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Search is now as vital to the Internet as DNS. As such, having it be run by an unregulated, for-profit monopoly is looking less and less acceptable. As a minimu

Search is now as vital to the Internet as DNS. As such, having it be run by an unregulated, for-profit monopoly is looking less and less acceptable. As a minimum remedy, Google should probably establish a defined email address or web site where complaints like this are answered within 24 hours by a human. It's not like they can't afford it, and it might hold off full-on regulation of their activities a while longer.

zbentley 9y ago
Such a help line, if actually known to regularly be helpful changing the ranking position of websites in search results, would be constantly spammed by "SEO Experts" looking to get result-bumps for their sites. This has three possible outcomes, none of them good: - The spam-support-call volume is too high and the hotline becomes so clogged that users with legitimate complaints don't even bother. As in, a ratio of 1000 SEO assholes to 1 user, 10 hour hold times, etc. - The hotline is so thoroughly staffed that this becomes the "new SEO" technique (think: robocalls to improve rankings, or contracting firms of humans in $cheap_location to make calls on the SEO person's behalf). Even if legitimate complaints are addressed in the process, the rest of the search results become even more spammy. - The hotline operators develop an intensely high suspicion threshold for any requests to change a site's appearance in rankings. It becomes known by users with legitimate complaints as a near-impossible uphill battle to get their position back, and is not used by many.
drdaeman 9y ago
By saying "full-on regulation of their activities" do you suggest that it's some (which exactly?) government or committee is who would decide on search ranking algorithms and what shows up in the results and what doesn't? Or is it something else?
- dreamcompiler 9y ago
  I'm suggesting that, in an effort to ensure fairness of opportunity and no anticompetitive practices are taking place, governments might begin to see Google as the public utility monopoly that it has de facto become, and start treating it like one. Google might want to get out in front of this by being a bit more transparent and responsive to its users.
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    I got it that you suggest the governments (all of them, authoritarian ones included?) to interfere by making some legislative decisions. But what exactly should the government(s) decide upon? Just saying that $company_name has to be "transparent" and "responsive" doesn't mean anything on its own. I was interested in how you suggest to achieve those feats (read: enforce them) So here's the problem I see: for the the accountability and transparency you suggest, to decide if Google (Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, DDG... is it really a monopoly?) does things right or wrong governing bodies must invent some rules how search engines should work. Surely not a full set of algorithms (that would be an unprecedented disaster) but a set of constraints on those algorithm outputs. And it has to be an extensive ruleset. I'm sure it's not enough to require that e.g. a registered trademarks must be the first result on exact query, or that querying for Tiananmen Square gets no results. It has to decide for what happens on the intermediate positions, what has more priority and what's legally irrelevant and mustn't show up any high. I think that would be just bad - too many ways to abuse this system. I thought of also not writing any legislatures but doing some ad hoc rulings, when judges decide what's fair and what's not on the case-per-case basis (basically, civil vs common law), but I'm not sure if that would work any well. In such theoretical scenario I just foresee the insane amount "sue because my site is 5th result and I feel it's unfair to be anything less than 3rd place" cases. That would quickly escalate, judges would end up inventing some common criteria, and we're back to the abovementioned scenario, just sourced differently.

zbentley 9y ago

Such a help line, if actually known to regularly be helpful changing the ranking position of websites in search results, would be constantly spammed by "SEO Experts" looking to get result-bumps for their sites. This has three possible outcomes, none of them good: - The spam-support-call volume is too high and the hotline becomes so clogged that users with legitimate complaints don't even bother. As in, a ratio of 1000 SEO assholes to 1 user, 10 hour hold times, etc. - The hotline is so thoroughly staffed that this becomes the "new SEO" technique (think: robocalls to improve rankings, or contracting firms of humans in $cheap_location to make calls on the SEO person's behalf). Even if legitimate complaints are addressed in the process, the rest of the search results become even more spammy. - The hotline operators develop an intensely high suspicion threshold for any requests to change a site's appearance in rankings. It becomes known by users with legitimate complaints as a near-impossible uphill battle to get their position back, and is not used by many.

drdaeman 9y ago

By saying "full-on regulation of their activities" do you suggest that it's some (which exactly?) government or committee is who would decide on search ranking algorithms and what shows up in the results and what doesn't? Or is it something else?

dreamcompiler 9y ago
I'm suggesting that, in an effort to ensure fairness of opportunity and no anticompetitive practices are taking place, governments might begin to see Google as the public utility monopoly that it has de facto become, and start treating it like one. Google might want to get out in front of this by being a bit more transparent and responsive to its users.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  I got it that you suggest the governments (all of them, authoritarian ones included?) to interfere by making some legislative decisions. But what exactly should the government(s) decide upon? Just saying that $company_name has to be "transparent" and "responsive" doesn't mean anything on its own. I was interested in how you suggest to achieve those feats (read: enforce them) So here's the problem I see: for the the accountability and transparency you suggest, to decide if Google (Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, DDG... is it really a monopoly?) does things right or wrong governing bodies must invent some rules how search engines should work. Surely not a full set of algorithms (that would be an unprecedented disaster) but a set of constraints on those algorithm outputs. And it has to be an extensive ruleset. I'm sure it's not enough to require that e.g. a registered trademarks must be the first result on exact query, or that querying for Tiananmen Square gets no results. It has to decide for what happens on the intermediate positions, what has more priority and what's legally irrelevant and mustn't show up any high. I think that would be just bad - too many ways to abuse this system. I thought of also not writing any legislatures but doing some ad hoc rulings, when judges decide what's fair and what's not on the case-per-case basis (basically, civil vs common law), but I'm not sure if that would work any well. In such theoretical scenario I just foresee the insane amount "sue because my site is 5th result and I feel it's unfair to be anything less than 3rd place" cases. That would quickly escalate, judges would end up inventing some common criteria, and we're back to the abovementioned scenario, just sourced differently.