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78 Comments
- nixonrichard, on 10/12/2007, -8/+109Hey, don't get so upset . . . three V-dubs for under $17,000! Woooot!
- scallon, on 10/12/2007, -8/+89@mobliehavoc
you rant about his spelling, yet you can't tell the difference between an "a" and a "o"? *sniff sniff* i smell hypocrisy. - WorldGroove, on 10/12/2007, -1/+51@mobilehavoc
Digg rule #78: Digg's comment submission system detects people trying to correct others' spelling and ensures that the would-be corrector's post will have at least 1 typo of its own. - hikaruzero, on 10/12/2007, -3/+44@mobilehavoc:
"... out of you way ..."
Looks like somebody's a bonafide dumbass! - scallon, on 10/12/2007, -5/+34I understand that they broke the rules, but this isn't some random guys web page, or some run of the mill porn site, its Volkswagen for gods sake. It is a huge multi-national corporation. Fair? Maybe not, but I, for one, would still like to be able to find their page through google if I need to.
- blumenth, on 10/12/2007, -3/+31Google needs VW's ad money more than VW needs Google's links. This was a smart business decision on Google's part. "But it's not fair" ends somewhere in the middle of elementary school.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23You would be surprised about how many people use google, yahoo, etc to navigate. A LOT of people would type "vw.com" into google and click the link, rather than typing it in their address bar.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22Well, they banned BMW.de...
- oriondr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19This is stupid, they aren't 'spamming' google, google goes to them to get their information.
Google != the internet, their rules aren't universal, Volkswagen's own website doesn't need to comply with Google's little standards. - GiggleStick, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19Maybe he means it's supposed to be Volkswegon?
- PaulOwen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13"*sniff sniff* i smell hypocrisy"
I smell hypocrisy too. Not about posters spelling (yes that was dumb though) but about Google's policy on people trying to game their index.
As the author points out the only reason VW were not punished like ordinary folk for attempting to cheat the system is because VW are a really big corporation and you are not.
One standard of acceptable behavior for you, another completely different one for corporations.
I'm just moving down my "Ten Reasons Why Google is Becoming Microsoft" checklist. Don't mind me, feel free to digg me down (you know I'm right though ... ) - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -22/+34I never claimed to be a great speller.
- tvh2k, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12They were doing it to improve flash-page results ON THEIR OWN SEARCH APPLIANCE, not at google.com!
- elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Actually, there's only one 'e'
- iarenzana, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Buried for not knowing how to read and try to correct others. He spelled it Volkswagon, not Volkswagan ¬¬
- Gerolsteiner, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13This article brought to you by the letter E!
- leomcallister, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6AND one n.
- InsaneMachine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I personally did not know that was their webpage. It wasn't even the top5 of what I would try. Without search engines, we would be back to the days where a site gets exposure through word of mouth or magazines.
Edit: to build onto what greg said above me, my dad searches for sites then goes to it. ex: here go to "www.google.com" my dad searches the link, then clicks on the search results. Just the way some people(the ones who have the money to buy a VW) go to pages. - Emachine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5They make the GTI, I forgive them....
- rkettner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Damn... that's not fair. I didn't have middle school. When I grew up it was Elementary (k-7) and High School (8-12)... and I'm only 24 now.
- spukeesan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Here's a question: Where does a web developer draw the line? I use hidden text within tags that house client logos, or within image-based navigation for browsers that can't display CSS. {display:none} has myriad use in accessibility development, and shouldn't be thrown out just because some people can use it maliciously.
- duniyadnd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Actually they were.. fast forward a few days and you'll see Google put them back up.
- tpaine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It would be a bad move for the rest of us too. Google knows that VW is a valid company providing a valid service that is in high demand. If a million joeshmoex3519tr.com's starts using these types of techniques google doesn't have the resource to find out if it was an honest mistake or if it's a legitimate organization. I'm glad they busted VW for it and I'm also glad they didn't delist them for it. If I ever want to look up VW info I would like their website to be included in that search results.
- spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3rkettner is correct. The embedded keywords were inserted to assist their internal Google Search Appliance to catalogue Flash-heavy pages. Text in Flash elements is not captured by google.com or the Google Search Appliance.
- tpaine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@hdtvdust
Clearly you have never had to do any sort of customer support. I'm a software engineer who works in web applications and when things get really wacky I have to get on the phone with these customers. Most of them don't even know what the "address bar" is. If they know the URL they want to go to then they enter into google and often times google just redirects you directly to the site. I think people see the address bar the same way they view the status bar, meaningless information that doesn't make any sense to them.
Talk to anyone who does any sort of online customer support and you will hear the same thing. Of course I don't know many people personally who do this, besides my mother-in-law, but of course I travel in a different circle than most of our customers. - longbow486, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Flash based sites suck, why not make something everyone can get to easily and still have it look nice
- rkettner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've had to help this lady fix her computer once... when I opened up the browser I asked her where the address bar was. She pointed to the yahoo toolbar...
The address bar was actually off... and she truly believed the "Yahoo Toolbar" was the address bar. Very sad, but I'm sure she's not the only one. - VeganG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Their website needed un-pimping.
Eh? Eh? - Winters, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Why stop there? You know every major newspaper uses cloaking which is supposed to get you banned from google.
- lebe0024, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Or, if you use Firefox, just type "vw" in the address bar.
- spaceman_spiff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hey, it's spelled Volkswagen, not Volkswagon.
- turpenine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2agreed, for google top drop it would be a bad move for google, they want to have the most complete search results.
- TimDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@gregharmon
I'm one of those people
strange habit but...yea... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3vw rules.
- alexforcefive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Why didn't they just use the meta tags in the first place? Wouldn't it be exactly the same?
- TorrentFox, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Wow, you all suck
- sn0w, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Apparently BMW wasn't as fortunate: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4685750.stm
- Jexie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3They may not be spamming them, and their rules aren't universal but they are anything but 'little standards'. Google shouldn't = the internet but for 90% of the people out there it does.
- rkettner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah... am I the only one that thinks they were setting this stuff up for their own "internal" google-search. I mean, using keywords like "homepage" seems odd for real-world SEO.
- verstohlen, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6mobilehavoc, unfortunately people don't care about spelling or grammar these days, and even less so about being corrected as noticed by the high number of negative diggs you got (probably poor spellers themselves). People would rather just wallow in their own ignorance than have someone show them the correct way. It's the sign of the times.
Now I prepare to be dugg down as people don't want to be reminded of this sad truth. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Who the hell needs Google to find the VW site? Lessee:
http://www.vw.com
Right in one! - cweave, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If the method is not in accordance with Google's site quality guidelines then it should be de-listed. There is simply no way around that. In this case it was blatant, and by all means I expect Google to come around and do the right thing.
- HyperHacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Functionality over beauty. A plain-looking site that users can access is better than a pretty one that they can't.
- Jeveran, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3When BMW did it, I understand it cost them a leprechaun's pot o' gold to get back in Google's good graces. I can't imagine it wasn't the same for Volkswagen.
- paulwilson05, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4People! As long as you can understand the context of the post there is no need to correct spelling.
- person425, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@oriondr
This is stupid, they aren't 'spamming' google, google goes to them to get their information.
I agree completely. Google has some of the top programmers in the world. If they didn't want to index hidden text, then they should ignore it when the spiders parse the page. I see nothing wrong with taking advantage of broken algorithms, especially when the algorithm designers actually know what they are doing. - tpaine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@person245
It's not like the text is marked 'hidden'. People come up with all kinds of ways to hide text with styles and javascript and for google to try and reverse engineer every possible method of hiding text would slow their spiders (things that index web pages) down to a crawl .. excuse the pun. The spiders have to be lightning fast to index as much as they do. Heck they don't even download the entire page, just the first x lines because they figure anything after that is below the fold anyway. Nevermind the countless style sheets and javascript files that are included.
What you suggest is possible, it's just simply not scalable to the billions of pages that google indexes regularly. Nor would it be cost effective considering it's probably 1 in a million pages that actually use these techniques with any success. - tim507, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1what is a google search appliance you ask? - http://www.timothyallard.com/resources/v3/google-appliance.html
- rkettner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"gregharmon...A lot of people on Digg CLAIM that many people do just that, but so far no one has come up with anyone who ACTUALLY does that. I've near heard of anyone who does that on purpose"
I see it come through Google Analytics daily... it's not as rare as you might think. As I said above... I've seen a person first hand that thought the Yahoo Toolbar WAS the address bar. So, literally EVERY domain she ever typed was through Yahoo search. - iluvudigg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Microsoft would be an award winner for this category
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