> We added a placeholder since there are rumours swirly, and they're from
> reputable sources - coincidentally the timelines for releases (around 2 months)
> align, and it's on a Monday, so it's highly likely.
Not sure where you get the "one step removed" bit. It is a content farm, at least in the places where it isn't simply copies of Wikipedia or autogenerated text.
The results may be directly measured but they are not real time. Click on the 7 Day view and you can see that the latest numbers are from Feb 22, before the change was rolled out. You would have to wait until Sunday or Monday, I would think, before seeing the difference.
Actually, I was wrong. The results are US only, so (for now, anyways) you can view what the results looked like before the update by changing the language parameter (&hl=) or the &gl= parameter in the url. For instance, pre-algo rankings (Mahalo #1):
kalvin, there would be no way to do that unless you were prepared and happened to store the queries beforehand. However, if you take a look at the Alexa page for one of the sites in question you can see what some of the top queries were that used to bring those sites traffic, and then manually go see where they rank now. For instance, Mahalo used to be in the #1 spot for many of the queries listed on it's page:
If you look now though you can see they are at #5 for [mcdonalds coupons] (which is still higher than they deserve), #6 for [how to play guitar], more than 5 pages deep for [bed bath and beyond], etc. Check ehow.com and you can see similar results no longer ranking:
Ok, I know no one is going to see this, but in looking for this thread I just discovered that the original one I was discussing is now showing up in the "Popular" list, albeit at #147 (5 votes in 10 hours). So obviously if anything was going on earlier, it's been reversed. It's even outranking this thread.
When you say #38 you mean this discussion and not the article that someone submitted today, correct? Is that what you think happened then, it was simply voted down? Who would be able to confirm or deny it then? I just went through all 690 submissions visible from the homepage onward and didn't see the one someone submitted today at all. You would think it would show up somewhere in that list, wouldn't you?
And, of course, I just realized - if it is a moratorium on discussing HN itself, then there is a chance that this post will never get seen (or answered) either...
This makes a lot of sense, and would have be easy enough for Google to test as well, creating some tiny, brand new, never before heard of test search engine that Bing would have no reason to copy, see if the same thing happened.
Firesheep, which allows people worldwide to steal other people's Facebook passwords over public wifi, comes out in October and they still don't redirect to https login by default. Zukerburg's fan page gets hacked with a message pertaining to Facebook's investors and they close the loophole that allowed it to happen in 1 day. Of course.
No, they also banned sites like MegaUpload (Google Suggest stops at the "u") and Rapidshare (which is causing collateral damage, since they stop suggest at the "i" with that one).
No, they are already being crawled and indexed by Google. Jason was lying about that. He banks heavily on the fact that it takes significantly more energy for others to check his facts than it does for him to make them up.
re: But Savings.com isn't "the site being looked for".
Yes, it is, the searcher doesn't know that though. That's Google's job, to rank the most relevant sites to the query. If those coupons are what the user is looking for then that site is what should come up first.
I also want to add that at this moment Savings.com does indeed outrank Mahalo.com for that query. While this may change (and based on past experience with Mahalo's empty pages many of them will outrank other sites that are higher quality eventually), that is not what the bulk of the issue is. Those Savings.com feeds are not "human powered" anything. They are exactly the kinds of pages that Jason told Matt Cutts he had removed from his site. They are the antithesis of what Jason claimed his site was all about just 4 days ago. That's the main issue.
Savings.com != Mahalo.com. There is no reason to rank Mahalo... if that is the site being looked for then rank Savings.com instead.
It is what is known as a "thin affiliate" site, and it adds a layer of navigation to the user and middleman payouts to the advertiser, lowering user experience and driving up advertiser costs.