[geeks] Google Irritation

[der Mouse]

> Google search butchers word pairs and even phrases, even if you quote
> them.

It also mangles things in other ways, like forcibly including responses
you specifically asked to have suppressed.

Quite some time ago, I was looking for some music typesetting software
called "smut".  I'm sure you all can imagine the false positives.  But
I started trying to exclude them with searches like

	smut music typesetting -sex -beaver

and I kept getting the false positives anyway, often even including in
the sample few lines the very terms I specifically minused.  I wrote to
them to report the bug, and what did they do?  Did they fix their
searches?  No; it appears these were "sponsored links", and they
believe it's a good idea to inflict such things on users who have
specifically indicated they are not desired - presumably angry
searchers bearing negative animus towards their advertisers are worth
more to them than happy searchers with no awareness of those same
advertisers.  Instead, they added "typesetting" to a list of search
terms that suppressed the pr0n "sponsored links" (or, at least, that's
what they said they did, and, while I have no reason to doubt it, I
also haven't tried to check it out).  I suppose I should be grateful
they did even that much, since clearly getting their sponsored links in
front of eyeballs is a priority even when it angers searchers, but
somehow my reactions don't quite work that way.

It makes a little more sense when you remember that their customers,
the people they optimize for the happiness of, are advertiers, not
searchers, but it's still pretty egregious; I'd think even advertisers
could grok that there is such a thing as undesirable attention, but
apparently not.  I certainly know that if I were a Web business, I'd
rather be unknown than known as "that damn site that keeps bullying its
way into my search results".  It's true that brand awareness can
outweigh negative affect, but only to a point....

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