Very interesting. I’ve often wondered about this kind of thing, but never really did any investigation (AS i’m not a webmaster)… I’m hoping my blog on blogspot (being owned by google) will be indexed properly… But i’ll definitely keep this in mind with future websites.
I tend to read stackoverflow from the google.com/ig page of feeds. You think that impacts your numbers or not? Should that traffic be attributed to Google?
I personally don’t think so.
Welcome Back
Jeff, you might want to check out this StackOverflow question:
So Microsoft doing the same thing is ok but Google taking over the world is… well at the end of the post you seem ok with that too?
Uh… ok. I think a little competition would be a good thing in this case.
I regularly find that most of the traffic to one of my static sites comes from places like webcrawler.com, shopping.com, dealtime.com and aol.com, with google often ranking 5th or 6th on my new traffic statistics.
Strangely, the site has absolutely nothing to do with any saleable or commercial product. Go figure.
I adore self-referential posts as much as the next guy, but did you really have to link to stackoverflow twice (four times if you count crackoverflow, since it links there, too, and your post relating to the launch of stackoverflow)?
Why don’t you just have your sitemap link to the pages of the lists of questions? Would the bot not then see all the questions, but with far fewer entries in the sitemap?
welcome back jeff. i’m horrored again.
Google’s not the real start page for the Internet – there can only be one Opening Page:
http://www.openingpage.com/
Google’s current position as the start page for the internet kind of scares the crap out of me
I know what you mean. But we do have Wikipedia too. I think that’s mainstream enough to offer a reasonable alternative if Google goes evil.
Of course, people would have to notice Google going evil.
Google’s current position as the start page for the internet kind of scares the crap out of me, in a way that Microsoft’s dominance over the desktop PC never did.
Let’s say that Microsoft did something utterly, absolutely, unequivocally evil–fed puppies into wood chippers while chanting Satanic prayers, say. What would it take for their users to move elsewhere? You’d need to install a new operating system. Do you use a non-web email client? It doesn’t run on your new OS. Your games? None of them run. Word and Excel? Gone. Your music collection? Hope it doesn’t use Windows-only DRM. And so on.
Now consider Google, instead. What does it take to stop using Google search? Nothing. You just…stop. Spend thirty seconds changing your homepage, maybe, and changing the default search engine in your browser.
Microsoft’s monopoly position has leverage. You can choose not to use their products, but you can only do so by cutting yourself off from everyone who views the world through Windows-colored glasses.
Google, in contrast, has a fragile monopoly. I can choose to stop using Google right now, without cutting myself off from anything.
And that is why it’s absurd to compare Microsoft’s several monopolies, which they have repeatedly leveraged to dominate additional markets, with Google’s transient and fragile position as the de facto default search engine of the net.
[not directly related to post topic]
I like the pixelated images. They look pretty detailed and accurate.
I wonder if there’s software that outputs similar effects using a real photo.
Isn’t the weekly cycle simply showing less activity at weekends?
The reason it doesn’t follow your archived posts (up to 931) is because it tries to find repetitive cycles and exit on them (which I think is true whether using querystring or just in the url). It finds a pattern of repeating numbers, goes to maybe 10 or so, and then breaks the loop.
I don’t recall where I read it, but just imagine if Google followed every calendar mini-app on the Internet forever: it would never stop.
How about creating:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions?page=1sort=oldest
In which page 1 has the oldest posts. That way, page 1-2k never change all that much (votes etc change, but question URLs don’t). Then just put that URL till the newest page in your sitemap, you’ll scale a lot better.
Er, did I just expose a bug with that link or something? It seems to be showing questions sorted by vote, but claims it’s by hotness.
Google’s current position as the start page for the internet kind of scares the crap out of me, in a way that Microsoft’s dominance over the desktop PC never did.
Wow, I thought I was the only one. I feel exactly the same here. Google scares me a lot more than MS has ever done. It’s probably a great place to work but when I read Steve Yegge’s blog I can’t help thinking it’s more like a cult than a company, but maybe that’s just me…
Hey Now Jeff,
Great points!
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto