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Why they do it? Because it works (until it hits HN front page). From my experience, running client sites, Google is blindly trusting anything from big brands,

Why they do it? Because it works (until it hits HN front page). From my experience, running client sites, Google is blindly trusting anything from big brands, screwing the small business sites. It's almost like content quality doesn't matter at all, especially after all the animal updates (Panda, Penguin etc.) Small sites are desperate as they have lost as much as 90% of traffic for no apparent reason. It must be profitable for Google too, their earnings have skyrocketed since then, even as they hit a plateau in market share. Occam's razor and all. Edit: The competing theories as to why Google does it are that Google wants to shake small business into advertising, considering that brands already do. Once you lose traffic you can advertise or close doors. Another one is that so-so search results are better to increase ad clicks. Considering that Google has a monopoly and still a strong brand, the second theory cannot be ruled out.

eksith 13y ago
If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads. I feel some people are far too concerned with getting onto the top of Google rather than improving the scaffolding to their sites and driving organic traffic back.
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. Now I believe it is true, would not have believed it a few years ago. This Larry Page era is full of surprises, and lets remember that all his pet projects (Android, Google+, X etc) are tolerated by investors because earnings are being increased by 20%+ a year. So Google has to do all it can to increase CPC and number of clicks. The ads on pages have been maximized and then some so they need to resort to tricks and penalties for sites. IMO, this is done at senior level Google execs and then Search execs find the excuse to match search algorithms with what's most profitable for Google. So the lowly search engineer is "changing the world" as the execs count the ad clicks, CPC--and their stock options. Who wrote this: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users...But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. " ? Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in academia. >> One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads The problem is that a lot of people use search to find companies, services and products. Getting frozen out of that is a major handicap. We should support alternative SEs so we have a healthy competition.
  - eksith 13y ago
    That's thoroughly depressing. The Page and Brin quote is interesting. I searched for it and got the original paper (back when it was called "Backrub"). The relevant quote is in Appendix A: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html#a http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html#a I agree that we should support alternative SEs. The first step might be decoupling "Google" from "Internet" in the mindset for a lot of web users. I don't know if that's even doable at this point before tackling the "Facebook/Twitter = Internet" problem first.
acoyfellow 13y ago
I've seen SMB sites get "getting screwed" by Google, because they had hired an SEO guy who got them backlinks that ended up getting taken away. Or they still have bad on-page SEO.. Most of the time it was a one time hire kind of thing, and they just expected the traffic to always stay the same with no effort. This guy named Glen runs an incredible SEO blog, and he's got case studies of brand new sites/page [1]. He explains how single page sites and YouTube videos are beating out big established sites. His SEO work and breakdowns on his blog are outstanding, and there is great information on there. The marketing departments of every startup should be on this guys mailing list. I have 0 affiliation with him. I've never seen anyone bring his name up on HN, and it's about time someone does. He has been saying all year: 2013 has been awful from Google's standpoint. People are gaming the system harder than ever, and maybe theres some smart people on HN who could use bits and pieces of what Glen does/preaches. Since Google is always changing the algo, Startups tend to avoid considering using SEO as a way to get immediate results.. But there is still some time left in 2013, and instead of all the information marketing spammers benefitting, I believe it should be HN (legit businesses & startups)! [1]- http://www.viperchill.com/google-storm/ http://www.viperchill.com/google-storm/
- pothibo 13y ago
  This is crazy. Just subscribed to his mailing list. Thanks!
  - acoyfellow 13y ago
    No problem. IMO he specifically needs to get more attention around here.. It's tremendous information for anyone looking to grow using SEO, and who want the most relevant information possible. I don't know a better SEO resource.
- Thereasione 13y ago
  This whole analysis is bad and sensationalistic. His observation is based on 1 search term. In order to make right conclusion someone should analyze at least tens of thousands (or even hundred of thousands) search terms. He also analyzed 1st page results only. He didnt even try to see what sets apart 1st page results from 2nd/3rd/4th. He points to single factor, totally disregarding other factors and their relative importance as part of whole algorithm.
Thereasione 13y ago
They dont even rank: http://i.imgur.com/mO1DTYq.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mO1DTYq.jpg
distantparts 13y ago
In my experience, the animal updates and other recent changes definitely favour the big brands. My main car reviews site (established 1997) was hammered by Panda, and has never recovered, while the big brands I competed with have been left untouched, despite having content that is often lower quality. While I think Google has done a really poor job of helping smaller sites who've been unfairly hit by these changes, I don't think there is anything underhand going on. I just think Google decided to tune their algorithms to minimise the number of bad results they show. They appear to be happy with results that favour big brands that they trust, while excluding most of the worst content farms, even though the cost of that is potentially failing to deliver high quality results from smaller sites. I'm sure they have user satisfaction statistics that justify this trade-off they're making. No malevolence or greed is required from Google in this scenario. In the short term, this is probably good for Google's users, but in the long term, it's creating a two tier web, where new entrants will find it more difficult than they should to compete with established brands. p.s. There seems to be a similar tradeoff made in terms of newer pages being favoured over older, more relevant pages. It makes sense in some cases (news for example), but in my view, the newness signal is too strong at the moment, and it's hurting the quality of their search results.

eksith 13y ago

If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads. I feel some people are far too concerned with getting onto the top of Google rather than improving the scaffolding to their sites and driving organic traffic back.

bsullivan01 13y ago
If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. Now I believe it is true, would not have believed it a few years ago. This Larry Page era is full of surprises, and lets remember that all his pet projects (Android, Google+, X etc) are tolerated by investors because earnings are being increased by 20%+ a year. So Google has to do all it can to increase CPC and number of clicks. The ads on pages have been maximized and then some so they need to resort to tricks and penalties for sites. IMO, this is done at senior level Google execs and then Search execs find the excuse to match search algorithms with what's most profitable for Google. So the lowly search engineer is "changing the world" as the execs count the ad clicks, CPC--and their stock options. Who wrote this: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users...But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. " ? Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in academia. >> One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads The problem is that a lot of people use search to find companies, services and products. Getting frozen out of that is a major handicap. We should support alternative SEs so we have a healthy competition.
- eksith 13y ago
  That's thoroughly depressing. The Page and Brin quote is interesting. I searched for it and got the original paper (back when it was called "Backrub"). The relevant quote is in Appendix A: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html#a http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html#a I agree that we should support alternative SEs. The first step might be decoupling "Google" from "Internet" in the mindset for a lot of web users. I don't know if that's even doable at this point before tackling the "Facebook/Twitter = Internet" problem first.

acoyfellow 13y ago

I've seen SMB sites get "getting screwed" by Google, because they had hired an SEO guy who got them backlinks that ended up getting taken away. Or they still have bad on-page SEO.. Most of the time it was a one time hire kind of thing, and they just expected the traffic to always stay the same with no effort. This guy named Glen runs an incredible SEO blog, and he's got case studies of brand new sites/page [1]. He explains how single page sites and YouTube videos are beating out big established sites. His SEO work and breakdowns on his blog are outstanding, and there is great information on there. The marketing departments of every startup should be on this guys mailing list. I have 0 affiliation with him. I've never seen anyone bring his name up on HN, and it's about time someone does. He has been saying all year: 2013 has been awful from Google's standpoint. People are gaming the system harder than ever, and maybe theres some smart people on HN who could use bits and pieces of what Glen does/preaches. Since Google is always changing the algo, Startups tend to avoid considering using SEO as a way to get immediate results.. But there is still some time left in 2013, and instead of all the information marketing spammers benefitting, I believe it should be HN (legit businesses & startups)! [1]- http://www.viperchill.com/google-storm/ http://www.viperchill.com/google-storm/

pothibo 13y ago
This is crazy. Just subscribed to his mailing list. Thanks!
- acoyfellow 13y ago
  No problem. IMO he specifically needs to get more attention around here.. It's tremendous information for anyone looking to grow using SEO, and who want the most relevant information possible. I don't know a better SEO resource.
Thereasione 13y ago
This whole analysis is bad and sensationalistic. His observation is based on 1 search term. In order to make right conclusion someone should analyze at least tens of thousands (or even hundred of thousands) search terms. He also analyzed 1st page results only. He didnt even try to see what sets apart 1st page results from 2nd/3rd/4th. He points to single factor, totally disregarding other factors and their relative importance as part of whole algorithm.

Thereasione 13y ago

They dont even rank: http://i.imgur.com/mO1DTYq.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mO1DTYq.jpg

distantparts 13y ago

In my experience, the animal updates and other recent changes definitely favour the big brands. My main car reviews site (established 1997) was hammered by Panda, and has never recovered, while the big brands I competed with have been left untouched, despite having content that is often lower quality. While I think Google has done a really poor job of helping smaller sites who've been unfairly hit by these changes, I don't think there is anything underhand going on. I just think Google decided to tune their algorithms to minimise the number of bad results they show. They appear to be happy with results that favour big brands that they trust, while excluding most of the worst content farms, even though the cost of that is potentially failing to deliver high quality results from smaller sites. I'm sure they have user satisfaction statistics that justify this trade-off they're making. No malevolence or greed is required from Google in this scenario. In the short term, this is probably good for Google's users, but in the long term, it's creating a two tier web, where new entrants will find it more difficult than they should to compete with established brands. p.s. There seems to be a similar tradeoff made in terms of newer pages being favoured over older, more relevant pages. It makes sense in some cases (news for example), but in my view, the newness signal is too strong at the moment, and it's hurting the quality of their search results.