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Comment by Thorrez | Hacker News Reader

When you put "slang dictionary" in the query it's going to significantly boost The Online Slang Dictionary's results, because you've included part of the site's name in the query.

If you just search squeege, Urban Dictionary is #2 and The Online Slang Dictionary is not in the top 10. If you just search "as much use as a chocolate teapot", Urban Dictionary is #5 and Online Slang Dictionary is #9.

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That seems fair. It wouldn't make sense for Google to generally rank The Online Slang Dictionary higher; Urban Dictionary is more popular and algorithms like PageRank would naturally prefer Urban Dictionary. When The Online Slang Dictionary ranks pretty well, but not as high as Urban Dictionary, but if you kinda include its name it ranks higher, that seems like appropriate search results.

also, citations would be outgoing references and that is different from being linked TO. The in/out ratio was abused by SEO spammers and so as a result, google came to value sites with more inbound links. Every single word on UD has links to tweet/like/share. If this Walter guy added that feature and gave the site a few typographic finishing touches, who knows? Maybe the auto penalty would be less for having 5700-out/??-in ratio?

> Urban Dictionary is more popular

I think this is exactly the point of contention: why is Urban Dictionary more popular? The author never says it outright, but appears to believe that it's because of the cumulative effect of this penalty over the last 8 years. This assumption is bolstered by the choice to include a photograph of the ex-googler and owner of Urban Dictionary posing with the person who ran the team instituting the penalties.

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