A slower Googlebot?
Google is the best search engine, right? Everyone knows that. Google is #1.

The problem with being number one, is that you attract the most spam. It's extremely lucrative to be able to spam the number one search engine. Google works extra hard to ensure that most spam doesn't get into the results.

But Google might not be as "responsive" to new stories as other search engines. Perhaps they are more careful and slower because they need to be more vigilant about limiting spam.

Here's an example: today the AP runs a story entitled: "Alaska Man Builds 16-Foot Snowzilla". But when you click on it, but there's no picture of the Snowzilla!

So to find the picture, you might go to Google and search for: ["Billy Ray Powers" snowzilla] since "Billy Ray Powers" is the name of the man who started the snowzilla. You probably will only see the AP story - and still no picture. If you click on news, you'll see three versions of the same AP story - all with no picture.

If you do the same search at Yahoo, you'll find the USA Today story, which does have a picture.

Perhaps Slurp is just faster to the USA Today than Googlebot today. It'll be interesting to see which bot picks up this post faster...

  ¶ 12/20/2005