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The Web's Worst Search Engine!
This page was written in protest after our unfair treatment at the hands of Google. We were hoping to announce our equally remarkable return to Google search after a 26 month absence, in about July 2009. However, I was not foolish emough to be duped by Google and at the time of writing this 2009/09/18 we have dropped to page 2 once more and I shouldn't imagine it will be long before we disappear once more. Therefore, I stick by my word Google are the web's worst search engine. Maybe I'll reappear, but with Google nothing appears to be stable. Therefore, it's time to move on...
The web's worst search engine! Have a look at this page and see if you agree. We will show you how some search engines can provide you with inaccurate information, a lack of information and in some cases complete and utter rubbish!
In my opinion the world's worst search engine at present is google. There are various reasons for this and I shall outline them below. The main reasons for this are the complete inaccuracy of searches, the flawed current algorithm, the total lack of communication and the over-zealous reliance on paid for and sponsored links.(2006/04/17)
Google asks you to submit your site to their search engine, so that they can give the most complete picture of the web. However, this is complete nonsense. Google holds sites back, displays searches which vary greatly from day to day and in my own case completely ignores most of my site's information.
Here is an example of the type of errors I am talking about. Visitors to my site will notice if they read the front page, that this site has over 300 pages. Google used to list about 230, today it lists 13! What is the point in them asking me to submit my site to their search engine? This dwindling of pages listed for this site started about nine weeks ago, so it is not a knee jerk reaction on my part, rather an acceptance of their failures. Why has this happened? I don't know. My Car Insurance page has lots of links, but it does not appear in the list of pages shown by google. Therefore, I thought I would question the Americans, which brings me to my next point about their total lack of communication.
I have tried numerous attempts to contact google, atleast twelve; I have never once received a reply. Infact, the more I email them the worse things seem to get! I tried a different approach and decided to contact them by telephone using the number provided them online. Could this be the answer? No. I rang up and received the usual boring automated reply, waited patiently for the numerous options. Pressed the digits of my touchtone phone all the time watching my pennies flushed down the toilet until I encountered a blockage, when I reached my final option after several minutes on the telephone, the now incredibly annoying voice directed me back to their "forum" online as there was no service to deal with my enquiry. What a complete and utter scam google! Not only are they costing me money by not listing my pages, but they ripped me off by charging me for a call that they were not prepared to deal with.
There do seem to be major flaws with the current algorithm, as the shifting sands seem to be caught in a constant maelstrom. One day my site went from having 233 pages listed when I started a mug of tea, to 89 before I had even finished it! A page that belongs to my good friend Zyra which links to this site has been online for years, however for the time being (about 1 week it has totally disappeared). What is their problem? As a website owner, I receive all sorts of SEO nonsense (I'm not into that, but you can submit your site to me and if I like your site or think it's relevant to my visitors, I'll gladly link to you), however the collective message is simple - there are major problems with the current algorithm.
Sponsored links at google what a joke! If you were to put in the search box Outer Mongolian Mountain Yak Urine for sale, what would be number one or certainly one of the sponsored links - eBay! Google loves eBay, infact I'm unsure do eBay own google? You might wonder the same thing. How many times have you done a search and found eBay in the top ten? It's complete and utter pants! Infact it's Bridget Jones big pants. A recent study of my server logs revealed that many people are doing searches on google minus eBay to try and stop this stupidity. If you want my advice avoid all sponsored links and top page paid links on google, as they are just a way for google to make some money, are often irrelevant and can contain misleading redirections. A friend recently did a search on a site for Linux and the sponsored links at the top were for Microsoft Software!
If you decide to go shopping on google you're in for a big surprise, the searches are vastly inaccurate. For exammple I decided to add some more stamp links to this site tonight, moreover realising that stamp sites could also be rubber stamps, I added the word Philately. That should do it, wrong! The first three entries were all connected to stamps being sold on eBay, are we sure they don't own google? Therefore, my final conclusion is that we should link to ourselves!!
We do not participate in silly SEO nonsense and do not care what your google page ranking is. What we do participate in is linking to good quality sites, that we feel will be interesting for our visitors. You do not have to be a Stamp Site to get a link from us, although it does help! However, there is much more to this site than just stamps.
This site operates a deep linking policy, so that you can link to any page at this site. We never remove a page, so you needn't worry about broken links.
However, there are many good search engines out there. At present we favour Yahoo and MSN. Below is a list of search engines which are either much better than google or certainly can't be any worse!
linkNZ
UPDATE: This site slumped to having only 10 pages listed on google, before things started to change, however it's a slow old process. Currently, 2006/05/04 we have 18 pages listed and this process has taken google three weeks to return eight pages. Watch this space, by next year all of the pages may have returned.
UPDATE: 2006/06/19 - We continued to flicker in the teens and all of a sudden Google lists 310 Pages!! This only lasts 24 hours though as we slumped back to 15 pages - Garbage!
UPDATE: 2006/10/02 - Good news Google often lists all of our pages and more! The bad news is that sometimes our pages completely disappear. We have also lost our page ranking on many of the searches. What's worse is that pages that were appearing and had not been lost, often now disappear. Therefore, there appears to be no continuity at all - what a way to run a company!!
UPDATE: 2006/10/23 - Pointless product search placed above our Front Page when we search for ourselves on Google. Is anyone interested in this useless piece of Google advertising?
UPDATE: 2006/12/18 - We were chuffed to see over 400 pages listed on Google. However, this didn't last, as we found that while these were listed on the web, when we checked the co.uk for uk pages only, we were only listed for approx. 130 pages. As the largest percentage of our traffic is UK based, once more Google's inconsistencies attempt to ruin our business!
UPDATE: 2007/05/02 - This is the last entry on this page. I'd like to say that there was a happy conclusion, but with Google, there never is! We returned from our holidays to find that we had disappeared completely from Google. We have been missing from their search for atleast five days. We know Googlebot visits us on a daily basis as we check our logs. We also know that while we are not listed on Google i.e. Cloaking - something they condemn, they allow people to find some of our pages in searches. Therefore, our content is good enough, but they prevent people from finding our front page.
In conclusion, they are victims of their own success and have become arrogant, greedy and inaccurate. They favour those who pay them. Therefore, you are obviously reading this on another search engine as they would like you to think we don't exist by their censorship. Vote with your mouse use Yahoo! They are much better and they like to give everyone a chance and if you want to pay for advertising they are cheaper and their system is easier to use!!
STAMP DEMON: "Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned - The Prodigy"
A kind bit of advice to google. We are quite nice people really once you get to know us and we rarely hold grudges, unless we are unfairly treated. However, we believe in freedom of speech. If anyone at google wants to discuss this with us, they can always visit our contact page! However, there is now a deadline for your communication!