> Despite the semi-positive resolution, I was disturbed. If these dime-store scrapers were doing so well and generating so much traffic on the back of our content – how was the rest of the web faring? My enduring faith in the gravitational constant of Google had been shaken. Shaken to the very core.
>
> Throughout my investigation I had nagging doubts that we were seeing **serious cracks in the algorithmic search foundations of the house that Google built**. But I was afraid to write an article about it for fear I’d be claimed an incompetent kook. I wasn’t comfortable sharing that opinion widely, because we might be doing something obviously wrong. Which we tend to do frequently and often. *Gravity can’t be wrong. We’re just clumsy … right?*
>
> I can’t help noticing that we’re not the only site to have serious problems with Google search results in the last few months. In fact, the drum beat of deteriorating Google search quality has been practically *deafening* of late:
>
> - [Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/01/why-we-desperately-need-a-new-and-better-google-2/)
> - [Dishwashers, and How Google Eats Its Own Tail](http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/12/dishwashers_dem.html)
> - [Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/content_farms_impact.php)
> - [On the increasing uselessness of Google](http://broadstuff.com/archives/2370-On-the-increasing-uselessness-of-Google......html)
> - [Google, Google, Why Hast Thou Forsaken the Manolo?](http://shoeblogs.com/2010/12/20/google-google-why-hast-thou-forsaken-the-manolo/#more-13002)
>
> Anecdotally, my personal search results have also been noticeably worse lately. As part of Christmas shopping for my wife, I searched for “iPhone 4 case” in Google. I had to give up completely on the first two pages of search results as utterly useless, and searched Amazon instead.
via [codinghorror.com](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/trouble-in-the-house-of-google.html)
It looks like the first few articles posted on this topic have started a bit of an avalanche. Which means lots of people have been thinking along these lines for a long time, but were afraid to speak up.
Google is going to have to do some house cleaning and PR work, if this keeps going.
