In google we must have faith
Google released a pretty sizable update to it’s algorithm last week, this along with an earlier change that Matt Cutts describes as targeting duplicate content, seems to show what Google think the web should be like. You should produce engaging original content, presenting other peoples information - however nicely - is bad, well not good.
They say that 84% of the sites that have been affected by this change were flagged as spam by their users anyway and that they are pleased with the results - other people are not so pleased as this guardian article shows. The Google spam team have a hard job, identifying pages and sites that contain information that will not be relevant to their users and other teams have the task of rewarding sites that produce information that users want. However there are a lot of sites out there that use content from other places, how many sites use Wikipedia text, it’s creative commons after all. Many sites have built their entire business around traffic from Google and so when Google turns around and takes some of that traffic away it’s not surprising that they are pissed off, after all they’ve probably put in a lot of effort creating their website.
Now I agree with Google, the Internet should be about contributing to the net, not stealing other peoples work and passing it off as your own somehow so that people can click on adverts, that faceless Wikipedia editor didn’t do it so that you could make money - I know that makes me slightly hypocritical but I don’t think that anyone could disagree with the statement?
On the other hand with great power comes great responsibility and Google may have trodden on some peoples toes here, the rankings may come back as people actually click on the links but maybe Google has the foresight to see that the greater gain will be that these sites refocus on quality content and we have a better Internet - that would be a good thing, no?
BBC & Twitter
I’ve noticed that the BBC’s reporting seems to have gone downhill over the past year or so, the information is still there but it’s presented in a much more sensationalist fashion. It’s not as bad as most places but you have to concentrate more to read the articles to get the real message out rather than the headline that the journalist has typed. But even more recently they have started to use twitter to provide quotes as the bottom of the page.
Using twitter to get quotes like that is a) Lazy and b) dull. I don’t want to know that someone’s agent thought it best to post something on their twitter feed, I want to know something that someone has either actually said or actually done. Phone some people up, find out who’s doing what about it, don’t just run a search on twitter and copy and paste, I can do that.
Hopefully the general standard improves soon otherwise I’m actually going to have to read news elsewhere…
Good Hunting
Kubica
After Kubica’s first year at Renault showed a lot of promise, especially given the car it looks like he may have ended his career in spectacular fashion in an Italian rally. According to the BBC it seem that he may have almost lost his right hand and suffered fractures to both his right arm and leg.
With those injuries the doctors seem to be saying that he could miss the whole 2011 season, that isn’t exactly what his career needed right now but it might just be the break that Bruno Senna was dreaming of (I’m sure he wasn’t dreaming of this exact scenario though - well I hope he wasn’t, he’s not into Voodoo is he…). It is ashame for F1 if Kubica doesn’t return to the sport as he was one of the most promising drivers in the field, let’s hope he makes a full recovery.
I can’t say that the prospect of Senna or Grosjean fills me with that much excitement, maybe I’m wrong and they will step up but it does leave the VC backed, newly branded Lotus Renault outfit without a star driver, Petrov will have a lot of work to do, I wonder what Jacques Villeneuve is doing nowdays…
Good Hunting
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-19
- @bpeel Hope not I just spent ages moving my twitter thing to oAuth! in reply to bpeel #
- Nagios is very whingy isn’t it… #
- @tk_answers back online - finally found the time to fix the twitter oAuth authentication
# - @tk_answers What is the time? #
- @csstacey It wasn’t me in reply to csstacey #
- @timmartin2 It’s the woodpidgeon near us that does something similar - though probably not as tasty. in reply to timmartin2 #
- Better time…, I may be able to reach my target #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-05
- Not buying Reading tickets is hard… #
- @djr36 Perhaps I’ll try it later in reply to djr36 #
- Perhaps I should correct them to ‘Dr Stacey’… #
- Thought I’d left being called ‘Stacey’ at secondary school… #
- Really want to be at home with my girls now
# - Reading was great, back to work, want to be at home with my girls #
- Girly’s in the local paper #
- Lovely late summer morning… cold and foggy! #
- @AndiSmith Happy Birthday BTW! in reply to AndiSmith #
- Plugging back in… #