This is an entirely contrary (as in Mary Mary) policy, as it means that even if you do everything exactly right, you are punished. It also implies there are somehow some kind of "second rate" links which Google considers OK. However, attempting to create such links produces the problem that honest sites can't win because they have no way of knowing how to do this. In contrast, the people who are cheating and gaming the system will create numerous disposable websites and then apply a principle of evolution to suss out Google's naff algorithm.

(Again, this has overtones of a very oldfashioned puritanical notion where it's considered a sin to create items which are without fault, and therefore deliberate flaws have to be introduced).

The result of this type of nonsense by Google is that sites appearing in Google searches include many that are absolute rubbish, where the text is meaningless, random words strung together, and various cheat-links going to unrelated places. If that's the type of Internet which Google wants, I propose we create a NEW INTERNET, populate it with Real Websites, and don't allow Google in to pollute it.

* Google punishes sites with links which it falsely believes are paid-for links

There is nothing distinct about a paid-for link, and Google can not tell if any links have been paid for. Therefore Google's assumptions about some links being paid for are without evidence. This type of false accusation and pseudo-random summary punishment is very bad for the Internet, and especially bad for good websites such as mine where many places have free links.

* Google punishes any kind of thing that Google decides could be used instead to make Google money!

This is a remarkably cynical statement by a wise person commenting on the lamentable Google problem, and whilst it may not be true in an absolute sense, there is an ominous smell of truth to it.

* Google doesn't like paid-for links.

This is almost certainly true as Google has confessed to it. Except there is a problem. What are paid-for links? They are links which are paid for, obviously. Now, fortunately as Google does not have access to everyone's private bank account, there is no way to tell which links on any website are paid-for and which are not. Obviously spam-ad links on Google Search ARE PAID-FOR LINKS, but I would suppose Google will not worry about that! Instead, it's more a matter of making assumptions and surmising about other people's websites, which can be little more than guesswork. This means that as a consequence, any accusations of a link being "paid for" are likely to be false 50% of the time. Therefore not fair

* The "food" error.

This was an error which was found on various pages at Zyra's website, most notably Zyra.net and Zyra.org.uk , where there was a link which was supposed to go to the front page of Zyra.org.uk but in fact it went to the food page instead. This was an in-house error, rather than something at Google. However, it could be for all we know that Google has falsely accused this site of some sort of cheating because of it.

This highlights a bigger problem, which is the paranoid suspicion that it could be ANYTHING. This sort of thing tends to occur in religions where the God can't be trusted any longer. This fits with the fall from grace of Google quite well.

* Google doesn't like website with too many pages

According to some pundits, Google's Panda update (one of the Stupid Google Updates) punishes websites with "too many pages". This is ludicrous and discriminatory. I actually take the time to WRITE pages, and people like the pages. If Google doesn't like that, it's time for Google to stand aside and let a more content-respecting search engine take its place. I have over nine thousand pages. Stuff Google!

Footnote on this: It isn't necessarily that Google publishes websites with too many pages in an absolute sense, but it could be that Google punishes that suddenly have too many pages more than they did yesterday. This doesn't apply to my site, because there are nine thousand pages, with another couple of hundred being added every month or so.

* Suicide and Death

People that have been ruined by the Stupid Google Updates may become victims of suicide, and then they might haunt Google. It wouldn't surprise me Google's offices and server rooms are already starting to get rather spooky especially at night!

* Google makes stupid assumptions about domains

(This like the other speculative theories on this page, is a "WHAT IF"). Google believes that pages that are at a website with a domain that's regional, are only relevant in that country's region. This would be a crass assumption on the part of Google, and would be like the sort of fascist assumptions made by racist extremists. It would undermine the principle of the Internet being International, and would seek to divide it all up into nation state regionalities. We don't like regionality here, as it's unfair, bigoted, and false at a fundamental level.

So, how could I think Google has a "Google Fascist" policy like this? Well, my primary website is Zyra.ORG.UK , and it is an International site. If I write a page explaining How Logarithms Work, then it is about how logarithms work anywhere in the world, and it's nothing UK-specific. If a company such as Google assumes that because it's got .org.uk in the name then it must be only relevant within the UK, then that company is living with a falsehood the likes of which went out of fashion when the Second World War was won.

Note that a few other pages such as which way water goes down the plughole and why clocks go round clockwise are at different parts of the Zyra website (Zyra.net and Zyra.info respectively). These are all part of the same website which is distributed around the webspaces. The fact is, though, such pages of explanation are of global interest, and not specific to a region.

If Google is making preposterous regional assumptions, as if all search queries are of the form "where can I buy cabbages" where locality is crucial, then Google deserves to be put out of business, and preferably soon. It's not acceptable to discriminate against people because of ethnicity, gender, orientation, and the domain is a similar thing. Look, if a website is .TV , then any assuming it's solely about things going on in Tuvalu is false. Now to be fair to Google, they've made an exception for .TV as they believe it's a "vanity" domain. However, people have equally good reasons to have other domains. In the case of Zyra.org.uk , it's because it's historically been that way. It's not going to change just because a naff search engine can't get its act together! Or, to put it another way, Stuff Google! Also, it's not always possible to get a top level domain, because of cybersquatters and for other reasons, and in any case it is not a solution moving everything to a different domain to try to get around the fact that Google can't suss that internationalism is the modern way. It makes Google look as outdated as someone believing that the international language Esperanto is somehow irrelevant beyond a small region in Europe because Zamenhof had a Jewish/Polish passport.

I personally hope this particular speculative theory turns out not to be true, because were it true it would mean that Google was guilty of regional prejudice, which was the reason I lost confidence in old Altavista before they fell from their position of having world dominance of the search market.

The fact is that the Internet is a global resource, and any attempt by old nation-states, commercial corporations, or opinionated religions, to split the world up into garden-fence localities, is divisive and against the spirit of The Internet.

* Other things

Many many other things. The paranoia and speculation continues.