Google Traffic Takes Down Web Site 414
bazonkers writes "Searchenginelowdown.com reports that it appears that the Google logo yesterday (honoring Gaston Julia) linked to the Google image search results for the words 'julia fractal'. The resulting traffic generated from clicking on that 'featured logo' incapacitated the servers of the top-listed images, hosted at an Australian university. This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."
Should Google try to convert its traffic to money? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's clearly taking the high road by making their home page an ad-page zone. I wonder how long that's going to last after the IPO and by definition, profit-hungry interests (such as your 401k plan) get control of the company.
One day, just for fun.... (Score:2, Interesting)
International bandwidth crunch? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Insult to Injury (Score:5, Interesting)
Much as I enjoy perusing information (and I do follow the links), this does raise a good question. Obviously, it's generally a good thing for a website to get traffic (usually, that's why the website's there), but are there moral implications for overloading a perfectly innocent site (fortunately, this site seems academic, so we aren't hurting business, per se)? Should we have a guilty conscience for bring down servers as wantonly as we do? I think not, as the Internet is open and free and who's going to stop us, but it's an interesting point they raise.
Reminds me of when I served at a restaurant and managers would complain when business was slow, but they'd get equally upset if a couple of buses pulled in and we were slammed with 100+ customers all at once. With so many customers, it was tough for us to give them good service, much less take good care of the customers we already had. I guess the exposure Google (and
Surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
New service: Google CachePlus? (Score:5, Interesting)
Time for internet upgrade (Score:1, Interesting)
Could google slashdot slashdot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Changing the picture (Score:3, Interesting)
If not, there are a various protections you can use to prevent the image being shown on another server (using the referrer is one, not particularly robust/compatible method) Many free websites use this method.
If google doesn't store the thumbnail, then it is not the google servers hammering them (as the site claims) but all the users doing the search. Thus it is irrelevant of how many servers google has.
Re:Damn (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh mighty Google... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not sure I follow--it was Julia Gaston's birthday, and Google has been known to put up special logos on famous birthdays.
Next I suppose you think Google should write an article honoring each holiday they put up logos for. =]
Wrong? no! (Score:1, Interesting)
People put their sites online so other people can see it. You cant then complain when lots of people see it, saying, "I only wanted a couple people seeing it". Its a public site, so expect the public to come. Just make sure you get a plan that doesnt charge when you go over your bandwidth, just shuts you down.
Re:*sigh* (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, Google is not obliged to warn them because their content is on public domain, but I think it would just be a matter of courtesy..
That brings to mind, should Slashdot start warning people before they are referenced here?
Re:Should Google try to convert its traffic to mon (Score:1, Interesting)
Just the leftovers caused me trouble (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been slashdotted four times or so before, so I know what it's like. The server handled it just fine, it was the connection that was the trouble.
I'm glad that the initial onslaught is over, but I'm still seeing elevated traffic levels, and probably will for a few days. This is normal for any kind of slashdotting.
Google's logo back to default (Score:3, Interesting)
IMO Google should institute a policy for links such as these; they should link to their own google cached versions, perhaps caching any other content such as images as well, instead of linking to the "featured" site.
The least they should do is warn the site of potential megatraffic. Anything less could be seen as slightly irresponsible on the part of google. However, it could also be they don't really realize how much power they really wield. Are there any google employees who read slashdot that can comment?
My site was "Cthuugled", too (Score:5, Interesting)
At 8:00 a.m. EST, my Mom IM'd me at school to tell me that the Internet as slow at home. At 9:00, my friend who uses my wiki told me that he had been letting it load for about an hour and it wasn't loading. The Xbox-Linux project's wiki [unmodded.mine.nu] also is hosted on my server, and it was inaccessible.
All these web sites are hosted on my little Linux box in my basement, on my parents' cable-modem with 40 KB/s up to the Internet. What happened to me was that the Google logo, linking to the image search for "julia fractals", had my friend Jonathan's site as the top hit. (The exact hit was this page [mathjmendl.org].)
The page was all-but inaccessible, as was my server. I eventually SSH'd in, copied the files to my JHU web hosting space, and set up an Apache redirect to serve the files from there [jhu.edu]. JHU (my university) has a pretty big pipe, I've learned over the years I've been here. :-).
I mentioned this in a blog entry [jhu.edu] I made on the topic. It seems that now the search finds some other first hit, the .edu.au site mentioned in the story. Perhaps that's because my server was "Cthuugled" (eaten alive by Google, that is), and no one could reach the first link for so many hours.
Re:Full text (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does the author ask those questions?
There's no facility on that page to respond, so it implies these questions are rhetorical -- leading to answers that are more favorable to the ill-prepared website.
My response to these questions follow, if anyone's interested.
No. If you don't want google to index your site, set up facilities to prevent it. Google shouldn't be held accountable for your inability to handle large server loads any more than the phone company should be held accountable for every single person that unexpectedly calls you. In the case of a phone line, you'd set up an unlisted number, in the case of Google, you'd block that referrer. Again. No. Google attempts to return results based on what its database is able to determine is the most relevant to the query being posed. Google already doesn't assume responsibility for any of the content that they link to, and there's no justifiable reason to change it.I have some sympathy for people hit by flash crowds due to being mentioned on sites like slashdot, but I have no empathy for people who find being linked from google (THE most widely used search engine on the internet, I might add) is causing too many hits to their site.
Google Cache (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean come on
What the hell are you yammering about? (Score:2, Interesting)
There was no "editorial comment." They change the logo to reflect an important event in history on any given day...it just so happened that Gaston Julia's birthday was that day. They're a search engine, and they want to promote their searching ability...why would they waste time and money hiring someone to write an article about fractals?
I'm not trying to flame or anything, but what exactly where you trying to say?
Gurgle (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like Google sent a server Gaga and it went down the Gurgler..
Now if they were TRUELY smart, they'd have used those hits, IP addresses and timestamps as random seed for some internet fractal art! Oops, shouldnt have suggested that - somebody will probably get rich off it.. *shrug*
-- Jim (If it sounds crazy, it probably is!)
Google stresses our server weekly (Score:5, Interesting)
We're on a wireless Internet connection due to severe lack of affordable Internet out here in the country, and they want to limit us to 30GB per month. I hate to complain to Google because we do get a lot of new customers from Google searches.
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pizza Overload (Score:4, Interesting)
Because that's not Google's job (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of posting content on a totally public, accessible forum like the Internet is teh knowledge that the big boys may take intrest in you at some point. You need to accept and deal with that. I've had servers I own or maintained hit by a lot of people before (from Wired rather than
Re:Using my time machine .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Using Google? (Reading Slashdot? The followup story)
Looking for images of quaternion fractals?
On the 3rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed. The reason was traced to Google introducing a fractal looking logo (see below), which when clicked, performed an image search for "julia" and "fractal". The two most interesting resulting images on the top row of the list were on this page (or rather the page that was here).
[Image used without permission from Google]
In order to get this server functional again, the pages that were here have been moved somewhere else. It shouldn't be too hard to find them if you really want to, do a Google search for "Quaternion fractal" or if you would like to create your own Quaternion fractals try POVRay.
Please note that this is not a criticism of Google but rather an interesting dimension to the power they wield. They have hundreds (thousands?) of servers worldwide that distribute their traffic load. If even a small percentage of that traffic is directed to a single server.....what chance does it have?
Questions: Should Google ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server? Should they regulate traffic to individual sites/pages by changing the order of the search results?
Happy searching!
Google giveth
and Google taketh away
Blessed is Google?
[Roger Bagula]
High Traffic-banner ads? (Score:3, Interesting)
I found the above statement from his web site interesting.
Here is an idea. How about developing some code that only kicks in banner ads when hits go above a certain rate. This could help mitigate the costs of above average traffic, while keeping your site banner free for normal situations.
Mega Proxies (Score:3, Interesting)
Is your ISP forcing you to use a cache????
i know the feeling... (Score:3, Interesting)
Suddenly it's not that great anymore if you have a high ranking on google and other search engines...
ohwell... since sunday we've probably become a "adult oriented" site anyway (the way americans see it). I'm even starting to get personal mails from people offering me free adult hosting
Ricardo.
Re:Could google slashdot slashdot? (Score:3, Interesting)