[geeks] Google Irritation

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG>
" 
" > Google search butchers word pairs and even phrases, even if you quote
" > them.
" 
" It also mangles things in other ways, like forcibly including responses
" you specifically asked to have suppressed.
" 
" Quite some time ago, I was looking for some music typesetting software
" called "smut".  I'm sure you all can imagine the false positives.  But
" I started trying to exclude them with searches like
" 
" 	smut music typesetting -sex -beaver
" 
" and I kept getting the false positives anyway, often even including in
" the sample few lines the very terms I specifically minused.  I wrote to
" them to report the bug, and what did they do?  Did they fix their
" searches?  No; it appears these were "sponsored links", 
" []
" I suppose I should be grateful
" they did even that much, since clearly getting their sponsored links in
" front of eyeballs is a priority even when it angers searchers, 

have you tried the firefox 'customizegoogle' plugin?  it allows you to
block the ads.

" It makes a little more sense when you remember that their customers,
" the people they optimize for the happiness of, are advertisers, not
" searchers, but it's still pretty egregious; I'd think even advertisers
" could grok that there is such a thing as undesirable attention, but
" apparently not.  I certainly know that if I were a Web business, I'd
" rather be unknown than known as "that damn site that keeps bullying its
" way into my search results".  It's true that brand awareness can
" outweigh negative affect, but only to a point....

yup, in any ad-supported enterprise we are the product and advertisers
are the customers...

it's in google's interest to suppress your reaction and just count
your eyeballs.  makes their numbers look better.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought