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Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome
- runn1ng 15y agoThis seems very un-Googley to me. This doesn't mean the article is not correct, but I just can't believe Google would do this kind of grey-hat SEO... mostly, companies do this to outsmart Google. Why would Google be trying to outsmart its own search engine?
- corin_ 15y agoNote: I care little about SEO, and I can't tell you if Google is trying to outsmart their own search engine, or, if they are, whether I should care about it. There is potential legal trouble for them if they were to tweak search results to favour their own properties - that's a pretty solid reason for using SEO tactics to outsmart their own search engine.
- yanw 15y agoAre you a lawyer? would you explain how is it exactly that "tweaking search results" is illegal? because I've noticed that meme going around and I don't think it makes much sense, I'm not saying that they any "tweaking", but if they were to rank whatever they like however they like on their own free website how is that illegal?
- corin_ 15y agoNo I don't have a complete understanding of the law in this area, but in simple terms it is because Google's search engine is designed to give users the most relevant results, and by giving their own brands preferential ranking (without an advertisement notification) they are misleading users and giving their brands an unfair advantage over their competitors. I'm sure someone else here can go into a more detailed answer. Side note: the only "meme" I've noticed is the idea that anyone would be presumed a lawyer unless they say "IANAL".
- yanw 15y agoBut who's to say what is "relevant"? and if the user doesn't think this is relevant to her, she can search elsewhere. I'm not even talking about links, there was this thing about the Google Flights result appearing for flight queries and some flight search sites (kayak and such) are up in arms about it, so here comes the question of how do they figure that they are entitled to any placement or traffic, and as for relevancy and usefulness surly showing flight details for flight searches is much more useful than nested links.
- pork 15y agoThey are the dominant player in a large market (online advertising). If they exploit the dominance of their product specifically to stifle competition, we have a Microsoft-esque situation where the question might have been "how exactly is integrating an additional piece of freely available software with our market-dominant operating system illegal?" Well, it was, and this might very well be as well.
- yanw 15y agoI'm not talking about ads I'm talking about ranking, and not even that, as ranking links doesn't really strike me as the way of the future, I'm referring to when Google shows a map for a location query and flight prices and schedules for a flight query as these are also search results and they are more useful (and prettier) so not only do I find nothing wrong with it but I find it to be the right way to go. Also regarding that antitrust meme the Microsoft comparison keep getting mention, I'm not really familiar with that case but as I see it, Windows you buy and you are stuck with, Google on the other hand is free to use or not as you please.
- pork 15y ago> flight prices and schedules for a flight query as these are also search results and they are more useful (and prettier) so not only do I find nothing wrong with it but I find it to be the right way to go. Certainly you might not find anything wrong with it; but if Google were to show ITA flight information in search results, with a link to Google Travel (hypothetical) to purchase the ticket, Expedia, Kayak, and Travelocity might be a little unhappy. > Windows you buy and you are stuck with, Google on the other hand is free to use or not as you please. The consumer being "stuck" with Windows was never an issue in the Microsoft case, but rather that they used their dominance in one field (the OS) to gain a significant advantage over a competitor in another field (the browser). If Facebook were to ban the sharing of Google+ links on their network, they might be in similar trouble.
- JS_startup 15y agoThe "stickiness" of Microsoft's products had nothing to do with the anti-trust case, They were leveraging their dominance in one market to exploit another; the permanence of the product has nothing to do with the illegality of their actions.
- Natsu 15y agoI don't think it's illegal because there are a lot of people pushing "search neutrality" right now who want to create such a law.
- ceol 15y agoDoesn't Google already do this? I thought the Google homepage was the only page with a rank of 10 or something.
- thenextcorner 15y agoThere are more websites with a PR of 10: - http://www.usa.gov/ http://www.usa.gov/ - http://get.adobe.com/reader/ http://get.adobe.com/reader/ - http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php - http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ - http://www.hhs.gov/ http://www.hhs.gov/ - http://www.miibeian.gov.cn http://www.miibeian.gov.cn - http://www.eua.be/Home.aspx http://www.eua.be/Home.aspx - http://www.universitas21.com/ http://www.universitas21.com/
- Johngibb 15y agoHow'd you find those? Do you have a citation?
- thenextcorner 15y agoJust Google it :-) "Pagerank 10 websites" should do the trick
- transburgh 15y agoIt's not that Google is trying to outsmart its own search engine, but verifying something that SEOs already know. Paid links still work. Google has not mastered sniffing them out yet. That all assumes that Google is paying for these links in hopes for SEO benefit.
- bzbarsky 15y ago> This seems very un-Googley to me. And the bundling deals Chrome had with Skype and has with Adobe seem "Googley" to you? I really doubt Google would be doing the grey-hat SEO thing myself, but mostly because they have more effective (if more expensive) ways to push Chrome that they've been using already, not because I think Google is incapable of behaving in a completely scummy way. The fact that installing Skype for a while (until Microsoft bought it) defaulted to installing Chrome and making it your default browser pretty much sums up what you can expect out of "Googley" nowadays.
- bzbarsky 15y agoUpdate: The search team's response to this shows that thinking of "Google" as a monolithic entity with a monolithic "Googley" attitude or a monolithic "evil" attitude is just wrong, unsurprisingly. Kudos to the search folks; I remain of the opinion that the Chrome marketing folks are fully capable of scummy behavior as desired.
- runn1ng 15y agoAll right, that's true. Google Toolbar for IE was also "bundled" similarilly to some software as long as I remember, and the behaviour of Google Updater on Windows is also almost like crapware. You are probably right.
- brudgers 15y ago<snark> Your winnings, sir. </snark>
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Zirro 15y agoTo be honest, I fail to understand why Google needs to do this. Chrome is gaining market-share at a very high pace already. Are they targeting a specific group of people in this case, or is this some misdirected effort by a third party advertiser?
- melling 15y agoTo answer the specific question about Chrome's growth being "high pace already": Doing a lot more damage to IE would be good for everyone. Microsoft moves way to slowly and they keep dropping support for older OS's, and they refuse to support WebGL, for example. IE10, while actually looking impressive, won't run on Vista. XP will have significant market share for at least another 5 years and it's limited to IE8. In short, I'd like to see Firefox, Chrome, and Opera take another 30% away from Microsoft. [Updated] Clearly my comments aren't appreciated. Look at this chart. http://gs.statcounter.com/ http://gs.statcounter.com/ To put it bluntly, Microsoft isn't getting the sh*t kicked out of them fast enough. Post PC, the death spiral of IE, no one buying WinMo7. Sorry guys, some of us have waited a long time for this. :-)
- sliverstorm 15y agoMicrosoft moves way to slowly and they keep dropping support for older OS's Gee, I wonder why they move so slowly. Do you think it could have something to do with trying to support so many old OS's? I mean, really. Your cake. You can't have it and eat it.
- Zirro 15y agoThat argument would work unless the competitors were supporting the same old OS-versions too, plus (in most cases) at least two other platforms.
- melling 15y agoFirefox and Chrome get updated every 6 weeks. Microsoft pretty much ignored the browser until Chrome and Firefox started gaining market share. IE6 - 2001 IE7 - 2006 IE8 - 2009 IE9 - 2011 IE10 - 2012 They are picking up the pace because there's so much competition. Unfortunately, it's not quick enough.
- evmar 15y agoHere's a hypothesis that is more generous to Google (I don't know the real reason): some Google campaign that pays per download of Chrome is prompting site owners to generate this low-quality content. It seems more plausible to me than Google paying directly for this, because it's a terrible marketing campaign. There's an onclick handler on the link to the Chrome download site on the blog that is in the screenshot on that page. I can't figure out what it does, though I did see when I clicked on it that my browser hit some URLs containing the substring "googleadservices", "conversion", and the Chrome download URL.
- dholowiski 15y agoYeah, I bet that's what is happening. I went to this site: http://www.humphriesnation.com/ http://www.humphriesnation.com/ and clicked on the Google Chrome link, and got sent here: https://www.google.com/chrome/?brand=ECSB&installdataindex=no-apps-no-promo https://www.google.com/chrome/?brand=ECSB&installdataind... Looks like an affiliate link to me.
- FrankBooth 15y agoThat seems plausible. However, whatever the true reason is, the end result is that Google is paying people to generate junk content. That's not good for anyone.
- GigabyteCoin 15y agoSo Google is not allowed to offer incentive for anything? Any sort of affiliate program brings it's share of junk content.
- zizee 15y agoThe problem is if google treats the chrome affiliate junk content differently from other junk content. If it is all treated the same, then it should be ok. I imagine that Google's search algo team is in a separate silo from their chrome marketing team (much like the search algo team is separated from the Adsense team) to try isolate them from the corrupting influence of their marketing team. That said, Google would be risking their search cash cow by the mere existence of this sort of campaign as it undermines the perception of the independence of their search results, so perhaps they should steer clear of offering incentives of this sort.
- kaffeinecoma 15y agoI switched to Chrome about a year ago for its performance, and now I'm about to go back to Safari for exactly the same reason. What happened to Chrome performance on OSX Lion? Why does it scroll like molasses?
- stanleydrew 15y agoWhat does this have to do with the article?
- jabo 15y agoThat comment was in the spirit of the original article I guess.
- nnethercote 15y agoEvery discussion about web browsers degenerates into a "which browser is better" flamewar.
- ditojim 15y agoi dont have the scrolling issue you describe on os x lion.
- jroseattle 15y agoWow, marketing people in this industry can be sooooo lame sometimes. What a terrible campaign. Google Chrome is a very good product, and doesn't need to be associated with this type of approach. The product speaks for itself.
- manojlds 15y agoGoogle was banning blogs doing paid reviews from PayPerPost and others. Now they do it themselves...
- wes-exp 15y agoObligatory Steve Jobs reference: Google's don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.”
- jacobwg 15y agoConspiracy theory - perhaps someone other than Google is running this campaign in order to trigger Google's automatic censoring of the Chrome download page... Pretty stupid attempt if so as Google is not likely to censor its own pages (certainly not for 400 "bad" links), but spammers can be stupid.
- kevinalexbrown 15y agoWhen I read: These days, it’s hard to know who to trust, but with the name Google, you know you are in good hands. I get a stomach-ache. I wonder whether something like this might backfire to some extent, not counting the possible hypocrisy. When you have people writing phrases like that, it almost sounds condescending, like an awkward author's attempt to portray a simple, good-old-fashioned person. Except real, good-old-fashioned people don't actually talk and make decisions like that, and even if they're not familiar with Chrome, they're not going to be persuaded by that. If this is the quality of content from such an SEO campaign, I wonder if such endorsements only work against Chrome in the long run. OTOH, if the SEO works, then maybe enough people switch to Chrome to justify the crappy endorsements.
- dannyr 15y agoComments are jumping all over Google without a word from the company yet. I believe Google deserves the benefit of the doubt.
- prophetjohn 15y agoI'll be interested to see an explanation for this, but the title is a little on the sensational side. I would say that Google's sponsored post campaign is closer to mildly intriguing than "jaw-dropping."
- chintan 15y agoIMO they want to possibly avoid anti-trust issues in future when Chrome becomes the dominant player. "Look we are teh small guys using plain old paid link marketing"
- silentscope 15y agoThis was bound to happen in some fashion eventually--it would happen to any company. The question is what will Google do about it. If it's a mea culpa I feel just fine about it. If it's a "no comment" one can hardly ignore the fact that they've gone down the road of filtering your access to information for the worse by making it less open and therefore less informative. Your move Google.
- nestlequ1k 15y agoWhat an absolutely bullshit article, by a site that only exists to advise people in the fruitless zero sum game that is search engine marketing. So theres a bunch of idiots out there that are gaming Google's paid campaigns, and Google is indirectly benefiting from it. Outrageous!! Search Engine land should shut down and find another line of work, something that actually benefits society in the tiniest of ways.
- orijing 15y agoSo the concern is that this impacts the ranking of Google Chrome in Google Search, and that the FTC is investigating Google for favoring its own content unfairly? It makes sense in the context of travel websites (Expedia complaining about Google, for example), but I'm not sure about Google Chrome. It's been promoted on the front page of Google many times--so does Google really need the extra boost in its search results?
- eurohacker 15y agoGoogles SEO chief Matt Cutts is often on HN defending Google and explaining their fair search algorithm, Since it is already proven how they manipulated the Yelp search results - the company that Google wanted to buy , and it has also been discussed that Google Places and other Google sites are un-naturally high among the first search results , may be its time to forget about their fair algorithm and start discussing to what extent they manipulate search results to prefer their own companies ( Google Places, Zagat etc. ) - and may be some Google people have some explaining to do to their customers why are the Google products spam results on the first page too often , so that customers do not start to use DuckDuckGo.com
- mmavnn 15y agoLooking at the most recent (at the moment, http://searchengineland.com/googles-jaw-dropping-sponsored-post-campaign-for-chrome-106348#comment-21563 http://searchengineland.com/googles-jaw-dropping-sponsored-p...) comment it looks like this is part of a video advertising campaign by Unruly. Apparently (according to Unruly) the video is theirs, but the surrounding text is supplied by the blogger and should use nofollow links.