Did you know that Meta and Social are no longer indexed by Google?

Google fucking hates us don’t they…

This was intentional. Ben or Andrew added it and asked Google to re-index the site.

Why did they do that?

No, I didn’t know that before I saw your question.

I am pretty sure that this was done while Fluther was recently down for maintenance. The boys had discussed making the changes and took advantage of the time while moving us to better servers to enact the change. The goal is for Google to remove the site from a “content farm” ranking by picking up the General section, which is more likely to have unique Q & A (not social network type) content.

What’s a content farm?

Content Farms are sites that have regurgitated or low quality content.

”(Googles new algorithm) is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites — sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites — sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on,” explains Googles Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts

Source

Oh so this is a good thing then. We were in a content farm? The fuck for?

We still are labeled a content farm. The changes were made in hopes of getting removed off the list. Google will look at us again some time in the next three months and see if we have evolved to meet their requirements. I asked this question in the hopes that we can get more variety and less snark for when we get looked at. It would rock if we had some academic questions that attract more scholars and geeks to the General section. :)

I love geeks!

^ :)

I wonder what would happen if we all started looking up stuff and including “Fluther” in the search. I do that sometimes.

@Dog Ah yeah…prolly doesn’t help us much when some of us tell would be homework questions to go suck a dick…:/
I think perhaps one big problem is that a LOT of the general questions include too much stuff about technology and gadgets that you can probably find the answer to on some official site, or the instructions packed in with the device though…I’ve seen a change from that lately though. Still, if Google doesn’t see our social section as something legit by which to remove us from farm content, we’re kinda fucked…that’s where most of our activity is. :/ That’s if I understand alla this right.

But… Yahoo! Answers…

How is it different from Fluther, other than that it doesn’t seem like it’s against duplicates? Hmm. Maybe they have time limits on their questions… and that makes it seem like they’re not a “content farm”.

@Dog What kind of scholarly/geeky questions are you guys looking for?

Perhaps we should all try to make sure our serious questions go in General, not social. Unless we really do want off topic answers.

@Symbeline : Actually computer questions are great since people look for them. Imagine you search for “How do I reset my iPod?”. You will get a lot of results but not as many as “Is god real?”

All the religion/politics/dream crap has made us just like the 100 million other sites out there.

@johnpowell Point taken yeah, now that I think of it. But I’m guessing it isn’t helping if the computer questions aren’t being answered?

@AnonymousGirl It seem so unlikely that YA was deemed ok, but we weren’t. It’s very confusing to me. I’m very hopeful that the new changes will convince Google to rethink their decision.

But I would have thought that there would be more copied content in General than in Social or Meta. If people are looking for specific information—as opposed to “what do you think about…” questions—aren’t we more likely to be see answers that include quotes from authoritative sources? There aren’t as many social or meta Qs that can be easily answered with a copy and paste.

Cool ! That means I can say “Elephant toenails and chicken beaks are delicious in soup.” and it won’t show up.

Any chance at all that sites get indexed because it has little activity? I mean comparing YA to here, they’re way more active than us.

We had a lot more traffic until they labeled us. A LOT more traffic. I have seen graphs with the dates on it and our visibility dropped off the radar when Google acted.

Aaaaah so being indexed did reduce the traffic…lame.

I knew it couldn’t possibly have to do with quality… Cuz we rule.

I still can’t believe that Google regards social interaction shoot-the-bull chit-chat sites as “low-value” sites. The people who run Google must be effing morons!

@HungryGuy :: There are millions of shoot-the-shit sites. Fluther wasn’t always that. It used to focus on solving problems. It no longer does.

So I think Fluther is actually where it should be in google ratings considering the content . It is just before they got a really high ranking like Wikipedia and the stackexchange sites.

@johnpowell Fluther is still quite good with solving problems, especially of the “my house is falling apart and I need help NOW” variety.

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