Here's your chance to make it better: what are the queries that turn up too many Made-For-Adsense pages, and what results should they be returning instead?
Well... in my field about half of the top sites which are returned for the query "Learn Chinese" (or something similar) are thinly-disguided AdSense spam or content-free marketing landing pages of little use to anyone actually hoping to learn Chinese. They exist almost exclusively to serve AdSense. Sample URLS: elanguageschool.net, clearchinese.com, instantspeakchinese.com, minmm.com, mychineselearning.com. Or try pretty much any site on page #2.
My own Chinese learning site is Popup Chinese (http://popupchinese.com). We have fantastic testimonials, tens of thousands of users, and links from tons of places, but we're still invisible in Google after more than two years. The Skritter (http://skritter.com) guys (who post here occasionally) should also be listed far above where they are - they've got a great product and it's insane that they're drowned out by this sort of flotsam. Ditto for NCIKU.com.
Everyone I know in our industry views Google with complete cynicism. Quality sites that won't play black hat SEO are at a major disadvantage to much spammier marketing sites and link-farms. All that being said, it is nice to see someone at Google is at least asking the question seriously. And given what you are up against... good luck.
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Here's your chance to make it better: what are the queries that turn up too many Made-For-Adsense pages, and what results should they be returning instead?
Well... in my field about half of the top sites which are returned for the query "Learn Chinese" (or something similar) are thinly-disguided AdSense spam or content-free marketing landing pages of little use to anyone actually hoping to learn Chinese. They exist almost exclusively to serve AdSense. Sample URLS: elanguageschool.net, clearchinese.com, instantspeakchinese.com, minmm.com, mychineselearning.com. Or try pretty much any site on page #2.
My own Chinese learning site is Popup Chinese (http://popupchinese.com). We have fantastic testimonials, tens of thousands of users, and links from tons of places, but we're still invisible in Google after more than two years. The Skritter (http://skritter.com) guys (who post here occasionally) should also be listed far above where they are - they've got a great product and it's insane that they're drowned out by this sort of flotsam. Ditto for NCIKU.com.
Everyone I know in our industry views Google with complete cynicism. Quality sites that won't play black hat SEO are at a major disadvantage to much spammier marketing sites and link-farms. All that being said, it is nice to see someone at Google is at least asking the question seriously. And given what you are up against... good luck.