HN Explorer

5 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 23.9 ms ] thread
gus_massa
Don't know the cause, but the first text in page is "Back" and it's placed just before a <h1> head. Perhaps that is confusing some heuristic.

From the html file:

  ...
  <a href="../">&lt; &lt; Back</a>
  <h1>Aurebesh</h1><br>
  ...
dendory
There's clear protocols set. The page <title> is supposed to be the anchor text. Google thinks they know better, and expects everybody to adapt.
cheald
Perhaps you missed the memo, but people have been adapting to Google for quite a while now.

Google's obviously attempting to give a bit more context to link titles when they think that the link comes from a publication. Your "Back" link goes to the root of your site, which is overwhelmingly used as a "home" link that is very frequently semantically given the title of the publication. That's cool with me - trying to make their results more usable is great. I think it's a little silly to be upset with Google doing something with their index that they feel might help their users.

vladady
Generally, the first link in a page is a link with the site name (where the site name is hidden and the logo is displayed). Google thinks back is your site name...
dendory
That's the point of my post. The page <title> should be the anchor. But because Google thinks they know better, they do extensive algorithm parsing (and yes I understand the goal is to foil spammer) then come up with random crap. They test their crap against WordPress, and if all looks fine, then they call it a day.