Google News Blames The Messenger (That Would Be Us)
from the just-trying-to-help dept
Google News has included Techdirt as one of its sources for a few years now. It doesn't bring much traffic, to be honest, but it's nice that we're included. For some unknown reason, Google News changed something on July 6th, so that all of our stories appearing in Google News now show up with the headline "Permalink to this story." We hadn't made any changes to our site, and Google News had always performed flawlessly in the past. We figured the folks at Google News might want to know about the glitch, so our VP of Product Development Dennis Yang emailed them a friendly note pointing out that something on their end appeared to have broken. What followed was a series of emails from Google staff (much of it sounding like boilerplate "canned" responses) that in almost every case blamed us for their own glitch. That's what we get for trying to point out a glitch to them.First, they told us the problem was that we had failed to put the title of the article in the title tag. This is false -- as we've always had the title of our articles in the title tag (which seems like a fairly easy thing to check). In response, Google News staff then told us that it was still our fault, because within the article page itself, we had a link to the page with the "Permalink..." text. Of course, that's the same as most major blog platforms -- and you would think that Google's algorithms would be smart enough to understand the difference between a title and a link that says "permalink." However, since Google indicated the link that pointed to the same URL as the story itself was more likely to be chosen as the title, Dennis then added a link in the title itself on the article page to the same article page. Google News then responded by telling us again that it was our fault -- this time it was because (you guessed it) the title link linked to the same page. Yes, they now blamed us for the change they had just suggested we make.
Dennis then responded (nicely, as always) going through the facts of the case (everything worked fine, we made no changes, suddenly it wasn't working), while highlighting how we followed every one of the rules they had suggested might be the problem in previous emails. Even though this was clearly an issue on their end, he asked if they wanted us to change anything on our end to help fix their problem. They gave us one final response, saying that hyperlinks on the page sometimes fool their algorithm and there's nothing more that they can do. In other words, they admit that their algorithm is broken, but it's not like they're going to fix it or anything. Once again, the traffic we get from Google News is somewhat minimal (we get much more from Google and Google's personalized page) so we're not complaining. Hell, it's their site, they can set it up however they want. However, we figured it would be nice of us to point out that whatever change they made on July 6th introduced what appears to be a bug that hurts the usefulness of their own site. We didn't realize that we'd be repeatedly blamed for the problem, and then told that there was nothing that could be done to fix the broken algorithm. So much for trying to help...
Either way, it's clear that Google News' algorithms have some problems. It was particularly disappointing that they made it seem like we needed to make the changes to fix this -- especially after their director of search, Peter Norvig, so adamantly talked about how Google can't expect webmasters to configure things to Google's liking. Apparently that only applies to the regular search engine, not the News one. We're not the only ones to have this problem, of course. Today, InfoWorld is complaining that Google News considers their blogs a news source, but not their actual news articles. Google's response? Again, they blame their own algorithm. Of course, this inability to control their own search bot may get them into legal trouble too. While it seemed silly, when AFP got upset that their sources were included in Google News, Google promised to take them out (which actually upset AFP's partners). However, now, AFP is furious again, because they've discovered (thanks to InfoWorld, by the way) that their content is back in the news search results. So, sources that want to be included aren't. Sources that don't want to be there are. And those of us just pointing out that the system can't accurately find a title are told it's our fault. Seems like Google News might need some work.
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Google like robots...
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Re:
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Re: Re:
Only in Google News, not Google personalized page, or regular Google search...
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Re: Re: Re:
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step 2) Remove Techdirt from my Google personalized homepage
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Re: Anonymous Coward is An Idiot Who Wastes People
No 2. Stop posting stupid stuff
No 3. Get educated
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Some people have too much time
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Re: Some people have too much time
I think you're missing the point. First of all, it's not having it "our way." We simply pointed out that Google's service appears to be broken. We were trying to HELP them. What surprised us was the response, saying that the mistake was ours.
If Google wants to leave their broken algorithm in place, that's their call. They just shouldn't blame us for their own mistake.
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Re: Re: Some people have too much time
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If you want something done right, you gotta do it
Second, Google provides a service for a wide range of people. Google News changing their service so webmasters don't have to configure anything is rather unlikely. You can't please everyone, so instead, they [probably] are trying to please either the majority or the easiest, and from there webmasters will need to tweak some of their own.
But if Google News doesn't bring in that much traffic, then there really isn't a problem, outside of Google being a bit stubborn.
For those who don't know: A permalink is a pernament link to a story. Like this articles permalink is "http://techdirt.com/articles/20060720/1654233.shtml" so people don't have to search the articles to find it.
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Re: If you want something done right, you gotta do
Definately, I agree changing the "Permalink to this story." from text to an image. And with PHP its very simple.
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Re: If you want something done right, you gotta do
Second, Google News, provides a news aggregating service but does not provide guidance to the sites that its aggregating from. Guidance about what parts of their webpages it consumes their stories for showing briefs on the Google News web page.
Heck it even shoos the hell out of people who try to help Google get this right. (Don't be evil, but be arrogant, stubborn and uptight. What a piss off!)
Would'nt it be much nicer if Google took this response, and interacted with the news sites webmasters to initiate some kind of standard, like they did with robots.txt, to make things better for everyone?
Third, even if Google News does'nt bring that much traffic to Techdirt, consumers like me would like things better on both Google News and on Techdirt (and other such site's) stories and the way they are shown on Google News.
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google issue
Richard
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To Big For Their Britches
I also must say that I find it very amusing that this article was linked from the Google personalized site ~.^
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Read the article ^^^^
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feelings
Click start, goto run, type cmd........
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I do like...
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target audience
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Re: target audience
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Uh um er
With that being sad, I have probably been on my google homepage once every 10 minutes (except for sleeping times) for the past WEEK, and I have failed to notice this said bug.
Huh?
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To the griefers: when you see an article that isn't interesting, use the button on the left of that little mousey thing to click "back". Then go on with your life. Don't spend another two minutes of your precious time complaining about somebody wasting your precious time complaining. The irony abounds.
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I like techdirt
First off its in the GOOGLE NEWS section, not the Personalized Home Pages.
Second, it was in the way Google gave Techdirt such a runaround for a flaw in their own algorithm. I´ve had the same thing happen to me a few times when dealing with bureaucratic institutions, such as Homeland affairs, the Post Office, the Telephone Company and my mother-in-law.
It would save everybody a lot of grief if companies learn to say things like "Gee, well that´s seems to be flaw in our processes, we´ll get back to you when we fix it". And then, even if they don´t, at least they´ve given you the illusion that you´ve won the argument.
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Beat Google at their own Game
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If you don't like Google News
And, go beat Google with the "Evil" stick while you're at it.
Also, please quit whining to us about your relationship - you said that you weren't getting much out of it anyway. You are better off hanging around Digg and /. anyway. They'll treat you better.
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Google News (Beta)
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Google's Full Motto
Interesting article coming on the same day as a comparison of Microsoft's and Google's Motto) -- i.e. "don't be evil".
I've long suspected that their full motto is "Don't Be Evil (But it's ok to be arrogant pricks)."
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I thought Google fixed this problem...
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I'll ask about this.
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Re: I'll ask about this.
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Viewed with no styles, Permalink this Story comes up before the title. Since both the permalink and the story title have the exact same link, maybe Elgoog is trusting the first one to be the story headline/title? Just a wild guess...
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