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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

#31

Post by joelrunyon »

dchuk wrote: post #29
doctorpangloss wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google has 2 customers: Searchers AND customers.

Google has to get searchers to sell to advertisers. That said, the generic 'websites' mentioned above are not Google customers. Google does not "owe" them anything – they owe the searchers the best results and the advertisers clicks at a certain cost. The only thing those other websites do with their free listings are attract eyeballs to Google's engine.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#32

Post by joelrunyon »

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…

> There's tons more, but I'm not a practitioner of SEO.

Sounds like you know an awful lot about SEO and consequences for not being a "practitioner."

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#33

Post by joelrunyon »

The entire premise of this article seems bogus to me.

"Google casts a big shadow on smaller web sites."

That title implies that Google is specifically targeting smaller web sites which isn't the case.

The problem seems to be that some shady small business did some shady stuff, got caught and got mad about it.

Google didn't go and replace them with walmart, they probably replaced them in the results with a similar sized company. Someone lost and someone won – that's it.

I'm the first to say Google should step up it's customer service, but it's disingenuous to act like Google is proactively seeking out small businesses who never did anything wrong in favor of big massive conglomerations.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#34

Post by joelrunyon »

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…

This seems similar to Hollywood complaining that dvd sales are down because people want to stream stuff over the internet.

Technology changes. The rules change. Don't complain that you built a company based on outdated business strategies (renting dvds or monetizing search traffic). Change your strategy and take advantage of the new opportunities.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#35

Post by lazyjones »

I can sympathize with Nextag on the topic of Google entering their market and possibly being a little less than objective regarding their own product (Benjamin Edelman has written about this several times: http://www.benedelman.org/).

On the other hand, getting 60% traffic from Google is very unhealthy (18 mil. of 30 mil. monthly users?) and doesn't make Nextag look like a site people stick to because of its quality. None of the sites I visit daily (directly) has anywhere near that much search traffic (according to Alexa), so perhaps Nextag hits are perceived by searchers as "generic", interchangeable results that happen to rank well on Google and they don't care much whether the hits are from Nextag, Google Shopping or any other e-commerce site.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#36

Post by stfu »

TomGullen wrote: post #7
stfu wrote: post #4

“We try very hard to make sure we communicate with Webmasters,” Mr. Cutts says. For instance, he says, he reassured Gawker Media that it would remain in search results after Hurricane Sandy caused it to crash. This somewhat perfectly summarizes the genius solution Google found to customer service. Google is very keen to react with a personal face to high profile cases while at the same time squeezing all the thousand…

How is Google squeezing small businesses?

Just because most reactions somewhat imply shady SEO problems:

Cutts' clearly states, that they are giving preferred treatment to a high viability site such as Gawker, while normal websites (i.e. internet peasants) would have been de-indexed in the same situation. Cutts' fulltime job is communicating ranking related issues, so I am quite certain this would have sounded a lot different if this would have been implemented as a general rule for disaster ridden IP ranges etc.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#38

Post by ridiculous_fish »

timothya wrote: post #18
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #9

I think the most serious concern is how Google promotes its own offerings above more popular competitors in the search results section. For example, do a search for "finance" and Google Finance is shown above Yahoo! finance, even though Yahoo! finance is better by most measures, and far more popular (see http://www.businessinsider.com/google-finance-yahoo-finance-... ) If you rely on Google to drive traffic, but also…

I'm not convinced that Google moves it's own results up as part of the organic search results. Bing puts Google Finance first before Yahoo Finance as well. Regardless of it's popularity, its position may simply because of other signals in the ranking algorithm.

Google freely admits to putting their own links first. Here's what Marissa Mayer said in 2007:

We didn't actually have Google Finance until about a year ago. Up until then we were ordering the links based on various published metrics... We had the five top finance sites in their order of their popularity listed there. So we rolled out Google Finance, we put the Google link first.

(You can watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT1UFZSbcxE - that quote starts at 44:50.)

Your observation regarding Bing is quite interesting. Your theory may very well be right, but there's a hilarious alternative:

It's known that Microsoft uses Google's rankings (see http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-... ). This would then propagate onto Yahoo, which uses Bing's engine, which means that Yahoo is told their own site is less popular. But Yahoo puts their site first, which may mean they're artificially boosting its ranking, under the guidance of you know who!

So 2012 Marissa Mayer may be artificially boosting Yahoo's rank to defeat 2007's Marissa Mayer's artificial boost of Google's rank. Ha!

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#39

Post by dchuk »

joelrunyon wrote: post #31
dchuk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google has 2 customers: Searchers AND customers. Google has to get searchers to sell to advertisers. That said, the generic 'websites' mentioned above are not Google customers. Google does not "owe" them anything – they owe the searchers the best results and the advertisers clicks at a certain cost. The only thing those other websites do with their free listings are attract eyeballs to Google's engine.

No, a searcher is not a customer, a searcher is the PRODUCT. Google is the marketplace, their customers (advertisers) are buying the product (traffic) via ad spend.

The entire reason Google improves the search engine is to keep you coming back so they can learn more about you to make their advertising even better. You, as a user of Google, are their product. They are selling YOU to advertisers.

Google is a company, not a utility, not a public service. They are in the business of profit.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#40

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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