fatinfo.com

How can JohnChow.com rank so low for the term John Chow? It is #1 in Yahoo, and MSN. However, it is on page 4 of Google. Imagine if this kind of hand edits on search results for Coke.com, it’s lawyers would certainly cry foul. It is widely believed that John Chow had done things to piss off the Google algorithm, and in return a hand edit was executed to screw up its natural search positions.

However, doesn’t a hand edit for something relevant equate to a broken search algorithm? Hand edits create an unfair advantage for corporations who can employ lawyers to take Google to court to restore its top search rankings. A true search engine should not require hand edits, instead every website within the index should be subjected to the same set of rules whether it triggers something to get it banned or optimized to rank well for certain terms.

Hand edited search results often means a broken search algorithm or one that can be gamed by crafty webmasters.

• Whitehouse biography page of George Bush for the term “miserable failure” where as the un-tweaked algorithm ranks Adobe for “click here”