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> I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information".

by darawk 6y ago

> I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment (even if just alleged, not proven), and the minute they don't they will lose their competitive advantage. Because then people would game it.

uluyol 6y ago
Exactly, the ranking needs constant tweaking to deal with spam/SEO.
- schemy 6y ago
  Which is what's happening right now. The only difference would be that you don't need to do industrial espionage on google to see what works first, so the cost of the seo would drop.
ricardo81 6y ago
Yes, same as the phone book for AAA Plumbers. Playing devil's advocate, gaming search engines used to be about keywords then it became more about links. SEOs nowadays talk about "EAT", expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It's still possible for marketers to mimic quality signals but it's less easy. It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. Slightly more on topic, marketers used to be able to do accurate keyword research with Google, and also see the keywords that people searched for when landing on their site, which is quite useful for figuring out their intent. Google keeps all that data to themselves now. I find their "concerns" about "use of private data" a bit laughable, considering they used your personal search history to try and target you on sites you visit across the web via ads. They don't mind retaining data about users, they just don't like having to share it with anyone.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  > It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. This was actually done back when Google+ first was launched — people could attach their authorship and it would be displayed on the search page, and you would also see a list of “experts” for particular categories on the right hand side when you searched for things like “python” or “poker”. I believe it disappeared with the rest of Google+, because no one actually cared.
  - ricardo81 6y ago
    Seems like that's one major ingredient they'd like to add to their algo as intent/authority is otherwise measured much more indirectly.
harry8 6y ago
>Because then people would game it. ...with slightly more effectiveness allowing better competition with google itself. You can do search. You can provide content. Doing both became rent seeking. And damn does google do rent-seeking very effectively.

by darawk 6y ago

uluyol 6y ago

Exactly, the ranking needs constant tweaking to deal with spam/SEO.

schemy 6y ago
Which is what's happening right now. The only difference would be that you don't need to do industrial espionage on google to see what works first, so the cost of the seo would drop.

ricardo81 6y ago

Yes, same as the phone book for AAA Plumbers. Playing devil's advocate, gaming search engines used to be about keywords then it became more about links. SEOs nowadays talk about "EAT", expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It's still possible for marketers to mimic quality signals but it's less easy. It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. Slightly more on topic, marketers used to be able to do accurate keyword research with Google, and also see the keywords that people searched for when landing on their site, which is quite useful for figuring out their intent. Google keeps all that data to themselves now. I find their "concerns" about "use of private data" a bit laughable, considering they used your personal search history to try and target you on sites you visit across the web via ads. They don't mind retaining data about users, they just don't like having to share it with anyone.

saalweachter 6y ago
> It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. This was actually done back when Google+ first was launched — people could attach their authorship and it would be displayed on the search page, and you would also see a list of “experts” for particular categories on the right hand side when you searched for things like “python” or “poker”. I believe it disappeared with the rest of Google+, because no one actually cared.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  Seems like that's one major ingredient they'd like to add to their algo as intent/authority is otherwise measured much more indirectly.

harry8 6y ago

>Because then people would game it. ...with slightly more effectiveness allowing better competition with google itself. You can do search. You can provide content. Doing both became rent seeking. And damn does google do rent-seeking very effectively.