6 ms·

Google Directly Embedding Stack Overflow Responses in SERPs

96 points by Mojah 12y ago

richmarr 12y ago
Seems like a short-sighted strategy, unless they have a plan to pay for the content they're using. Impressive though.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 12y ago
  As detailed in TFA, this only happens for sites that have been intentionally set up for it to happen, via microformats. Perhaps there is a risk that a particular site will cease to operate in that fashion, but it would just be replaced by another, and Google are pretty good at choosing the most appropriate links to highlight.
- chriswarbo 12y ago
  Surely relying on ad revenue from people redirected from search engine results is the short-sighted strategy? It makes your revenue stream rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. The comments on the article even imply that Wikipedia "suffers" from having their content embedded in Google search results in this way; as if Wikipedia relies on ads, or has free bandwidth to waste, or cares more about getting visitors than spreading knowledge. Unlike Wikipedia, StackOverflow is a commercial venture with ads, but are we really so jaded that we expect them to sabotage those who want to use their content? Have CC licenses turned into nothing more than trendy logos, to which we only pay lip-service? SO's informal opinion-of/relationship-with Google is well-documented, for example: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/04/16.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/04/16.html http://blog.codinghorror.com/trouble-in-the-house-of-google/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/trouble-in-the-house-of-google/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-importance-of-sitemaps/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-importance-of-sitemaps/
  - jfoster 12y ago
    > Surely relying on ad revenue from people redirected from search engine results is the short-sighted strategy? What's the long-sighted alternative? > It makes your revenue stream rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. Involvement with search engines makes your traffic rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. Ad networks will predictably go wherever the users are. Search engines are rather unpredictable.
    - bryanlarsen 12y ago
      "What's the long-sighted alternative?" StackOverflow's primary income source is Stack Overflow Careers.
      - mooreds 12y ago
        Yes. That's why they took more investment this year: http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2015/01/20.html http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2015/01/20.html
      - jfoster 12y ago
        If they let Google cut off their supply of eyeballs, Careers isn't going to do too well, either, though. Google is adding a tall hurdle to the front of their user-onboarding funnel. It's a fair point that ads are not the best way for them to monetize, but practically any other form of monetization also involves getting users from a search engine onto their site.
    - chriswarbo 12y ago
      > Involvement with search engines makes your traffic rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. That might be the case, but I was interested in revenue, not traffic.
kaoD 12y ago
> So it appears this is happening with Stack Overflow knowing about it and approving it, after all — they implemented schema.org. Not really. As far as I know, implementing schema.org means your data is structured, not that anyone can do whatever they want with it. The real reason Google can do it is because Stack Overflow user submitted content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Unfortunately Google is not complying with the license since it requires providing a link to it and indicating which changes were made[0]. There is a mechanism in schema.org to specify licenses[1]. I couldn't find it in SO answers' attributes, but Google shouldn't assume that means they can do whatever they want with the content! In fact, wouldn't that mean the content is under copyright (unless specified otherwise) and therefore not remixable/shareable? As far as I can tell, even if those are excerpts, Google's use does not fall under fair use. Anyways, props to SO for choosing CC BY-SA for their user submitted content. I think it's fair (after all SO feeds from their users) and, even if detrimental to their interests in the short term, in the long term builds trust among their users. [0] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ [1] https://schema.org/license https://schema.org/license
- coldpie 12y ago
  I agree with your first paragraph, but I don't agree that google is violating CC BY-SA. They do provide a link back to the original source, very clearly shown in the picture in the article. This seems sufficient for attribution, though perhaps they should go further and actually cite the answerer's username. You could argue that combining two answers counts as modification, but that seems more of a nit-pick than enforcing the spirit of the license. Otherwise the text is unchanged.
  - kaoD 12y ago
    From the license: > Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, _provide a link to the license_ [...] There is no link to the license. There isn't even a mention of the license! For me this is the most important point, therefore Google is not complying with the license. --- > You could argue that combining two answers counts as modification, but that seems more of a nit-pick than enforcing the spirit of the license. This is a minor point for me, but I still disagree. Google's work is definitely a remix and the license is very explicit about it. We're not the ones meant to interpret what's the spirit of the license or when it's fine to violate its terms. I guess (IANAL) even non-remixed excerpts (i.e. removing content) should be marked as excerpts to fully comply. Here's example of why it might not be just a nitpick: answers are sometimes conflicting, and their meaning might change radically when automated excerpts are amalgamated. Imagine a right answer turned wrong by the automated merge. This could damage SO's reputation, driving away visits which would otherwise come back to SO as a reliable source. If I were to remix them by hand, I would definitely mark it as a derived work.
SwellJoe 12y ago
Stack Overflow utterly destroyed the other answer sites for just this reason: they make choices based on what is best for the user, not Stack Overflow. Check the traffic of Expert Sexchange, or Quora, vs. the entire SO network. If all you care about is short term gains, you lose to the company that wants to build a trusted brand. At least that's the way I think it should work out, and in this case I think it has. There is such a clear delineation between good and evil in this market, and such a clear leadership position held by the "good", that it's interesting that folks are wringing their hands worrying about whether SO gets enough impressions out of this. They don't need/want merely impressions. They want your trust and your participation. I know where I go when I have a question...how about you?
- eru 12y ago
  I go to Google (or Bing), and the search engine sends me to stack overflow. To agree with you: occasionally, quora pops up. But I actively avoid them.
  - avinassh 12y ago
    Also Quora forces you to signup even to view all answers/comment. (or you have to do silly url hack, appending ?share=1). Secondly the quality of answers on Stackoverflow network is much better than Quora. Lastly, I have seen some answers deleted by Quora mods for their personal reasons.* There is no way such thing can happen on Stack Overflow. * this [0] is the question I remember. Directi is an Indian company. And mods who work for Directi deleted the answers which showed Directi in badlight. It doesn't matter whether answers were correct or not, let the downvotes decide them, but this kinda of censorship is not cool. [0] - http://www.quora.com/Is-Directi-banned-from-IIT-placements http://www.quora.com/Is-Directi-banned-from-IIT-placements
    - acdha 12y ago
      Yes - I deleted my Quora account after catching them doing search-engine cloaking. Their policies make it clear that their priority is juicing numbers for eventual resale rather than building a useful resource.
stalcottsmith 12y ago
Duckduckgo has had this feature for a while... is Google playing catch up?
- nolok 12y ago
  Given the difference in size and userbase, if duckduckgo were to be the one playing catch up on new small features like this, they would really be doing it wrong ...
  - nolok 12y ago
    I'm not quite sure why I'm being downvoted here ? I'm not criticizing but pointing out the obvious. Or do you think the smaller/newer players aren't supposed to be the ones bringing new ideas and executions but are meant to merely follow the giants from a distance and copy them ? In search or in other fields ... Because that's what downvoting what I said implies.
- jasonlotito 12y ago
  Yeah. This isn't anything new or unique. DDG does it better.
jasonlfunk 12y ago
> So it appears this is happening with Stack Overflow knowing about it and approving it, after all -- they implemented schema.org. But at the cost of pageviews? Having a useful answer appear at the top of a Google search with an obviously link to your site can only help you. It builds your brand as an authority and provides the first link for people to click for problems. I think this is a clear win for StackOverflow.
blazespin 12y ago
I suspect this actually increases exposure and traffic to SO. If you look at the quoted data it is definitely not enough to decide if that's the right answer. It's going to get you to click through as you really need context, like vote ups, compare/contrast with other answers, look at context of question, etc. I think it's a bright move on SO's part and they really do control what they share with Google. It's basically a free ad for SO. Smart. Also, it could be that Google is paying SO to do this. You never know.
- df07 12y ago
  They are not paying us :) They did work with us to develop a new schema.org type for Questions (http://schema.org/Question http://schema.org/Question) and Answers (http://schema.org/Answer http://schema.org/Answer) which we implemented.
  - comboy 12y ago
    So do you like what they are doing here or would you prefer they didn't?
TravisJamison 12y ago
Just going to leave this here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.seroundtable.com/report-scraper-example-1393540705.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.seroundtable.com/report-scra...
mark_l_watson 12y ago
While it is a good point about maybe affecting page views, the use of schema.org markup is a tide that lifts all boats: great technology. While other embedded semantic markup schemes are also very useful, it makes sense (to me) to have schema.org be the standard that gets used.
tljr 12y ago
This is a bad thing? You can't, like, own data, maaan.
ww520 12y ago
Is there a search engine tuned to programming or CS search? I.e. rank programming related results higher?
- aabajian 12y ago
  I've been working on such a thing here: http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu The hypothesis behind the search engine is that correct answers will share some of the same tokens in common. For example a search for "mysql error 1045" brings up posts from stackoverflow, linuxquestions, ubuntuforums, and serverfault that all mention an incorrect password. The "best" answer is the one that instructs you on how to reset your password. Other queries you can try are: "linux check hard drive space" "openssl aes" "reset safari 8 on yosemite" "how to remove spilled wine from macbook?" I had concerns as well about whether this type of search engine "steals" content from other sites. I consulted with a few lawyers and their legal consensus was that this fell under fair use since I was a) Only showing a portion (specific posts) from each site and b) Transforming the posts in a novel way (i.e. re-ranking them). The transformative requirement is the #1 factor for fair use: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#the_transformative_factor_the_purpose_and_character_of_your_use http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#...
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  Google. With time, it will prioritize sites you tend to click.
dwd 12y ago
If you google "html anchor element" you get an embedded result from w3schools.com Needs more testing for quality control.

96 points by Mojah 12y ago

richmarr 12y ago

Seems like a short-sighted strategy, unless they have a plan to pay for the content they're using. Impressive though.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 12y ago
As detailed in TFA, this only happens for sites that have been intentionally set up for it to happen, via microformats. Perhaps there is a risk that a particular site will cease to operate in that fashion, but it would just be replaced by another, and Google are pretty good at choosing the most appropriate links to highlight.
chriswarbo 12y ago
Surely relying on ad revenue from people redirected from search engine results is the short-sighted strategy? It makes your revenue stream rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. The comments on the article even imply that Wikipedia "suffers" from having their content embedded in Google search results in this way; as if Wikipedia relies on ads, or has free bandwidth to waste, or cares more about getting visitors than spreading knowledge. Unlike Wikipedia, StackOverflow is a commercial venture with ads, but are we really so jaded that we expect them to sabotage those who want to use their content? Have CC licenses turned into nothing more than trendy logos, to which we only pay lip-service? SO's informal opinion-of/relationship-with Google is well-documented, for example: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/04/16.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/04/16.html http://blog.codinghorror.com/trouble-in-the-house-of-google/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/trouble-in-the-house-of-google/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-importance-of-sitemaps/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-importance-of-sitemaps/
- jfoster 12y ago
  > Surely relying on ad revenue from people redirected from search engine results is the short-sighted strategy? What's the long-sighted alternative? > It makes your revenue stream rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. Involvement with search engines makes your traffic rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. Ad networks will predictably go wherever the users are. Search engines are rather unpredictable.
  - bryanlarsen 12y ago
    "What's the long-sighted alternative?" StackOverflow's primary income source is Stack Overflow Careers.
    - mooreds 12y ago
      Yes. That's why they took more investment this year: http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2015/01/20.html http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2015/01/20.html
    - jfoster 12y ago
      If they let Google cut off their supply of eyeballs, Careers isn't going to do too well, either, though. Google is adding a tall hurdle to the front of their user-onboarding funnel. It's a fair point that ads are not the best way for them to monetize, but practically any other form of monetization also involves getting users from a search engine onto their site.
  - chriswarbo 12y ago
    > Involvement with search engines makes your traffic rely on the whims of uninterested third-parties. That might be the case, but I was interested in revenue, not traffic.

kaoD 12y ago

> So it appears this is happening with Stack Overflow knowing about it and approving it, after all — they implemented schema.org. Not really. As far as I know, implementing schema.org means your data is structured, not that anyone can do whatever they want with it. The real reason Google can do it is because Stack Overflow user submitted content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Unfortunately Google is not complying with the license since it requires providing a link to it and indicating which changes were made[0]. There is a mechanism in schema.org to specify licenses[1]. I couldn't find it in SO answers' attributes, but Google shouldn't assume that means they can do whatever they want with the content! In fact, wouldn't that mean the content is under copyright (unless specified otherwise) and therefore not remixable/shareable? As far as I can tell, even if those are excerpts, Google's use does not fall under fair use. Anyways, props to SO for choosing CC BY-SA for their user submitted content. I think it's fair (after all SO feeds from their users) and, even if detrimental to their interests in the short term, in the long term builds trust among their users. [0] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ [1] https://schema.org/license https://schema.org/license

coldpie 12y ago
I agree with your first paragraph, but I don't agree that google is violating CC BY-SA. They do provide a link back to the original source, very clearly shown in the picture in the article. This seems sufficient for attribution, though perhaps they should go further and actually cite the answerer's username. You could argue that combining two answers counts as modification, but that seems more of a nit-pick than enforcing the spirit of the license. Otherwise the text is unchanged.
- kaoD 12y ago
  From the license: > Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, _provide a link to the license_ [...] There is no link to the license. There isn't even a mention of the license! For me this is the most important point, therefore Google is not complying with the license. --- > You could argue that combining two answers counts as modification, but that seems more of a nit-pick than enforcing the spirit of the license. This is a minor point for me, but I still disagree. Google's work is definitely a remix and the license is very explicit about it. We're not the ones meant to interpret what's the spirit of the license or when it's fine to violate its terms. I guess (IANAL) even non-remixed excerpts (i.e. removing content) should be marked as excerpts to fully comply. Here's example of why it might not be just a nitpick: answers are sometimes conflicting, and their meaning might change radically when automated excerpts are amalgamated. Imagine a right answer turned wrong by the automated merge. This could damage SO's reputation, driving away visits which would otherwise come back to SO as a reliable source. If I were to remix them by hand, I would definitely mark it as a derived work.

SwellJoe 12y ago

Stack Overflow utterly destroyed the other answer sites for just this reason: they make choices based on what is best for the user, not Stack Overflow. Check the traffic of Expert Sexchange, or Quora, vs. the entire SO network. If all you care about is short term gains, you lose to the company that wants to build a trusted brand. At least that's the way I think it should work out, and in this case I think it has. There is such a clear delineation between good and evil in this market, and such a clear leadership position held by the "good", that it's interesting that folks are wringing their hands worrying about whether SO gets enough impressions out of this. They don't need/want merely impressions. They want your trust and your participation. I know where I go when I have a question...how about you?

eru 12y ago
I go to Google (or Bing), and the search engine sends me to stack overflow. To agree with you: occasionally, quora pops up. But I actively avoid them.
- avinassh 12y ago
  Also Quora forces you to signup even to view all answers/comment. (or you have to do silly url hack, appending ?share=1). Secondly the quality of answers on Stackoverflow network is much better than Quora. Lastly, I have seen some answers deleted by Quora mods for their personal reasons.* There is no way such thing can happen on Stack Overflow. * this [0] is the question I remember. Directi is an Indian company. And mods who work for Directi deleted the answers which showed Directi in badlight. It doesn't matter whether answers were correct or not, let the downvotes decide them, but this kinda of censorship is not cool. [0] - http://www.quora.com/Is-Directi-banned-from-IIT-placements http://www.quora.com/Is-Directi-banned-from-IIT-placements
  - acdha 12y ago
    Yes - I deleted my Quora account after catching them doing search-engine cloaking. Their policies make it clear that their priority is juicing numbers for eventual resale rather than building a useful resource.

stalcottsmith 12y ago

Duckduckgo has had this feature for a while... is Google playing catch up?

nolok 12y ago
Given the difference in size and userbase, if duckduckgo were to be the one playing catch up on new small features like this, they would really be doing it wrong ...
- nolok 12y ago
  I'm not quite sure why I'm being downvoted here ? I'm not criticizing but pointing out the obvious. Or do you think the smaller/newer players aren't supposed to be the ones bringing new ideas and executions but are meant to merely follow the giants from a distance and copy them ? In search or in other fields ... Because that's what downvoting what I said implies.
jasonlotito 12y ago
Yeah. This isn't anything new or unique. DDG does it better.

jasonlfunk 12y ago

> So it appears this is happening with Stack Overflow knowing about it and approving it, after all -- they implemented schema.org. But at the cost of pageviews? Having a useful answer appear at the top of a Google search with an obviously link to your site can only help you. It builds your brand as an authority and provides the first link for people to click for problems. I think this is a clear win for StackOverflow.

blazespin 12y ago

I suspect this actually increases exposure and traffic to SO. If you look at the quoted data it is definitely not enough to decide if that's the right answer. It's going to get you to click through as you really need context, like vote ups, compare/contrast with other answers, look at context of question, etc. I think it's a bright move on SO's part and they really do control what they share with Google. It's basically a free ad for SO. Smart. Also, it could be that Google is paying SO to do this. You never know.

df07 12y ago
They are not paying us :) They did work with us to develop a new schema.org type for Questions (http://schema.org/Question http://schema.org/Question) and Answers (http://schema.org/Answer http://schema.org/Answer) which we implemented.
- comboy 12y ago
  So do you like what they are doing here or would you prefer they didn't?

TravisJamison 12y ago

Just going to leave this here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.seroundtable.com/report-scraper-example-1393540705.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.seroundtable.com/report-scra...

mark_l_watson 12y ago

While it is a good point about maybe affecting page views, the use of schema.org markup is a tide that lifts all boats: great technology. While other embedded semantic markup schemes are also very useful, it makes sense (to me) to have schema.org be the standard that gets used.

tljr 12y ago

This is a bad thing? You can't, like, own data, maaan.

ww520 12y ago

Is there a search engine tuned to programming or CS search? I.e. rank programming related results higher?

aabajian 12y ago
I've been working on such a thing here: http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu The hypothesis behind the search engine is that correct answers will share some of the same tokens in common. For example a search for "mysql error 1045" brings up posts from stackoverflow, linuxquestions, ubuntuforums, and serverfault that all mention an incorrect password. The "best" answer is the one that instructs you on how to reset your password. Other queries you can try are: "linux check hard drive space" "openssl aes" "reset safari 8 on yosemite" "how to remove spilled wine from macbook?" I had concerns as well about whether this type of search engine "steals" content from other sites. I consulted with a few lawyers and their legal consensus was that this fell under fair use since I was a) Only showing a portion (specific posts) from each site and b) Transforming the posts in a novel way (i.e. re-ranking them). The transformative requirement is the #1 factor for fair use: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#the_transformative_factor_the_purpose_and_character_of_your_use http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#...
wodenokoto 12y ago
Google. With time, it will prioritize sites you tend to click.

dwd 12y ago

If you google "html anchor element" you get an embedded result from w3schools.com Needs more testing for quality control.