It's a Huckanspiracy!
From late 2004 until at least a few months ago, doing a Google search for Huckapoo would return a link to my exhaustive (and exhausting!) coverage of that band somewhere in the top five results (the exact position alternating with the band's official site, its MySpace page, Wikipedia entry and my New York magazine feature).
Today I discovered that my Huckapoo coverage has been demoted to result number 603. That's right: there are 602 better sources of information about Huckapoo on the internets than Radosh.net, including Les artistes dont la premiere lettre est H.
Now, the upside of scrolling through seven pages of Huckapoo results is that I discovered the previously hidden photographic gem above (see two more from the set here). But the downside is, what the fuck happened over at Google?
Seriously, someone with some tech savvy needs to explain to me why or how my site has been blacklisted as a source for Huckapoo information — which surely someone other than me still looks for now and then.
Clues to this mystery after the jump.
I haven't been erased entirely from Google's database. Doing a site-specific Huckasearch still turns up 48 results.
There actually is a hit for my site somewhere around result number 200. Only it's not a link to a post about Huckapoo, or to my site's search results page for Huckapoo — it's to the search results page for Prussian Blue, on which Huckapoo is briefly mentioned.
The top blog result in the search is a Metafilter post linking to my first Huckapoo post. After that, the search turns up several different blogs all linking back to me long before it turns up my site itself. (When you do a Google blog search for Huckapoo, however, my site is number 6, which still seems too low.)
This seems to be a Huckapoo-specific penalty. I'm still on the first page of results for Clique Girlz and Peter Landesman.
I fare better on other search engines. Here are the positions of this site in Huckasearches on...
Live: 5
Ask.com: 9
Yahoo: 16
But not always. I can't even find my site in a search on something called Gigablast, though it turns up several of my posts on off-site aggregators.
When you do finally reach result number 603, there is a link to only one post, with no "more results from..." option.
It's an outrage, I tell you! Write your senator! Or at least give me a plausible explanation -- and be prepared to testify as an expert witness in the class action suit I plan to file.
Comments
Nothing is forever. To feed the beast, you've gotta keep making substantive HP posts.
I suggest making shit up.
Posted by: zebra | October 31, 2007 3:05 PM
Don't worry. Once Mike Huckapoo gets the Republican nomination everything will be fine.
Posted by: Tim H | October 31, 2007 3:15 PM
zebra - it's not like any of the sites that pulled ahead of me have been posting constantly on the topic. Or more than once.
Posted by: radosh | October 31, 2007 3:54 PM
Were their posts more recent?
Maybe blogs get downgraded although I've never heard of such a thing.
Troll tactic #139*: Add a link to your own blog on Wikipedia.
Troll tactic #472*: Start a flame war. Enhance your clicks for chicks quotient.
*Two fine examples of making shit up.
Posted by: zebra | October 31, 2007 4:11 PM
this picture categorically begs to be zoomed.
a good source on all things google is at blogoscoped.com.
you, a victim? come on, butch up!
Posted by: RC | October 31, 2007 4:59 PM
I don't know the answer to your question, but I know that a couple of prominent weblogs have written recently about their Technorati rankings taking an inexplicable dive:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009527.html#009527
Posted by: Scraps | October 31, 2007 5:32 PM
Maybe that long-rumored CreepyRank algorithm has been put into play.
Posted by: binky | November 1, 2007 1:40 AM
Now that I think about it, I do think this is probably related to a recently reported algorithm change. Every time I wrote the word "Huckapoo" I linked it to my search results page. Perhaps understandably, the algorithm read that as an attempt to pump up my page rank by self-linking.
The interesting thing is that even if all those links are discounted, this site should *still* be one of the top search results for Huckapoo. Which means Google didn't just just remove them from the equation, it punished me for having them. I can see where they're coming from, but in this case, the real victim is the millions of people who will never find the most valuable Huckaresource on the web.
And there doesn't seem to be any way to appeal. It's like Guantanamo with shorter skirts.
Posted by: radosh | November 1, 2007 10:01 AM
so you think this is just a by-product of a new way of counting links and not intentional in any way?
Posted by: jake | November 1, 2007 12:32 PM
Jake - I think they're intentionally trying to punish people for phony internal links created to pump up page rank, but since it's entirely automated, legit internal links like mine get caught in the net. I don't think any human was involved in the process.
Posted by: radosh | November 1, 2007 12:37 PM
I've long given up on trying to figure the ways of Google.
My blog this morning is the fourth hit for "Hugues Asseman," the French marketing director for Apple, because I poked fun at his name--yesterday afternoon!
I was, for a time, the top hit for "Barry Manilow puts a sock in his pants," though I've dropped to around fifth place, sadly.
And my dog's blog (don't ask--he's stopped blogging) was among the top five hits for "Freddie" for a while there, after Kottke.org linked to it.
Posted by: Jim/The Velvet Blog | November 2, 2007 8:16 AM
Well, since this post, I'm back on the front page again. So time passed is a factor... but not the only one, since, as I said, numerous sites that were (and still are) ahead of me, haven't updated their Huckanews in several years.
Posted by: radosh | November 2, 2007 10:00 AM
Oh, and curiously, that post of mine that's now a front-page result is not this one, or any of the ones that this one links too. That's so random, as the Huckapoo girls used to say.
Posted by: radosh | November 2, 2007 10:01 AM
You are no longer in the first page for clique girls, you are the 85th result on the ninth page google for Clique Girls, serves you right... Google works on a algorithm programed way, if you don't know what this is, the check up on wikipedia, another site that almost always gets into the top five, your peak is over. You go ahead and atempt to file a suit, fail miserable, and end up broke :D
Posted by: Applonia | April 22, 2008 8:39 PM
In mathematics, computing, linguistics and related disciplines, an algorithm is a type of effective method in which a definite list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, when given an initial state, will proceed through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in an end-state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as probabilistic algorithms, incorporate randomness.
A partial formalization of the concept began with attempts to solve the Entscheidungsproblem (the "decision problem") that David Hilbert posed in 1928. Subsequent formalizations were framed as attempts to define "effective calculability" (Kleene 1943:274) or "effective method" (Rosser 1939:225); those formalizations included the Gφdel-Herbrand-Kleene recursive functions of 1930, 1934 and 1935, Alonzo Church's lambda calculus of 1936, Emil Post's "Formulation I" of 1936, and Alan Turing's Turing machines of 1936-7 and 1939.
Posted by: Applonia | April 22, 2008 8:41 PM