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Top 10 Ways Google Is Like Pamela Anderson - Google search has a lot of upfront promise, an impressive systems architecture, a dazzling algorithm, and media stardom.

So why in the world are Google’s search results so much like Pamela Anderson? That is, why are the Google SERPs full of overstuffed content, airhead natterings, sleazy sites, blatant copycats, repetitious drivel, and practically devoid of quality results?

The answer is easy. Google’s brilliant engineers outsmarted themselves and unleashed an algorithm update after Thanksgiving that totally screwed things up. And, it continues to chew up and discard high quality results and replace them with junk.

The sad thing is, they’re too much like Pamela Anderson to notice what went wrong because it’s not what’s up front that counts, it’s what’s underneath that matters.

So, to help them out and enlighten the unenlightened, here they are:

Top 10 Ways Google Search Is Like Pamela Anderson

1 - Replacing Real Things With Fakes

This one’s kind of interesting. Who knew that Google was actively replacing real results with fake implants?

Here’s a screenshot of a #1 Google ranking for a news story titled “Triplets Widowed Dad”: 

After experiencing a spate of indexing problems, I spot checked some old results. Here it is two months later at #11 in Google:

Why the drop you wonder? It’s because Google replaced the URL and story excerpt that ranked #1 with a little snippet from the sitemap URL.

Smooth move there big G…

2 - Spacing Out & Forgetting Who Said What

So, you blog about a topic, getting pretty good traffic and lots of comments from the post. Then one day it just disappears from the SERPs and never comes back. Here’s a post that was number #2 on Google for “Amanda Knox”:

Then one day it just disappears completely from the top 100 results and never comes back. So what happened?

Turns out Google “forgot” who said it and suddenly I’m in the omitted results. Never mind that the replacement page is an automatic redirect to a cutekid.com photo contest.

How that’s relevant to a murder in Italy is a mystery to me…

3 - Garbling English

Turns out Google has gotten confused about where they are on Google.com searches. You can get completely different results by simply changing the language within the URL.

Here’s a Google search for “Alexandra Paressant pics” in English:

Edit the url and replace “en” with “no” for Norwegian or “fi” for Finnish, etc. and check the different results.

So, why in the world do I care that Google.com shows different results in different languages? Because I used to have those same Google #1 results in English as well before I disappeared completely…

http://www.hitsusa.com/alexandra-paressant-pics-google-number-1.JPG
http://www.hitsusa.com/alexandra-paressant-pictures-google-number-1.JPG
http://www.hitsusa.com/alexandra-paressant-photos-google-number-1.JPG

I guess Google decided my English was bad or something…

4 - Forgetting Who Came First

Another way Google is like Pamela Anderson is they can’t seem to remember who came first anymore. Bad sex tape puns aside, I’m increasingly finding my original content pushed aside into the dreaded omitted results category.

And then a few weeks later, BAM! I’m in the omitted results:
 

Gotta wonder about that one. Kinda like that Kid Rock hookup…
 

5 - Making Stuff Up

Seems Google didn’t like my original URLs, so they started making up their own. Every time I removed a batch of them, they made up some more.

Eventually, Google created 180 imaginary URLs from Wordpress search results, which meant that roughly 40% of my posts had been mis-indexed.

But removing them doesn’t deter mighty Google. Months later, they’re still looking for those removed URLs that never existed in the first place…

Post is too long, so it’s continued here:

Google Search Is Like Pamela Anderson - Part 2

And those are the Top 10 Ways Google Is Like Pamela Anderson.