google?

[pokey]

just found out "google shopping" is censoring firearms/ammo/accessories.
time to move on , i switched to ixquick.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012 ... s-results/

[1894c]

for fun...i just used the ixquick search engine, been using Bing & Google. I did a simple search (Ruger SP-101) that i've done on the other two just to check the results--wow--what a difference...i got hits that the other two didn't...i hate censorship, especially when i'm under the impression that i live in a free nation...thank you "pokey" ... :)

[El Chivo]

whether or not it's a firearms policy, I don't know, but what I DO know is they exclude non-advertisers from their search results, or at least put them so low it's meaningless.

My web site music store used to come up within the top 10 on Google when they first started, they were doing honest searches based on the input and the html. After about two years they began selling advertising and at that point, my site stopped coming up, because I wasn't buying any, and other sites that paid were coming up on top, even if they didn't have the item in their store, and I did. Now the first couple of pages are all big advertisers. For a while they were even repeating back a nonsense words with a link to Amazon saying "Buy ____ on Amazon". For example if I typed in disgronificator it would say "Get your Disgronificator Now from Amazon". "Free shipping on Disgronificators" , etc.

It's not quite that blatant at the moment but if the site hasn't been paying for their advertising they may be getting bumped way down there.

I occasionally google shooting or reloading terms and I get plenty of hits from various forums.

But I'm curious, when you say you found out there's a policy, did you hear it from them or is it just a matter of lousy searches?

[hondo1892]

I heard on the radio the other day that someone in washington was talking to google. Asking how they could censor certain things on the web. Don't know if it's true but maybe.

[Rusty]

El Chivo,

I know you didn't post o this to call attention to your site but I'd like to look it over if you don't mind posting it.

I've always been led to believe that Google used some kind of strange algorithm that had to do with the number of requests you have on your subject. You also can buy space on Google where you pay for your position by the number of clicks you get on your site. That can also cost you a lot of money since your competition can search for your site and keep clicking away until they have cost you big time bucks.

[Blaine]

Google is responsible to the paying customer: commercial businesses. After you understand that, everything else falls logically in place. I love Google for everything, especially since my memory is going.....

[1894c]

Google is responsible to the paying customer: commercial businesses. After you understand that, everything else falls logically in place. I love Google for everything, especially since my memory is going.....

what...you say something...who... :O

[pokey]

not "google" itself, "google shopping". check this out.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012 ... s-results/

[El Chivo]

El Chivo,

I know you didn't post o this to call attention to your site but I'd like to look it over if you don't mind posting it.

I've always been led to believe that Google used some kind of strange algorithm that had to do with the number of requests you have on your subject. You also can buy space on Google where you pay for your position by the number of clicks you get on your site. That can also cost you a lot of money since your competition can search for your site and keep clicking away until they have cost you big time bucks.

http://www.musicstudents.com

Google is responsible to the paying customer: commercial businesses. After you understand that, everything else falls logically in place. I love Google for everything, especially since my memory is going.....

I don't quite agree, since the end users (general public) and the paying customers (retail sites) are two different populations. Google was, at first, and is still supposed to be, complete and pertinent content for the general public who searches on it. If an advertiser can benefit from this, well and good. But by skewing the search results you're not serving your end users, not that they have a clue. Bypassing sites that have exactly what was searched for, and then substituting an advertiser who doesn't, means the end user is not getting an honest search. This makes Google just a network of billboards along the information superhighway.

Of course, this eventually becomes a self-fulfilling policy if Google has the monopoly on searches, as they seem to do. Then anyone they exclude will eventually cease to exist, and the only sites that pay can exist, then I guess the searches are honest enough, because the sites that really matched are all gone.

At the beginning of the web there wasn't this monopoly of the big search engine and big advertisers. It was a level playing field and I did well on it for a few years. But I would have had to work too hard to make up their estimated $50 per day of advertising, to take them up on it.

The internet started off as information based and websites had content, with a little bit of shopping. Then came retailers that have no content, just shopping. Fair enough, but I don't think they should exclude information sites.

By the way, the reason I used to come up higher on searches than Amazon or Sheet Music Plus, was that I had made separate *.html pages for each of my titles. Then, when the customer searched for that title, the search engine found a solid page and returned it. The big sites don't make up separate pages for each title, the product page you see is created on the fly, and the information is pulled from a database provided by the publisher (if you have noticed in internet shopping, every site that has an item gives you the same exact product description, including misspellings. Those come from the manufacturer). Since there is no page in existence when a search is made, there is nothing to find and, in the past, no results. That was six or seven years ago.

However, once Google instituted pay-to-play, enter any musical keyword, such as a composer, and you're inundated with ads from the big places, and you're on your own to wade through these and see if any place has the title you searched for. Most don't but maybe they can order it. I have the exact thing sitting here and nothing comes up. Algorithm or not, it's not an honest search for the consumer.

Forget for the moment that they're putting the small sites out of business, they are abandoning their original purpose, they're not giving honest searches.

[Cliff]

I see on another forum someone suggest trying a new(er) site. It is http://www.gunspecs.com. Went to it and looks pretty good. Didn't do a long or detailed search but it does list just about everything you might be interested. Will have to check out more later.