The state of Texas thinks that it might be. Their attorney general has launched an investigation into whether Google is manipulating their search engine rankings to hurt their competition.
The full article is here.
Unless they are talking about Google sticking YouTube results at the top of the page and other similar changes that were made over the years, I'm not sure I buy into this accusation.
They should let me look over their algorithm to prove their innocence.
The accusations are that Google acts unethically and dishonestly by manually overwriting their algorithms to allow their business partners sites gain higher rankings than their competitors (msft and their sites for example). Personally I think there is a lot of truth to it, but we're not likely to see anything proven since Google won't reveal their algorithms to check that.
You really think that they are tweaking the results like that? Care to tell me why?Originally Posted by DomainMagnate
I don't think its impossible, but given that almost their entire business is based on the quality and integrity of their results, I don't think they would take that risk.
Many reasons, but most important are that:
1. It's a known fact that Google hire search quality reviewers who manually assign results to some of the most important queries, either to fix some of the bugs/problems with the algo, fight spam, or simply to present more relevant results that searchers are looking for.
2. There is a lot of money in the serps and as any publicly traded company Google need to make more revenues to keep their shareholders happy, so the pressure is high.
3. Many seo experts I've talked to believe so. And I don't mean those who just call themselves seo experts, but people who are successfully competing for some of the toughest keywords in Google and have an inside scoop on the industry.
4. There is virtually no risk in it for Google, no one can ever prove anything without having access to the algorithm.
5. Google is evil
1. True, and I think this could be an issue for them. Having people who have to "fix" their algorithm can be seen as manipulation or the people could be manipulating the index without Google even really being aware of it. I have had debates on here about whether Google should be doing this or not. I personally believe that they should focus on improving the shortcomings of their algorithm when it produces less than desirable results instead of manually making changes, but others disagree.Many reasons, but most important are that:
1. It's a known fact that Google hire search quality reviewers who manually assign results to some of the most important queries, either to fix some of the bugs/problems with the algo, fight spam, or simply to present more relevant results that searchers are looking for.
2. There is a lot of money in the serps and as any publicly traded company Google need to make more revenues to keep their shareholders happy, so the pressure is high.
3. Many seo experts I've talked to believe so. And I don't mean those who just call themselves seo experts, but people who are successfully competing for some of the toughest keywords in Google and have an inside scoop on the industry.
4. There is virtually no risk in it for Google, no one can ever prove anything without having access to the algorithm.
5. Google is evil
2. Sure there is a lot of money, which is why Microsoft and others would be happy to see that this investigation has been launched, but I think they make a lot more money from being the dominant search engine than they would by placing a YouTube video at position 4 instead of position 8. I think another weak spot could be their prominent display of YouTube, Google Images, and Google Finance sites above the "real" results, but I personally don't have much of an issue with that.
3. Rumors at best. I don't see this gaining much traction.
4. All it takes is one disgruntled contractor or employee with an email chain or even just accusations to blow the whistle. Access to the algorithm isn't needed.
5. At times.
What really surprises here though is what does the state of Texas has to do with all this? Why did they decide to pick on Google?
Won't hold up in court as sufficient evidence. One disgruntled ex-employee? Axe to grind because he didn't get a promotion. Annoyed because he didn't get the corner office he wanted. Hard to reach a conclusion without access to the algo.All it takes is one disgruntled contractor or employee with an email chain or even just accusations to blow the whistle. Access to the algorithm isn't needed.
They've abused their power alright. In many different ways. From street car snooping on wi-fi to stealing my content. Remember, they are trying more and more to cut webmasters out of the loop and provide information directly in the SERPS so visitors don't need to come to our site. They did it with the define: search, did it with books, are doing it with image search and much else. They are now trying to do it with searches for flight tickets - they see how much money the travel industry is making with searchers looking for the best fares so they've bought up ITA Software Inc which powers expedia, tripadvisr, travelocity and many others. Soon the cheapest fares will be displayed in the SERPS itself and this is subject of a separate investigation by the DoJ. Google even steal our web pages and reproduce them word for word in their cache. There is no other industry in the world where we allow what we allow SEs to do i.e. take someone else's IP for free unless they specifically set up something to block you. Any newbie setting up a website will find his content stolen and reproduced till such time he learns about robot blocking. He may not want to stop Google reproducing his content, but the important point is that it is taken first (and reproduced) without prior permission.
Bear in mind that this is a public company and has a duty to its shareholders to increase its profits (within the law). And is there a law against manipulating search results to increase your revenue? I hardly think so. The laws in this area are more about not disguising paid advertising as organic results (and we know SEs have fallen foul of this, too, in the past). So Google can manipulate results to increase profits and possibly already are. Any such manipulation is likely to affect competitors one way or another.
"We look forward to answering (Abbott's) questions because we're confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users," Don Harrison, Google's deputy general counsel, wrote in a Friday blog post.
Right there you have Google's p[hilosophy on absolutely everything, in a nut shell. Everything they do is about their what benefits their users so if you can come up with a scenario where fixing the SERP benefits the people who generate that $30 Billion annual revenue then you'll have my attention. It would be business suicide for the Google SERP to be proven untrustworthy and Google simply aren't that stupid.
It's exactly the same situation as the online poker sites. They have the ability to fix hands and generate big bucks and benefit both themselves and a handful of members but if it got out that the online poker sites couldn't be trusted, that's the end of online poker, bang. They'd be killing the golden goose, no one is that stupid. It's more profitable to be honest for them.
Clinton, you talk about them cutting webmasters out of the loop, so what? It's the smart thing to do and no different to a million other services that scrape content. Google can't directly control the quality of the content is added to their index, even though they've tried over the years to influence it with all the tools they give us and the way the SERP works but if you could just eliminate the need for an anti spam team and the huge resources they must oput into staying ahead of the SEOs and other spammers then why wouldn't they do it? The only thing about it that bothers me is that Google is a carriage on my gravy train and I don't want to lose it. And you think they 'steal' content off newbies? Hmmm. I guess that makes them theives like the other less successful 2000 search engines.
Last edited by JJMcClure; September 8th, 2010 at 03:48 AM.
Just because Google say they do, it doesn't mean they do do. They are unlikely to admit that they rig the results at the expense of their users (and I'm not suggesting they do!).
What interested me was the use of the word "recommend":
Google don't recommend websites! They just try to list sites that best match a searcher's query. There's no quality control going on (other than spam related). If Google's function was to provide recommendations, then I could see what the outcry was about. If your business was providing recommendations, then you'd have a duty to research what it was you were recommending.Google Inc.'s methods for recommending websites are being reviewed by Texas' attorney general in an investigation spurred by complaints that the company has abused its power as the Internet's dominant search engine.
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