What Do You Hate About Google?

[dannysullivan]

I've just posted my 25 Things I Hate About Google article. Agree with my picks? Got your own?

For those about the love, also see 25 Things I Love About Google. And what to share your own loves? Try this forum thread, What Do You Love About Google

Interesting list of reasons to hate Google. But there are reasons to endure the pain of avoiding Google altogether: Mostly their lack of transparency in an editorial policy. They have agreed to support Chinese censorship. What other restrictions have they implemented? Will they tell us? how will we know? I suspect that they will comply with corporate or political requests for censorship to gain business, and not tell the users to keep the business. This conjecture is further based on Google's reluctance to publish a commitment to the way it will store and use gmail data.

The cost of these Google practises are damaging both to the search engine integrity and to the society that seems increasingly to rely on it. The added cost of our implicit consent of the policies by continuing to support google and not to demand these changes is far worse.

[Beginner]

Gosh. This is a brave post. Hot the heals of not-quite-agreeing with on else thread I find your blog post too interesting to ignore!

I don't disagree with you on the web count tallies matching up. There's just no way that gripe would make my top 25 list. I can't believe how much it annoyed it!

I disagree with the following:

• .com serving different results from the country-Googles (As a Brit in the UK I want UK bias results, I can see how you'd dislike that though).
• I like caching (I want to click on the cached results in the best match for my query is offline).
• I want Blogger to remain free (there are enough free blog sites out there already at least with Blogger Google has tighter control.
• I'm not sure whether you can 'fix' a philosophy (you can disagree with it, but you can't order it fixed).

I agree with you on AdSense. It's out of control. Google are encouraging spam sites and rewarding them. It's going to get out of hand. Google's also too prone to gutting AdSense sites without warning. I know of someone who made less than $1 a day on AdSense on a family site and who, without warning or announcement, simply had their AdSense halted. Google claimed that there had been false clicks (at less than $1 a day?). There hadn't. The family wouldn't know what click fraud was, all the knew was that Google had accused them off it and with the account dead there was no way for me to investigate.

[GoogleGuy]

If it helps, I've been pinging people about several of these. It actually helps to have some of these thoughts called out by someone else so that I can point to it.

[BradBristol]

Google has been so damn successful, I just hate that...

#2
I dislike how smug the googlites are, especially that Matt Cutts guy. (anyone that has two sets of double t's in their name is more than a little strange, if you know what I mean...)

#3
I dislike the fact that google has ignored every request I have made for a research grant (I am only asking for 1million) so I can research how to spam their engine better.

#4
I dislike the fact that google ranks other less relevant pages above mine in the SERP.

#5
I dislike the fact that google will not remove all those SPAM pages that are positioned above my pages in the SERP... Even after filing dozens and dozens of spam reports on each and every one of them.

#6
I dislike the fact that even after I have written google hundreds of times each year, telling them how they could do a better job at search (by listing my pages higher in the SERP), they have never responded to me, not even once.

#7
I dislike the fact that google tries to help out the little guy. I mean the way they did their stock IPO and Froogle offering to list your RSS feed for free, who do they think they are? Why don't the boys at google act more like Haliburton, a real American Corporation???

#8
I dislike the fact that google has started talking to webmasters. People like that Matt Cutts and his buddies going around telling everyone about good SEO in google, I can’t believe it, it makes me ill just to think about it.


I could only come up with seven (Ok I added more).... the mind altering substance started wearing off....

Oh Ya, I almost forgot, I really really hate... http://www.google.com/ig

[Marcia]

They have agreed to support Chinese censorship.

No, they have NOT! They've agreed to participate in the vital economic growth of the Chinese people and bring them a fine source of information and commerce with which the people can connect with the rest of the world.

What I HATE about Google is not them, but all the people who think they know all about what Google should and shouldn't do. Everybody is an expert - and if they're such experts why don't they raise some VC of their own and wow the world.

What other restrictions have they implemented? Will they tell us? how will we know?

Restrictions on spam and how people know is when their sites drop into oblivion. They don't have to tell - actions speak louder than words.

Another thing I HATE about Google is also not them, it's all the people around who decide to depend on Google traffic and think Google owes them a living and then whine and blame Google when THEIR OWN business plan doesn't work for them.

[ewc21]

Obviously, Google could not please everyone, just like MSN or Yahoo! SO it is not surprising the hate and love lists keep on stretching longer.

One thing though is that before posting these lists, make sure you fully understood how the business works and do not trust hearsays or any awful posting found in the discussion forums.

[dannysullivan]

I disagree with the following: .com serving different results from the country-Googles (As a Brit in the UK I want UK bias results, I can see how you'd dislike that though).

Just so I'm clear, I don't care if Google automatically skews the results on google.co.uk even if I do NOT change to see "pages from the UK."

I'm in the UK. I know most people will automatically be redirected to co.uk, and many won't change to .com. I also know many will benefit from having the results be skewed, since they won't do it themselves.

But if I tune into Google.com, that's where I find it strange to have the skewing happen anyway. As far as I'm concerned, Google.com is the international channel that many people all tune into from various locations. Having it broadcast different results is inconsistent, I feel. But that's my take, of course

[sem4u]

As an SEO I dislike the focus that Google's algo has on links....but at the same time I can see why this is done...just take a look at Yahoo! & MSN's results to see the difference.

AdSense on poor and scraped sites. Why do they allow ads to run on these? Why can't each site be approved first?

I would like to see 'related searches' as well. Hopefully it would teach users how to search with more specific phrases.

[DarkMatter]

I hate Google because it's the best, fastest way to learn about topics that I am completely unfamiliar with.

[Marek]

Hate is too strong of a word... but I dislike the following:

- you get different results for the same key phrase from different locations. I realize that it is a technical challenge to keep everything synchronized... but I still dislike it.

- you can’t easily remove your own pages which are outdated or you just don’t want them in the index, even after submitting a request to Google. G should provide something like a "reverse" of their Site Maps program (which I love). E.g. I submit a "Reverse Site Map" and G uses it to remove those pages from the index and cache. Simple.

- Same with removing unwanted cached content – this is difficult – that I hate.

[Carlos Chacón]

Three major things I hate about Google:

1-The way they manipulate the SEM industry.
2-The way they’ve changed the Internet first objective; free information to everybody.
3-How they’ve been feed their business on the last years.

No mention of Google's implementation of political censorship? No, you "hate" Google because Blogger is free!

[dannysullivan]

Well, I did mention that in point 25. But of course, I dislike that. It could easily have been number 26. There are many more things I could also have added if I wanted to spend even more time, but after a bit, it just felt enough. I wasn't trying to say these are the top 25 things I hate but rather these are 25 different things I hate and wish they'd fix, to better illustrate why I find it tiring they're heading in even new directions with this type of stuff hanging.

One of the reasons one gets back so many useless results is that Google looks only within a "page" or Web site.

Let's say you are looking for a product that has 5 features you want. You don't want to rely on a phrase because different vendors may combine those features in different ways. But if you use the simple AND function, you will get pages of products that don't interest you simply because, on a single "page", each product listing has one or more of the words you are looking for.

With a proximity search, however, you can significantly narrow down the search.

So instead of searching for A+B+C+D+E, you would limit the search to A+B+C+D+E with x words of each other, within x sentences of each other, withing x paragraphs of each other, etc.

I know it not only can be done but is incredibly useful because I used a software product almost 20 years ago that had exactly these kinds of searches (in addition to the standard Boolean searches).

[PhilC]

I disagree with your example of your first hate, Danny. Expanding the query from 'mars landing sites' to 'mars landing sites earth' expands the number of pages that can be matched - it doesn't reduce them. Most of the matched pages don't contain all of the words, so adding an extra word would produce a larger set of matches.

[simons1321]

How they don't number their search results.

Ever try to manually see where you rank in the serps and have to count and scroll at the same time with up to 100 results on the page????

Easy if your in the top ten, but if youre #68 then its a pain.

multiply that by 20 - 50 keywords and you'll go nuts half way through.

Thank god for greasemonkey scripts!

I've never had any real problems with google.

I'm an avid Gmail fanboy and I use the personalized google homepage.

Although there are a few things that annoy the living daylights out of me.

1. GMail is still in "beta"... Whats up with that? How can email be in beta?
This also makes signing in a bit difficult at times.

2. Spam. I dont have very much spam. (Thankfully) Although I have to many
phishing attempts. (roughly twice aday.) And for the spam that does get
through, how can I make a custom blacklist?

3. My RSS feeds on my homepage works only 60% of the time.

Those are my only problems, if you can really call them that.

I think Google is doing a good job. (Some things could be done better
of course, but what cant?)

What do I hate ?

Well what I dislike is the fact that after three months, I am still trying to explain to Google that thier Analytics CPC data is not being atttributed to the right hole in Analytics, and that thier Analytics CPC Data report is of no use to anyone if it don't work !

I've just e-mailed support again today to ask when this will be fixed and told them I don't want the standard "our engineers are working on the problem" answer that accompanies most replies nowdays.

I'm beginning to wonder if I am e-mailing a bot or something, as many of the answers seem to be pre-formtted.

Pete
Sydney AUS

[Guillaumeb]

No seriously this is insane !!!! Can't Gmail just stop to automatically add useless people in my Address Book??? This is killing me. Just because I have an email from blahblah@blahblah .com gmail will add it to my contact list...is google trying to be smart or something? Give me a break...