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Google profits more from spammy search results than from quality search results? I don't think so. Definitely not in the long run.

by codeup 16y ago

samatman 16y ago
I believe the point was more that Google profits both from spammy search results AND from quality search results. That's a conflict of interest, one well spelled-out in the original post: When removing all spam (let's pretend it's possible) will negatively impact revenue, even short-term, there's less motivation to do it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
  why would it impact revenue if spam was removed, even temporarily? Wouldn't the people who went to spamy sites go to the "good" sites and still click on these sites thus still make google money? Unless you are suggesting that the spamy sites are the only ones available and if they disappeared searchers would not be shown results, I do not quite see why removing spam would hit the bottom line.
  - erik 16y ago
    The argument is that spamy sites are filled with Google AdWords. Removing these sites would result in less AdWords clicks, thus less revenue.
  - gojomo 16y ago
    There are several mechanisms where marginal increases in spam could increase Google's profits, as long as the effect isn't so bad people leave for another alternative entirely. (1) If the natural search result landing pages are slightly lower quality – awful writing created via lowest-bidder/freelancer content mills – but the AdWords landing pages remain higher-quality, due to more investment and ability-topay filtering, then AdWords results become more attractive to users. That's more clickthroughs and more revenues. (2) If the first page of results reviewed by a user doesn't resolve their intent, so they reformulate a more specific query, Google gets to display a second, perhaps better-targeted set of ads on the second query – a second chance at satisfying the user goal via a paid placement rather than an unpaid result. (3) If there are good natural results sites for a topic that lack ads, but others can be created with roughly the same info that have AdSense, unless Google specifically punishes sites for containing AdSense, the relative number of AdSense sites with duplicate info will multiply over time. Even if they are ever-so-lightly better (or 'as good' to low-literacy readers), and thus appear 'good' in some of Google's algorithms, they wind up wasting time in aggregate with duplication, and dilute the traffic/community of original ad-free source sites. More likely, though, they are just-enough-better in the cynical 'SEO' dimensions to display other less profit-maximized sites, and thus may be worse in the (not directly measurable) value-to-readers dimensions. Still, in the short- and medium-term, the multiplication of such sites, and replacement of AdSense-free sites with Adsence-drenched sites, makes Google money.
    - Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
      low-literacy readers? 11159 karma points does not give you the card to play mr arrogant gojo. But thank you for your explanation. I think the first point is quite clever and does make sense, but it has to be balanced with the number of visitors that google may loose by allowing the index to become spamy. The second point seems to be what everyone is thinking of and perhaps the strongest argument to suggest that google might not want to tackle spam. For that argument to gain any credibility however it needs to be shown that other search engines, i.e. bing, which perhaps do not have a conflict of interest are doing better at showing quality results. Otherwise, I think it makes it more likely that there are other reasons than conflict of interest. As to the third point, the cases that it would apply to I would think are miniscule in the grand scheme of search, not least because a very tiny minority of websites does not use ads, excluding e-commerce. Finally, I think a strong argument for google to tackle spam, and against the proposition that google does not want to, is that google would make much more money by converting more clicking visitors into customers for the adword landing page. If spamy sites have a much lower conversion of clickers for the adword customers, then cutting off these spammers would increase the conversion rate, leading to higher payments for clicks to google by adword users.
      - gojomo 16y ago
        http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html Pretending these low-literacy users — 43% of the US adult population! — don't exist, or can't be discussed frankly, is less respectful than seeking to understand them. It's quite likely that these people are late adopters of web search, and thus their proportion of Google users is still rising. Consider, also, that there is evidence that lower-income, lower-education users are more likely to click on ads. I've been perplexed when discussing content mills with Googlers how they quickly assert (often in similar phrasing, suggesting a party line passed along in internal or official communications) that reasonable arguments (or very subtly, internal studies) imply many users appreciate the content mills' writing. Perhaps it's the low-literacy users who are happy to land on a mill site. Either they can't tell the difference from a quality, authoritative treatment — or maybe even the plodding, keyword-stuffed, repetitive writeups are actually reassuring for slower readers. There has to be a logical reason, other than Google venality, that such awful spamglish writing decked in AdSense ranks so highly.
- brudgers 16y ago
  As a publicly traded company, there is always a tendency to focus on quarterly results and the bonuses attached to them rather than the long term. Because search and web advertising is only a mature industry relative to the internet and not relative to industry in general, planning ten years out is difficult if not impossible, e.g. Youtube and Facebook didn't exist ten years ago.

Google profits more from spammy search results than from quality search results? I don't think so. Definitely not in the long run.

by codeup 16y ago

Google profits more from spammy search results than from quality search results? I don't think so. Definitely not in the long run.

samatman 16y ago

I believe the point was more that Google profits both from spammy search results AND from quality search results. That's a conflict of interest, one well spelled-out in the original post: When removing all spam (let's pretend it's possible) will negatively impact revenue, even short-term, there's less motivation to do it.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
why would it impact revenue if spam was removed, even temporarily? Wouldn't the people who went to spamy sites go to the "good" sites and still click on these sites thus still make google money? Unless you are suggesting that the spamy sites are the only ones available and if they disappeared searchers would not be shown results, I do not quite see why removing spam would hit the bottom line.
- erik 16y ago
  The argument is that spamy sites are filled with Google AdWords. Removing these sites would result in less AdWords clicks, thus less revenue.
- gojomo 16y ago
  There are several mechanisms where marginal increases in spam could increase Google's profits, as long as the effect isn't so bad people leave for another alternative entirely. (1) If the natural search result landing pages are slightly lower quality – awful writing created via lowest-bidder/freelancer content mills – but the AdWords landing pages remain higher-quality, due to more investment and ability-topay filtering, then AdWords results become more attractive to users. That's more clickthroughs and more revenues. (2) If the first page of results reviewed by a user doesn't resolve their intent, so they reformulate a more specific query, Google gets to display a second, perhaps better-targeted set of ads on the second query – a second chance at satisfying the user goal via a paid placement rather than an unpaid result. (3) If there are good natural results sites for a topic that lack ads, but others can be created with roughly the same info that have AdSense, unless Google specifically punishes sites for containing AdSense, the relative number of AdSense sites with duplicate info will multiply over time. Even if they are ever-so-lightly better (or 'as good' to low-literacy readers), and thus appear 'good' in some of Google's algorithms, they wind up wasting time in aggregate with duplication, and dilute the traffic/community of original ad-free source sites. More likely, though, they are just-enough-better in the cynical 'SEO' dimensions to display other less profit-maximized sites, and thus may be worse in the (not directly measurable) value-to-readers dimensions. Still, in the short- and medium-term, the multiplication of such sites, and replacement of AdSense-free sites with Adsence-drenched sites, makes Google money.
  - Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
    low-literacy readers? 11159 karma points does not give you the card to play mr arrogant gojo. But thank you for your explanation. I think the first point is quite clever and does make sense, but it has to be balanced with the number of visitors that google may loose by allowing the index to become spamy. The second point seems to be what everyone is thinking of and perhaps the strongest argument to suggest that google might not want to tackle spam. For that argument to gain any credibility however it needs to be shown that other search engines, i.e. bing, which perhaps do not have a conflict of interest are doing better at showing quality results. Otherwise, I think it makes it more likely that there are other reasons than conflict of interest. As to the third point, the cases that it would apply to I would think are miniscule in the grand scheme of search, not least because a very tiny minority of websites does not use ads, excluding e-commerce. Finally, I think a strong argument for google to tackle spam, and against the proposition that google does not want to, is that google would make much more money by converting more clicking visitors into customers for the adword landing page. If spamy sites have a much lower conversion of clickers for the adword customers, then cutting off these spammers would increase the conversion rate, leading to higher payments for clicks to google by adword users.
    - gojomo 16y ago
      http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html Pretending these low-literacy users — 43% of the US adult population! — don't exist, or can't be discussed frankly, is less respectful than seeking to understand them. It's quite likely that these people are late adopters of web search, and thus their proportion of Google users is still rising. Consider, also, that there is evidence that lower-income, lower-education users are more likely to click on ads. I've been perplexed when discussing content mills with Googlers how they quickly assert (often in similar phrasing, suggesting a party line passed along in internal or official communications) that reasonable arguments (or very subtly, internal studies) imply many users appreciate the content mills' writing. Perhaps it's the low-literacy users who are happy to land on a mill site. Either they can't tell the difference from a quality, authoritative treatment — or maybe even the plodding, keyword-stuffed, repetitive writeups are actually reassuring for slower readers. There has to be a logical reason, other than Google venality, that such awful spamglish writing decked in AdSense ranks so highly.
brudgers 16y ago
As a publicly traded company, there is always a tendency to focus on quarterly results and the bonuses attached to them rather than the long term. Because search and web advertising is only a mature industry relative to the internet and not relative to industry in general, planning ten years out is difficult if not impossible, e.g. Youtube and Facebook didn't exist ten years ago.