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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

#51

Post by makomk »

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…

If searchers can't find what they're looking for on Google, they'll go elsewhere though. Before Google downranked sites like Nextag I seriously considered moving to a different search engine altogether because they were rendering it pretty much useless for any topic they'd got their claws into. I'd search for reviews or technical information on a netbook or some other consumer electronics and get page after page of nothing but useless "comparison shopping" and "vertical search" sites, none of which actually had any meaningful information on and all of which appeared to be automatically generated.

It's no wonder that Google cracked down; they were destroying its main service - search - in order to make a cheap buck for themselves by driving out useful results and driving searchers to turn to them in desperation.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#52

Post by dbaupp »

stfu wrote: post #36
TomGullen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 implemen…

I don't think he "clearly" states that. To me, it sounds like he is saying: our algorithms are robust to temporary service failures; websites aren't penalised heavily.

As a genuine question, do you have any evidence for the de-indexing time of normal websites? (And evidence that they aren't restored as soon as the website is restored?)

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#53

Post by makomk »

FreeKill wrote: post #42
codeka wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Search "headphones" on Google and you'll see the massive ad spot taken up by Google Shopping What's wrong with that? If I'm searching for headphones, why would I want to be taken to another search engine that indexes headphones? I want to be see the best prices and be taken directly to the websites that actually sell headphones. There's nothing inherently wrong with a monopoly. If you think Google is a monopoly, it…

There's nothing wrong with it, other than that fact that you have no choice in that case but to take Google's word for it on the lowest price. Maybe there are other sites out there that do a better job finding low price headphones but you'll never see them in the search because Google prefers its own sub-standard offering instead.

There aren't. I reckon that's probably why Google offered Google Shopping in the first place - all the other price comparison sites I've tried sucked, and it's hard to come up with a suitable incentive not to suck given the SEO techniques they use.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#54

Post by FreeKill »

makomk wrote: post #53
FreeKill wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with it, other than that fact that you have no choice in that case but to take Google's word for it on the lowest price. Maybe there are other sites out there that do a better job finding low price headphones but you'll never see them in the search because Google prefers its own sub-standard offering instead.

There aren't. I reckon that's probably why Google offered Google Shopping in the first place - all the other price comparison sites I've tried sucked, and it's hard to come up with a suitable incentive not to suck given the SEO techniques they use.

That might be true, but it doesn't mean there won't ever be...

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#55

Post by alpatters »

I do wonder sometimes if google's own site would pass its site quality guidelines. Like duplicated content; the same content appearing on multiple pages, all pages should be linked from somewhere on the site or a site map, substantial original content.

I think it fails on all three of these, so in some sense it is anti-competitive to block other sites that fail these measures whilst it doesn't hold itself up to those same standards.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#56

Post by joelrunyon »

dchuk wrote: post #39
joelrunyon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, n…

I completely understand that. My point was that Google has to keep searchers happy or they have no product to sell advertisers. In that sense, the searcher is a 'customer' (you may like 'user' better) that Google needs to keep happy in order to maintain its product and keep it's real customers (advertisers).

That said, the greatest search engine in the world isn't that great if no one uses it. Search volume (and advertising platform quality) is what drives advertisers to Google. If their results suck, users will use something else and lose the product that Google needs to be able to sell to its customers.

(You can say the same thing about the rest of their products as it is all about collecting peripheral demographic information that allows advertisers to directly target them on the content network).

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#57

Post by Xion »

> The government’s scrutiny of Google is the most exhaustive investigation of a major corporation since the pursuit of Microsoft in the late 1990s.

I can't help to notice that apparently in the last 15 years or so, a significant government interest was only focused on high-tech companies. Looks like more "traditional" branches of economy and companies working therein are generally behaving fine...

Companies like Lehman Brothers, for example.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#58

Post by denzil_correa »

FreeKill wrote: post #54
makomk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't. I reckon that's probably why Google offered Google Shopping in the first place - all the other price comparison sites I've tried sucked, and it's hard to come up with a suitable incentive not to suck given the SEO techniques they use.

That might be true, but it doesn't mean there won't ever be...

That line of thinking can turn any organization into an orwellian entity.

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#59

Post by victorantos »

ksikka wrote: post #5

Some sites go down in rankings, but other (hopefully) more useful sites go up in rankings. Also if your company is impacted negatively by this, you should attempt to focus more on social network effects to reduce reliance on Google. For example, integration from Facebook and Twitter opens up more channels for users to visit your site through.

my 5 year old website has dropped traffic 3X suddenly, I was shocked, who to blame now, Google? https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45940875/google-negatively-affects-...

Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

#60

Post by jkn »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #38
timothya wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.youtu…

Mayer's answer actually starts at 44:34 and gives the proper context: she's talking about the order of links in the OneBox (the area at the top that shows the current stock price and a plot), not the order of links in the main results. Danny Sullivan wrote a long post about this:

http://searchengineland.com/dear-congress-its-not-ok-not-to-...

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