Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google - the content producer?

tedvalentin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: Google - the content producer?

#11

Post by jokermatt999 »

Now, what happens when I search for "sushi Baltimore"? I get Google's helpful map, and the websites for several sushi restaurants in Baltimore, but no single site that lists them all and does detailed reviews. In this case, Google's map was much more helpful than any of the actual listings. If Google didn't know about Ted's site, how are they supposed to put it above theirs? Mea culpa, you can't really claim Google is pushing their content above similar content if they don't know it exists.

Perhaps, as the submitter mentions in another comment here, Google could form a partnership, but that would require massive organization to set up. Even if they just wanted to form a partnership with all sushi listing websites in major cities, that would still require a lot more effort on Google's part for a benefit of...what? Better listings for sushi, yes, but would it be worth the trouble for them to index it all?

Re: Google - the content producer?

#12

Post by what »

mmelin wrote: post #2

What should Google do here? Clearly, in this case users would be better served by the third party service. But overall, Google Maps results for these queries are probably a good thing. Is the answer that Google should index and present the information from Sushikartan in Google Maps? I don't know.

They could do something similar to the Transit Program. Let him submit a feed for inclusion in google maps.

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/transit/partners/

Re: Google - the content producer?

#13

Post by falien »

Google is not presenting their own competing services in a biased way over others. They are presenting search results in context sensitive ways. Searching for sushi in a geographic location indicates you want to find sushi places in that area. A google map is the best possible way for google to present the information you want. Does a crowdsourced site completely dedicated to this tiny niche do a better job than google's algorithm? of course it does, but there is no way for google's algorithm to judge that for every query.

Search instead for "sushi review stockholm" and the cited website is the first result and there is no google map at the top, because the search does not indicate to google that the first priority is to simply find sushi places and nothing else.

Now if google was artificially placing gmail, or google docs, or any of their other service products that are not themselves presenting search results, above the competition for generic search terms; that would be a problem. The behaviour cited in the post is simply the best way for google to provide search results. Google maps is a core search technology, just like google image search, books, video etc. You can't use anti-monopoly rules to handicap the dominant product itself. Especially when all the competition (search providers) considers the same behaviour to be part of their core search service as well.

Re: Google - the content producer?

#14

Post by falien »

falien wrote: post #13

Google is not presenting their own competing services in a biased way over others. They are presenting search results in context sensitive ways. Searching for sushi in a geographic location indicates you want to find sushi places in that area. A google map is the best possible way for google to present the information you want. Does a crowdsourced site completely dedicated to this tiny niche do a better job than goog…

Note that to see this behaviour on other search engines, you may need to use US locations. Yahoo and Bing don't seem to recognize stockholm as a location.

Re: Google - the content producer?

#15

Post by kulkarnic »

falien wrote: post #13

Google is not presenting their own competing services in a biased way over others. They are presenting search results in context sensitive ways. Searching for sushi in a geographic location indicates you want to find sushi places in that area. A google map is the best possible way for google to present the information you want. Does a crowdsourced site completely dedicated to this tiny niche do a better job than goog…

I'm sorry I don't buy this argument: When someone searches for "sushi stockholm" on Google, they aren't saying "Show me a map with all the sushi places in Stockholm". They are saying "I want to know more about getting sushi in Stockholm. Can you show me a webpage that can show me that?"

That webpage could well be the Google Maps website; and to level the playing field, Google could use a similar blue-link to the Google Maps page that highlights sushi places (or alternatively, show a map from the author's website).

I wouldn't, however, hold my breath. On the Internet, it's NEVER going to be completely fair. If they could, simple, personal geocities-based recipe sites would prevent AllRecipes and BBC from taking over "their" expertise (some of those old homepages had seriously awesome recipes!)

Re: Google - the content producer?

#16

Post by moultano »

kulkarnic wrote: post #15
falien wrote: post #13

Google is not presenting their own competing services in a biased way over others. They are presenting search results in context sensitive ways. Searching for sushi in a geographic location indicates you want to find sushi places in that area. A google map is the best possible way for google to present the information you want. Does a crowdsourced site completely dedicated to this tiny niche do a better job than goog…

I'm sorry I don't buy this argument: When someone searches for "sushi stockholm" on Google, they aren't saying "Show me a map with all the sushi places in Stockholm". They are saying "I want to know more about getting sushi in Stockholm. Can you show me a webpage that can show me that?" That webpage could well be the Google Maps website; and to level the playing field, Google could use a similar blue-link to the Goog…

>they aren't saying "Show me a map with all the sushi places in Stockholm". They are saying "I want to know more about getting sushi in Stockholm. Can you show me a webpage that can show me that?"

[Citation needed]

Presumably if you're correct, and users aren't actually looking for the google maps interface, they'll skip it and move to the web results. Users have now come to expect this behavior from Google when they type in local search queries.

Re: Google - the content producer?

#17

Post by falien »

kulkarnic wrote: post #15
falien wrote: post #13

Google is not presenting their own competing services in a biased way over others. They are presenting search results in context sensitive ways. Searching for sushi in a geographic location indicates you want to find sushi places in that area. A google map is the best possible way for google to present the information you want. Does a crowdsourced site completely dedicated to this tiny niche do a better job than goog…

I'm sorry I don't buy this argument: When someone searches for "sushi stockholm" on Google, they aren't saying "Show me a map with all the sushi places in Stockholm". They are saying "I want to know more about getting sushi in Stockholm. Can you show me a webpage that can show me that?" That webpage could well be the Google Maps website; and to level the playing field, Google could use a similar blue-link to the Goog…

They aren't saying either of those things. They are saying "show me sushi stockholm" which google interprets as "show me sushi in stockholm" and as far as google knows (and accurately as far as I'm concerned when I use google), any sort of searches explicitly limited to a known geographic area are best answered by a map of that area with search results shown on top of it. If you search for "getting sushi in stockholm" you don't get a map. The language that triggers a map as the first result is very specific and not limited to google. Individuals may find that they don't like the map as the first result for some queries, but as a company every major search engine as decided this is the best way to present certain results. Rail against it as a website owner or user all you want, but it is absolutely a legitimate practice.

Of course it is possible to have better results for certain queries. Is it even remotely plausible for google to reliably decide that? To my knowledge, not without solving some very difficult problems, which they may or may not have any motivation to do, but they are certainly under no obligation to do it either.

Re: Google - the content producer?

#19

Post by shrikant »

falien wrote: post #14
falien wrote: post #13

Google is not presenting their own competing services in a biased way over others. They are presenting search results in context sensitive ways. Searching for sushi in a geographic location indicates you want to find sushi places in that area. A google map is the best possible way for google to present the information you want. Does a crowdsourced site completely dedicated to this tiny niche do a better job than goog…

Note that to see this behaviour on other search engines, you may need to use US locations. Yahoo and Bing don't seem to recognize stockholm as a location.

That's a bug, not a feature.
Post reply on HN