Google - beginning of the end?

[James]

Just ran a search on "crowborough carnival" - an event happening today where I live.

The top result was for the society's homepage but results two, three and four are for eBay ("Find carnival ornaments on eBay" - yeah right) and two search engines / directories that I've never heard of. The words "crowborough carnival" do not appear anywhere on these sites.

So - have these three companies paid Google to have their irrelevant results high up? They are not marked as sponsored links. Or have they some incredible way of manipulating the Google spider?

Whatever the reason, Google has lost credibility in my eyes.

http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/barker/forum/crowgoogle.gif

[Phil]

frankly i'm surprised there's no "compare prices on Crowborough Carnival at Kelkoo" style junk search-results in there too. That's my particular search annoyance - especially when looking for computer components

[David]

Very strange. I just did the exact same search and I got this:

http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/watson/postimages/crow.gif

What's going on here?

[Tom]

And what about the annoyance of being led to a site only to discover you have to register OR PAY MONEY to see the result of your search?

The trouble began when Google went commercial. They are now obliged, by SEC rules, to look after the (financial) interests of their shareholders.