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Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#21

Post by AnthonyMouse »

TomGullen wrote: post #3

What's the complaint here? Google makes changes that sometimes negatively impact someone's business? As long as Google's algorithm is trending in the correct direction (that is towards better quality results) then these complaints are just growing pains and I don't see much of a problem. Some startups are criticised for simply being features of a chosen platform. Once they get big enough, the platform in control will…

>What's the complaint here? Google makes changes that sometimes negatively impact someone's business?

As far as I can tell, it's largely a bunch of spammers trying to attack Google for downranking their spam.

The argument is that Google competes with them and so shouldn't be allowed to use its dominance to favor its own service. But it's pure nonsense. These companies aren't valid search results. They only ever got into the results through SEO, and then they wail when the algorithm improves to kick them out. Someone who searches for "kitchen table" is looking for a website selling or providing information about kitchen tables, not a search engine that allows them to search for websites selling or providing information about kitchen tables. The user is already on a search engine -- other search engines are not relevant search results unless the search term is in the nature of "XYZ search engine."

What the complainers are doing is the equivalent of going into the largest chain of retail stores and putting boxes on the shelves labeled with a brand that the major retailer doesn't carry, which don't actually contain any product but instead contain a map to other stores that carry the brand the retailer doesn't. And then complaining when the retailer doesn't allow the spam products to remain on their shelves, and claiming it's an antitrust violation because the retailer has the most market share and it sells its own competing brands of products.

Naturally that doesn't convince judges or sell newspapers, so the spammers scour the world for instances of algorithmic imperfection that give a bad ranking to someone else, who unlike the spammers didn't actually deserve it, and then play ominous music as they reveal the shocking fact that some Google engineer's 20% project or some little-known subsidiary responsible for 0.00043% of corporate revenue arguably competes with the disadvantaged website in some fashion.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#22

Post by ruby_on_rails »

sudont wrote: post #10
TomGullen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Google squeezing small businesses?

Basically, the volatility of their algorithm and the opaqueness of it means that any small business that is getting >80% Google-referred traffic is in for a tough time if they're marked as bad. And mistakes happen. Say: * A canonical tag that shows up due to a bug. Dead. * Industry terms that appear duplicative to the NLP parser. Dead. * Too-diverse content. Lower rankings, but functionally dead. There's tons more, b…

I also call bullshit on this. Google is very open to webmasters,and has a giant like 40 page .pdf available to them strictly about what things get better search results and what things cause negative results or out right panda-ing. The article says right up front about the voting website that they had duplicated content on pages and no one linking to them to boot. Both are known negatives to anyone working in SEO or web today and it has been known for years.

The entire article seemed to be one giant raving contradiction of its self. Companies don't want to hire good people (or for some reason have ignored what they have said), chosen to keep doing things they way that keeps getting them negative results, then moan about it. What happened to the voting website is the very thing thing that Bing would do to them (and probably has done to them).

Now admittedly, Google tends to promote its services above services of other companies, should they be in competing markets. Its unclear if this is by accident (Google engineers probably know the best Google SEO methods after all) or by design. At worst, if it is done by design, then Google is no worse then any other large company. Remember when all the big super markets started producing their own products at cut rate prices? Before when you walked into a Publix, you had 10ft of shelf space devoted to nationally branded ranch dressing. Now you have 5 ft devoted to Publix brand Ranch dressing and 5ft devoted to everything else. So if you are Kraft, your seeing your [eye-ball] search traffic being reduced by half and your competitor now has a much lower price to boot.

Why is it that Kraft doesn't care about that? They don't care, because they have spent the last half decade building their brand and their customer pool. They know that if their loyal customers go into a super market they will see the cheaper supermarket branded ranch dressing first; then second they will see the high priced Kraft and buy Kraft. I can easily extend this analogy to many of the situations presented in the article. When Google enters a market, they are the underdog. Just like when Publix decides to copy another nationally branded product and sell it in their stores. Even if Publix devoted 9 ft to Publix brand Ranch and 1 ft to National brands, on the shelves, Publix still wouldn't capture 90% of the market.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#23

Post by don_draper »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #12
sudont wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, the volatility of their algorithm and the opaqueness of it means that any small business that is getting >80% Google-referred traffic is in for a tough time if they're marked as bad. And mistakes happen. Say: * A canonical tag that shows up due to a bug. Dead. * Industry terms that appear duplicative to the NLP parser. Dead. * Too-diverse content. Lower rankings, but functionally dead. There's tons more, b…

This smells like bullshit to me. Google's search results are generally extremely good from the "customer's" point of view. People whining about how they're hurt by losing search position inevitably turn out to be spammers or other lowlife that have been trying to use "SEO" or some other shady practice to artificially inflate their search position. So yeah, Google is bad for con-men. Darn.

I've been spending time in Black Hat internet marketing forums (out of curiosity). They hate Google. Google is consistently making their search engine better for the user and worse for spammers.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#24

Post by doctorpangloss »

capo wrote: post #15

The folks at Nextag (which by the way sells product listings without disclosing them and then complains about google: http://searchengineland.com/given-nextags-lack-of-transparen... ) are telling the same sob story to every reporter who would listen. Their complaint is that they keep getting less free traffic from Google as if they are somehow entitled to it, they insist that they are living in a "Google world" and t…

If you don't like Google’s results use another service.

Sure, but Google has two kinds of customers: searchers and websites.

Maybe you believe websites shouldn't hide from Google because it makes no strategic sense. Twitter and Facebook don't let Google index their content. Why would they let Google front-run ads on their content? It's not a catchall rule, to hide with robots.txt.

Maybe websites should just pay up: they should auction for higher results, if their business depends on search placement. But that's misunderstanding Google's role.

Google isn't a salesperson. It's more like a road. Both bring business to your door (literally), but the latter gets used by everyone for everything. And it turns out it doesn't matter how you pave the road (roads have been public since the Egyptian times, yet road-building technology has changed dramatically) or whatever.

To Nextag, Google is a utility. It is only by tradition that some monopolists become utilities and others do not. How do you regulate Google for what it is: a public utility?

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#25

Post by staunch »

itp wrote: post #16
staunch wrote: post #8

The problem is that Google competes with businesses that once thrived on its platform. It's similar to when Microsoft decided to bundle IE into Windows. Google now bundles comparison shopping and local business reviews into search. If they go too far in this direction it will probably hurt them. Users don't want a search engine that puts its own, lesser quality, sites at the top. It'd be amazing if Google spun off Go…

Maybe you can help me understand this analogy a little better. You say that it's similar to when Microsoft decided to bundle IE into Windows, but the comparison isn't totally obvious to me at first blush. Microsoft went to great (and often illegal?) lengths to prevent customers from considering or being able to make use of alternatives. Consumers had a great deal of lock in -- a user of a Windows computer often had s…

The thing that's similar to what Microsoft did with IE is that Google is leveraging its monopoly position to compete in new businesses.

Search "headphones" on Google and you'll see the massive ad spot taken up by Google Shopping. They've done similar things with the way they integrate Google Local/Zagat into local business searches.

That's the equivalent of the kind of deep integration Microsoft did with IE. IE wasn't just another application in Windows, it was built-in and inseparable. The same is true of Google's products, they're automatically highlighted, and at the top of, every relevant query.

It seems pretty obviously anti-competitive to me. I think their only defense is that they claim not to be a monopoly, but no one who's on the receiving end of Google traffic can agree with that claim.

I actually think they should spin off Google Search for their own sake. To maintain the integrity and long-term quality of the product.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#26

Post by doctorpangloss »

kyrra wrote: post #19
staunch wrote: post #8

The problem is that Google competes with businesses that once thrived on its platform. It's similar to when Microsoft decided to bundle IE into Windows. Google now bundles comparison shopping and local business reviews into search. If they go too far in this direction it will probably hurt them. Users don't want a search engine that puts its own, lesser quality, sites at the top. It'd be amazing if Google spun off Go…

Search makes google zero dollars. Adwords makes google lots and lots of money. Adwords is about getting their paying customers ads infront of users. Search, product review, gmail, and lots or other apps are ways for google to make money. Adwords is Googles firehose of money. Their other products help push that or are trying to find new ways to make money.

I'm not sure that Google had such a cogent strategy when it made its blockbuster products and acquisitions, like Gmail, Docs, Picasa, and YouTube. It wasn't obvious that YouTube ads could make enough money to pay for the servers, and indeed it took a while to be profitable. Maybe the strategy was just that Google should do better and cheaper than others.

I think individual engineers looked at things (e.g.) Microsoft made, like Outlook, made it better, and made it free. Nobody should be surprised if the corporate go-ahead was made on the basis of undercutting Microsoft rather than driving ad revenue (at the time).

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#27

Post by DrJ »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #24
capo wrote: post #15

The folks at Nextag (which by the way sells product listings without disclosing them and then complains about google: http://searchengineland.com/given-nextags-lack-of-transparen... ) are telling the same sob story to every reporter who would listen. Their complaint is that they keep getting less free traffic from Google as if they are somehow entitled to it, they insist that they are living in a "Google world" and t…

If you don't like Google’s results use another service. Sure, but Google has two kinds of customers: searchers and websites. Maybe you believe websites shouldn't hide from Google because it makes no strategic sense. Twitter and Facebook don't let Google index their content. Why would they let Google front-run ads on their content? It's not a catchall rule, to hide with robots.txt. Maybe websites should just pay up: t…

I think before we turn google into the utility, we should turn the infrastructure that google runs on into a public utility.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#28

Post by SoftwareMaven »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #24
capo wrote: post #15

The folks at Nextag (which by the way sells product listings without disclosing them and then complains about google: http://searchengineland.com/given-nextags-lack-of-transparen... ) are telling the same sob story to every reporter who would listen. Their complaint is that they keep getting less free traffic from Google as if they are somehow entitled to it, they insist that they are living in a "Google world" and t…

If you don't like Google’s results use another service. Sure, but Google has two kinds of customers: searchers and websites. Maybe you believe websites shouldn't hide from Google because it makes no strategic sense. Twitter and Facebook don't let Google index their content. Why would they let Google front-run ads on their content? It's not a catchall rule, to hide with robots.txt. Maybe websites should just pay up: t…

Maybe websites should just pay up: they should auction for higher results, if their business depends on search placement.

Isn't that exactly what AdWords is?

As a consumer, I definitely what to know what is being paid for to show up and what isn't.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#29

Post by dchuk »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #24
capo wrote: post #15

The folks at Nextag (which by the way sells product listings without disclosing them and then complains about google: http://searchengineland.com/given-nextags-lack-of-transparen... ) are telling the same sob story to every reporter who would listen. Their complaint is that they keep getting less free traffic from Google as if they are somehow entitled to it, they insist that they are living in a "Google world" and t…

If you don't like Google’s results use another service. Sure, but Google has two kinds of customers: searchers and websites. Maybe you believe websites shouldn't hide from Google because it makes no strategic sense. Twitter and Facebook don't let Google index their content. Why would they let Google front-run ads on their content? It's not a catchall rule, to hide with robots.txt. Maybe websites should just pay up: t…

No, google has one customer: advertisers. Searchers don't directly make Google any money, advertisers do. Google is not a public utility, it's the most successful online advertising machine ever.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#30

Post by joelrunyon »

I'm really amazed (and impressed) at how many mentions & links Vote-USA got throughout that article. Seemed like an inordinate amount for the number of times it was mentioned.

Also, I get the whole "we got deindexed" from Google, but duplicate content is not necessarily a new thing. If you got penalized for it, so did a bunch of other people. You shouldn't act like it's a surprise and whine about it. Just fix it and move on.

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