Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Google Adding Words to Titles for Pages in Supplemental Index

Google seems to be adding words to the title links for some pages contained in the supplemental index.  I've seen this occur on four separate domains now in the past three days.  In all of these cases, the title appearing in the search results does not match the title appearing in the cache of the page, nor does it match a title tag that was ever present. 

Followup:  There is a thread on WMW that details some of the issues being seen.  Halfdeck also has a nice writeup about it on his blog.

We know with the recent story about the five million junk pages indexed in Google that the folks at the 'plex are having some issues.  Hopefully they'll figure it out sooner than later.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

I Think I'm Being Used (for better results)

This is the first time I've seen this.  Funny thing is, I got distracted and forgot to click on the Learn More link.  Haven't been able to reproduce the message either.  Oh well...

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Is Google Spread(sheet)ing Too Thin?

You must have already seen the array of blogs and news articles today about Google's new online spreadsheet program.  I personally haven't used it yet, so I have no opinions on the functionality of the tool.  I'm speaking more to the general consensus I'm seeing on the blogosphere, which can basically be summed up like this:  "Google is trying to really tick Bill Gates off, and they just might have done it, but what does this have to do with Search?  Has Google really lost focus?"

Notwithstanding the Forbes report this week, I think Google is right on course.  I wrote this post last fall which talked about the underlying reasons why people use one engine over another.  I maintain my position that people use an engine for its convenience and ease-of-use moreso that it's relevancy.  I think this will be particularly true in 12-24 months, around the time Windows Vista launches.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, Google has to become a mainstay in multiple areas of computing or they will become irrelevant.

P.S.  I also think Google likes you to be logged in with your Google account as much as possible, so this aids that goal as well.  Between GMail, Analytics, Adwords, Notebook and Adsense, I'm having trouble staying logged out while I search, which I'm sure is exactly the goal.