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> Before rolling it out, Google asked Warner [CelebrityNetWorth.com] if they could scrape his data and credit him. Warner declined, but Google did it anyway. M

by aorth 10y ago

> Before rolling it out, Google asked Warner [CelebrityNetWorth.com] if they could scrape his data and credit him. Warner declined, but Google did it anyway. Money quote. Google's rich snippets are friendly to users, but hostile to sites where the data originates.

beaconstudios 10y ago
it's the eternal problem with platform-based companies, like Twitter's treatment of developers. Except in Google's case, the platform is the gateway to the internet.
mattm 10y ago
One could argue that if a "business" is only providing one sentence answers to questions then it's not really a business in the first place. The owner seemed to have found a very small gap and it was closed shortly after.
- tchaffee 10y ago
  Google is profiting off those one sentence answers. If it's enough of a business for Google, I suppose it's enough of a business for the people doing the actual work to find the answers.
  - mcintyre1994 10y ago
    Are they actually though - in the immediate term? Sure they show ads on the search result, but there's a box with the answer to your query, why would you click an ad? It seems like the reason it's good for Google is because it's the perfect response to the query and it cements Google as the search engine that can answer my questions. Are they directly profiting from those queries or are they just making themselves a better search engine, and indirectly profiting from that? If the latter I find it hard to argue against them.
    - tchaffee 10y ago
      If they are stealing the data in order to make themselves a better search engine, I find that pretty easy to argue against. Someone did work that provides value and Google is taking that data and making it look like their own.
      - AznHisoka 10y ago
        Nobody needs to argue anything. just block google in your robots.txt if you are unhappy. case closed.
        tchaffee 10y ago
        What sites need is a happy medium. For Google to index the site, but to not use that same data to eliminate the need for a visit to the site. Content has value. If Google is grabbing that content and using it on their own site, that's a problem.
bgw 10y ago
How are they "hostile to sites where the data originates" when Google is the primary driver of traffic to those sites?
- tyingq 10y ago
  Because they use an algorithm to extract the data that the searcher is looking for and display it on their site, drastically dropping the chances that anyone clicks through to the site. Whether it's hostile or not, if they continue far enough, it would choke off the sources. People don't tend to invest time in creating content where there's zero chance to interact with the reader, ever. Create a site that takes search queries, and return scraped Google results data. Become popular. See how long it takes before it gets shut down. I do get your high level point, but isn't there some quid-pro-quo involved? People allow Google to crawl, which enriches Google's search product. Some traffic is offered in return for helping their index with high quality content. Edit: If you doubt the effects widgets have on traffic, take a look at what it's done to Wikipedia traffic[1]. The KG entries used to have many, many deep links into Wikipedia. A lot of those links have changed to deep links into Google. [1] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wikipedias-traffic-from-google-down-11-why-the-drop/138791/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wikipedias-traffic-from-...
  - narrowrail 10y ago
    My default search work-flow is 5 keystrokes+$searchquery which gives me wikipedia results which are not always good, but 90% exactly what I need. I try to minimize my use of Google's services at every opportunity, and I'm aggressive with my router's host file (not to mention uMatrix w/ Chromium and Firefox w/ NoScript/RequestPolicy). It bothers me that I can't black-hole Google's domains on my router's host file w/o screwing up too many websites to count (local to international) because so many have built-in Google web resource dependencies (e.g. googleapis/maps/googletagmanager). However, I can't believe your argument makes sense to anyone. It seems publisher's want the benefit of Google's traffic w/o having to deal with users preferring not to click-through when they are looking for a 1 sentence answer. There are legit means to preventing Google from indexing one's site.

by aorth 10y ago

beaconstudios 10y ago

it's the eternal problem with platform-based companies, like Twitter's treatment of developers. Except in Google's case, the platform is the gateway to the internet.

mattm 10y ago

One could argue that if a "business" is only providing one sentence answers to questions then it's not really a business in the first place. The owner seemed to have found a very small gap and it was closed shortly after.

tchaffee 10y ago
Google is profiting off those one sentence answers. If it's enough of a business for Google, I suppose it's enough of a business for the people doing the actual work to find the answers.
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  Are they actually though - in the immediate term? Sure they show ads on the search result, but there's a box with the answer to your query, why would you click an ad? It seems like the reason it's good for Google is because it's the perfect response to the query and it cements Google as the search engine that can answer my questions. Are they directly profiting from those queries or are they just making themselves a better search engine, and indirectly profiting from that? If the latter I find it hard to argue against them.
  - tchaffee 10y ago
    If they are stealing the data in order to make themselves a better search engine, I find that pretty easy to argue against. Someone did work that provides value and Google is taking that data and making it look like their own.
    - AznHisoka 10y ago
      Nobody needs to argue anything. just block google in your robots.txt if you are unhappy. case closed.
      - tchaffee 10y ago
        What sites need is a happy medium. For Google to index the site, but to not use that same data to eliminate the need for a visit to the site. Content has value. If Google is grabbing that content and using it on their own site, that's a problem.

bgw 10y ago

How are they "hostile to sites where the data originates" when Google is the primary driver of traffic to those sites?

tyingq 10y ago
Because they use an algorithm to extract the data that the searcher is looking for and display it on their site, drastically dropping the chances that anyone clicks through to the site. Whether it's hostile or not, if they continue far enough, it would choke off the sources. People don't tend to invest time in creating content where there's zero chance to interact with the reader, ever. Create a site that takes search queries, and return scraped Google results data. Become popular. See how long it takes before it gets shut down. I do get your high level point, but isn't there some quid-pro-quo involved? People allow Google to crawl, which enriches Google's search product. Some traffic is offered in return for helping their index with high quality content. Edit: If you doubt the effects widgets have on traffic, take a look at what it's done to Wikipedia traffic[1]. The KG entries used to have many, many deep links into Wikipedia. A lot of those links have changed to deep links into Google. [1] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wikipedias-traffic-from-google-down-11-why-the-drop/138791/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wikipedias-traffic-from-...
- narrowrail 10y ago
  My default search work-flow is 5 keystrokes+$searchquery which gives me wikipedia results which are not always good, but 90% exactly what I need. I try to minimize my use of Google's services at every opportunity, and I'm aggressive with my router's host file (not to mention uMatrix w/ Chromium and Firefox w/ NoScript/RequestPolicy). It bothers me that I can't black-hole Google's domains on my router's host file w/o screwing up too many websites to count (local to international) because so many have built-in Google web resource dependencies (e.g. googleapis/maps/googletagmanager). However, I can't believe your argument makes sense to anyone. It seems publisher's want the benefit of Google's traffic w/o having to deal with users preferring not to click-through when they are looking for a 1 sentence answer. There are legit means to preventing Google from indexing one's site.