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Google Updates

Google has gone down the toilet.

A Satirical look at Google's Unfair "Updates". Time to fight back against Google's unfairness, misuse of market position, and failure to understand Real Content evergreen websites.


Although the following contains a fictitious future history about the ongoing fiasco perpetrated by Google, it is a valid ironical critique of Google and has an air to it as if it were a sequel to If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines. The page was first written in July 2012 and contains two "Google Updates" which were part of the history at the time. It then goes on into a creative work of fiction by Zyra, the character that runs Zyra.org.uk. The reason for writing this page (which Google may not like), is that the misbehaviour by Google search engine had resulted in unfair prejudice against this site. Finally, enough was enough, and the "near suicidal" desperation became manifested as online material. Writing the page itself is potentially suicidal in a way, as for all we know, Google might take revenge against anyone for blaspheming against the Great God Google by applying more prejudice to it, or even banning it altogether. There is no telling, considering how badly Google has behaved up to now, and no assumption that there will be improvements.

The factual history first, then the fictional imagining follows.

In the beginning, Google was a good search engine, but as time went on, it became worse, and became plagued by search engine cheats. However, rather than dealing with this problem, Google introduced various "Google Updates". The major problem with these "Google Updates", was that although they were supposed to be a good idea, they had very little effect on search engine cheats and yet they resulted in severely negative results on honest websites. They were a disaster, and Google has alienated webmasters. And so begins a fictitious future history of Google, and what could happen if their ego continues to get further out-of-hand.

Google's "Update" can be described as "a change to the Google's search results ranking algorithm". Sounds innocent enough? Well it's not!

Google Panda

February 2011, April 2011, and various tweakings and adjustings as if Google search engine was like a temperamental lawnmower engine tinkered with by the neighbour who seems to make a habit of it.

It's no good pandering to Google. Presumably named "Panda" after a near-extinct Chinese bear which people mistakenly believe is cute-and-cuddly when in fact it is a savage and slothful creature. Also, as China has a monopolistic practice regarding Pandas, and Google is well-in-league with the Chinese autocratic communist regime, and also have monopolistic tendencies, it seems especially appropriate.

The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

A crucial feature of the Panda Update was the prejudice against good long-term reliable Evergreen websites, and a preference instead for news websites, social networking sites, and other short-termist sites. Notice how this compares with the idea of eliminating "low-quality sites"?! Can you see the curious mismatch?

Also a feature of the Panda Update was the preference for copied material over original content. (If you want to make a Chinese comment about this, it's up to you).

Or as Wikipedia puts it "Google's webmaster forum became filled with complaints of scrapers/copyright infringers getting better rankings than sites with original content". Oh really, so, Google supports plagiarists and punishes originators?

Google ingratiates itself and things are said such as "To help affected publishers, Google published an advisory note, thus giving some direction for self-evaluation of a website's quality". However, like many other afflicted folks, I have read the Google note, and it does not match with what they do!

More telling is the idea of "artificial intelligence based on baysean algorithmic stuff". The term with this is the word "intelligence". If crime detection worked that way, it would be like ED209 (a faulty machine in Robocop) stomping around arresting anyone with a striped jersey or carrying a bag that looked as if it might say "swag" on it.

Also note that Panda is Prejudice. "Google Panda update impacts an entire site's ranking or specific section rather than just the individual pages on a site". As Google does not say which page the false accusation is levelled against, and as there are over nine thousand pages at this site, having the entire site being punished is ludicrous!

Here's another quote from Wikipedia: "In addition to other changes, Panda seems to focus on the date of a web page. Some experts think this has adversely impacted sites with lots of "evergreen content". Because evergreen content usually has an older publication date, Panda seems to reduce its visibility in search results. For searchers looking for in-depth information, many of these evergreen posts are great sources of knowledge on a topic. If these evergreen web pages happen to be on a blog they also often contain a long comment thread with lots of additional, valuable information. In the future Google may have to address how evergreen pages are listed in search results when recent results are more superficial in nature".

Anyone can see the obvious counterproductive nature of the previous notion?! Or to put it another way: Utterly ludicrous and stupid.

Much of the 2012 shpiel talks of websites being punished! Note: This is not the way to carry on. Having a "suss law" like the bad old days in the UK when a person could be implicitly found guilty of the crime of "being black on a Friday night", the whole thing is brought into disrepute.

As I refuse to be part of the seo nonsense, I am not a member of Google's cosy club of webmasters who have got Google accounts. Therefore, when Google says "Numerous websites have been hit, and penalized, and many owners have received messages through Google webmaster tools, declaring their tactics are outside of Google's guidelines, and that they have an unnatural link velocity", I have received no messages from Google about anything of that type.

Google Penguin

April/May 2012, and various other lawnmower-mending-neighbour style updates. The update was named "Penguin" even though democratically it was voted to be named "Titanic", presumably because of it being a disaster of epic proportions.

"Penguin" refers to an Antarctic flightless bird which enjoyed good publicity as the emblem of Linux, and was also a symbol of a famous book publisher. Unfortunately the bird itself has the unfortunate privilege of living in one of the worst places on Earth. It is a place so hostile that on the rare occasions any humans arrive to visit, they are explorers and exobiologists, and they are often so short of supplies they have to eat the penguin or burn its blubber as fuel.

The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate "Google’s Webmaster Guidelines" (in other words arbitrary made-up rules). ...by using black-hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, or deliberate creation of duplicate content, and a few other things which Google kept secret so no-one knew if they were guilty or not.

This came as a big warning to anyone who wrote in languages such as English, German, Chinese, and Arabic, and other languages which Google described as "highly-spammed" languages. Shucks! I should have known to write this website in Cymraeg (Welsh)!

And, "The algorithm follows the logic by which Google’s human quality raters determine a website’s quality. In January 2012, so-called page layout algorithm update was released, which targeted websites with little content above the fold". I wonder how much content this page has "above the fold"?! I would guess that as it says "Stuff Google" and "Down with Google", it may be regarded as not having much content above the fold?

The main target of Google Penguin update is to check webspam.

Now look, we know what webspam is. It's those stupid pages which are full of rubbish and nonsense and have loads of pop-ups and adverts. There's none of that here. However, Google says one thing and does something else.

Here's another quote: "Google’s Penguin feedback form: Two days after Penguin update was released Google prepared a feedback form designed for two categories of users: those who want to report web spam that still ranks highly after the search algorithm change, and those who think that their site got unfairly hit by the update" ... "Google also has a reconsideration form through Google Webmaster Tools for the 700,000 sites who received an email stating their sites demonstrated unusual linking". No such communication was evident here. Google have punished this site, and refused to talk. I welcome constructive comment from anyone who would care to have a look around this website and see for yourself there is no such "webspam" here!

So, in 2012, Google has punished this website, and there is no way to contact Google and tell them they are in the wrong. So now the fictional future write-up begins...

In case you didn't know, the following is a FICTIONAL IMAGINING of a possible future history, which we hope will not occur!:

Google Galapagos Tortoise

Imagined date February 2013.

Presumably named after the near-extinct giant lumbering armour-plated animals, the likes of which feature on the title sequence for the brilliant British comedy "One Foot In The Grave", and on news reports about the sad death of yet another zoo's old-timer ancient tortoise, the subspecies of which is now lost forever.

In the Google Galapagos Tortoise Update, Google had become so set in its ways it was determined to take control of the now already discredited "Social Networking" idea, that it had bought out the last of the worthless stock of Facebook which was going out of business anyway. With Google's "Big Brother is Watching You" system, it was made a compulsory condition of the unified privacy policy of Google that everyone had to register using the stupid name on their passport and only have one account. (See passport problems, ID problems, and name problems). This was rejected by the majority of people in the Free World, although Google still continued to have increased membership because the Chinese government compelled all of their citizens to have a Google membership. People were saying on websites "We want some privacy and freedom!", but such websites only appeared on OTHER SEARCH ENGINES, and were banned from Google search results because saying such blasphemies was "against the Google webmaster guidelines".

Google Polar Bear

Imagined date late 2013 / early 2014:

Presumably named after a giant Arctic white bear which people imagine to be very cute, and yet which actually makes a good meal OF visiting tourists. Polar bears are endangered, not because their food supply is running out, but because the land on which they live, Arctic Ice, is melting because of global warming.

In the Google Polar Bear Update, any and all websites with any Real Content were punished. Google had decided that all Real Content represented a threat to Google's policy of selling loads of spamlike PPC adverts in your face. Real websites which had evergreen content and which had allowed Google to grow from nothing in the first place were not happy about this. Google banned such sites as Wikipedia, The BBC, and Zyra's website, on the grounds that they "contained content", and were therefore a threat to Google's commercial ownership of the world. The United States Government sponsored by Microsoft wholeheartedly backed Google's aim, saying "We can not allow freedom of speech to any suspected terrorists, and that means you".

By now, the average IQ of Google's target audience had fallen well into double-figures, and many people who still used Google were too stupid to notice that the search results that they got were auto-completed and auto-corrected to such an extent that they had almost no relation to what they had a vague notion of searching for in the first place. Also, the Google spam-ads, sponsored links, were covertly disguised as faked-up search results that the dumbed-down audience had no choice but to click on the adverts and get lots of stupid pop-up windows.

Soon after the launch of Google Polar Bear, the "chief highfalutin job-title distinguished executive officer in charge of defeating Google Spam, Witchcraft, and other works of the Devil" was assassinated by an Anonymous assailant. Google immediately responded by having a trial of all 2.5 million of the potential suspects (webmasters who had good websites which had been demoted). The automated trials occurred inside Google's own servers and lasted 2.5 milliseconds, after which all of the accused were found guilty as charged in absentia. However, when Google tried to get the world's governments to round up all of the offenders have have them sent for execution, the European Court of Human Rights pointed out that in the world it is regarded that a person has a right to appear at their trial and to be tried by their peers and to be "innocent until proven guilty" etc.

After the assassination of Google Spamfinder General, there was considerable disagreement among the members of Google to decide what to call the next update. As no agreement was reached, the new Google update was parrallelly called...

Google White Rhino

Named after a large near-extinct mammal which has no car insurance policy and yet deliberately crashes into Land Rovers and other 4-wheel-drive vehicles on safari. The beast is an uninsured driver of a tonne of meat with a horn on the front. The horn is made of compressed keratin (hair) which quacks and charlatans sell as bogus medicaments.

Google Tapir

Named after a prehistoric-looking animal which features on the initial scene of the great movie "2001 A Space Odyssey". When apes evolved into humans, the early adopters of the new technology of using tools such as bones to bash other critters over the head, resulted in them defeating their competitors. The most famous jump-cut of all time flips to orbiting spacecraft.

Google White Elephant

The committee was told that this was not a real creature, but they still believed their own hype and decided this was a genuine endangered species, and they had failed to take a good look into the mirror!

Google Hippopotamus

Another "cute" animal, and yet an animal which kills more humans than various sharp-toothed predators such as lions and tigers. Hippopotami are also uninsured drivers and will spoil the no-claims bonus and paint job on any 4X4 vehicle trundling across the wild terrain.

Anyway, after this beastly update, Google closed all lines of communication and instead resorted to making presidential-style announcements with no course of query or redress. By closing off all criticism, Google had become aloof from any notion that it might in any way be at all to blame for anything.

By now most of Google's dwindling target audience were illiterate and unable to read text. So, Google resorted to having something called You Tube, which was a way of uneducated people being spoon-fed stuff which they could watch as if they were pretending to watch the television rather than doing anything "Internet-like".

Even quite basic things which could be explained in a paragraph of erudite text were made into an mp4 movie clip which took up megabytes of download space and which typically involved someone reading out the script slowly, or even subtitles flashing on the screen in case anyone could read them. This was a fine way of wasting loads of data bandwidth, which oddly somehow got paid for.

Google Dodo

Imagined date mid 2015:

The famous Dodo is largely remembered for being extinct. A flightless bird, native to Mauritius (which is a tax haven), the Dodo was made extinct by cats and rats jumping ashore from ships. Sailors did not extinct the Dodo. It didn't taste good, and was no sport to hunt.

The Google Dodo Update saw a thinning-out of the already depleted set of websites on Google. With all evergreen content-based sites eliminated, the only sites that appeared (apart from Google spam adverts) were websites that were set up in a hurry, exploited some loophole, and were then put out of business. However, with the Google Dodo Update, Google tightened up the extent to which any content was allowed, and actively encouraged cybersquatting to sell more bogus domains. This was good news for cybersquatting companies such as Go Daddy, but bad news for any independent websites wishing to make any money.

Google Woolly Mammoth

Imagined date early 2016:

Named after a giant prehistoric extinct elephant-like beast, whose name also contains the term "woolly" which reminds us of such things as "Woolly Thinking", again an apt notion when applied to the behaviour of Google.

With the Google Woolly Mammoth Update, fierce competition was rife among websites which had only a few days to be created, populated by random rubbish generated by increasingly powerful Google-Obfuscation Robots, hit an all-time high, and then be punished out of existence again.

By now all of the real websites had moved to other search engines.

Google Brontosaurus

Imagined date Christmas 2017:

These long-extinct beasts were put out of business 65 million years ago when a giant asteroid hit the Earth. Schoolchildren are inspired by them, but creationists don't like them.

The new Unified Privacy Policy of Google now compelled all users to register using their entire DNA profile and to be pinpointed on a map of the world with a geographical location. This meant that if they said anything out-of-turn they could be exterminated by remote-control.

As a result, everything Google did and said was supported 100% by all of their members.

Most of the members who still used Google were not in a position to disagree or say anything anyway, and their carers who spoonfed them commented that Google helped to keep them out of trouble during the time inbetween feedings. Google received special awards from the psychiatric companies who make drugs to keep mentally handicapped people docile, as Google provided a potted mechanism for keeping these people under control.

Google Trilobite

Imagined date Mid 2018:

In the Google Trilobite Update, Google programmers were coming to grips with one final webspam website which stubbornly refused to go away in any search that was being done. However, after weeks of trying, someone pointed out that in the Google Search Results there was actually only one site which still came up. It was a site called www.google.com and it was the most guilty site in terms of webspam ever and was completely against the Google Webmaster Policies. Google could not make any exception and had to proceed with trying new algorithmic changes to eliminate this menace.

Eventually, Google resolved that this was not going to be solved by programming, and so they wrote a letter to the website www.google.com and told them to stop being such a nuisance. The letter was opened by robot, read, and replied to. Then, later that day, the website closed down, leaving the programmers with final victory, ZERO search results. At last Google had eliminated all webspam. The end.


Epilogue:

So, there it is, a veritable "Ghost of Christmas Future" style scariness. I welcome Google reforming and avoiding such a disastrous potential future. You can write to me and talk about it if you like. Also please link to this site! I need links and visitors, after all having written such blasphemies against the Great God Google it's not as if I can rely on being on searches, is it? Well, not unless people move their search preferences to other search engines!