Whether Google is a monopoly isn’t the point. Much has been made of Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s admission on Wednesday that the web giant might be a monopoly, during his testimony before a Senate hearing into Google’s market dominance and its effect on consumers and the marketplace. But despite the howls of outrage at Google’s size and dominance in the search market, the fact remains that — for the purposes of U.S. antitrust law at least — being a monopoly isn’t illegal. What is illegal is either acquiring that monopoly by nefarious or anticompetitive means, or using that dominant position in a way that harms the market for those services.
The problem with applying that to Google is that even if you assume it has a monopoly and is being anticompetitive, it’s not at all clear how that is bad for consumers. Is Google’s behavior harming consumers? Search is the critical gateway by which users navigate the web: As one Google executive has noted, “[S]earch is critical. Having a large market share is not illegal.
How Google Ambushed Microsoft and Changed the Subject. In previous posts, I wrote about the epic battles that are brewing between spammers and content farms—which are turning the web into a massive garbage dump—and search providers, which have to choose between profit and customer satisfaction. This is a serious problem. The content farms are “dumbing down” the web by churning out thousands of mostly low-quality articles, every day, on topics that Google tells them they can make money from. All of these players are raking in billions of dollars at our expense. I had the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion this week between Google, Microsoft, and Blekko. The event, which I emceed, was called Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box, and was organized by BigThink and Microsoft. As I joked, it seemed odd that Google was playing the role of “evil” monopolist; Microsoft, the “good” contender, whilst Blekko was a fly on the wall.
I had originally invited Google SEO development head, Amit Singhal, and Microsoft Research GM, Ashok Chandra. Blekko Launches Spam Clock To Keep Pressure On Google. Every hour, one million spam pages are created. That’s a stat that start-up search engine Blekko has now put out — complete with a new “Spam Clock” showing a count-up of spam pages created since the first of the year. Currently, the Spam Clock estimates that there’s been about 155 million spam pages made since January 1. Blekko CEO Rick Skrenta talks more about the clock on his personal blog here. Don’t confuse that figure with the total amount of spam pages on the web.
How Bad Is Spam? Is spam a big problem? It’s sort of a New Year’s tradition now. This year, we’ve had another round — and Kedrosky’s article is often lumped in with them, despite being a year old. Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google from guest author Vivek Wadhwa on TechCrunch covers how apparently only Blekko’s date sorting could handle certain types of research. Sure, Google Has Problems On the other hand, it’s clear how much garbage that Google has caused to be generated, simply by publishing the trends. Why Google Needs The Manipulative Web. The Internet sometimes doesn’t work as we hope it would, or think it should. In certain verticals, great content doesn’t create great links, and because of that, in my opinion, SEOs are often forced to resort to manipulative link practices to get their clients and websites to rank. Websites with low “content link efficacy” are vertically positioned in areas that aren’t socially friendly, such as health insurance or payday loans, and because of this, are often incapable of truly (and naturally) driving lots of links to their site, no matter how impressive and link-worthy their content is.
Websites with high content link efficacy, on the other hand, can occur when sites expect their fair share of links when great effort is put into a piece – because it exists in a space, such as Funny or Die or I Can Has Cheezburger, where users aren’t afraid to use word-of-mouth and also, because the users expect that their friends would also enjoy the content. Google’s Stance On Manipulative Linking. Once Again: Should Google Be Allowed To Send Itself Traffic? This fall, Google made its links to its millions of Place pages even more prominent on the first search results page, pushing sites such as TripAdvisor.com farther down the page for searches on “Berlin hotels,” for instance. Place pages for businesses give basic information such as location and hours as well as a summary of user-generated reviews from sites like Citysearch and Yelp.
Carter Maslan, a Google product management director, acknowledged “a little bit” of tension between Google and local-information sites. But he said the changes are meant to improve users’ experience by getting them more information about businesses faster, and to provide links to review sites. Upset over lost traffic To some degree this is about publishers “settled expectations” and changes in the Google algorithm disrupting them: “we’re getting less traffic than we used to.”
As the WSJ piece points out Bing operates in a way that is similar, often referring traffic to its own sites. Google, These Aren’t Really The Best Answers For Users. They Are The Best Answers For You. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran an article pointing out how Google is increasingly favoring its own properties, in search results over natural results to outside sites which previously commanded the top spots.
This practice is especially noticeable with Google Places and local results, but there are other examples as well from product and mortgage search to health search. We’ve seen these spats before, particularly between Google and Yelp. Citysearch and Tripadvisor are also taking a traffic hit, it seems. Google responded yesterday with a post on its public policy blog titled “Local Search: It’s all about the best answers for users.” Yeah, right. Don’t kid yourself. It’s all about what is best for Google. Is it just a coincidence that the top seven links in a row happen to be businesses with Google Places listings (which you can see by clicking on the Google Places links on the right).
The Google Places results don’t always take up nearly the entire first page. 2015 : le démantèlement de Google ? Is Google Changing Quality Score Rules Again? In the past few months, two significant issues have been messing with AdWords quality scores—or at least with how many of us perceive quality scores. Google has developed several bugs in how it displays quality score.Keywords with low quality scores are acting like keywords with high quality scores. Google Quality Score Display Bugs Google’s quality score bugs have been well documented. I’ve seen reports of quality score in AdWords accounts not matching what’s being displayed in the AdWords editor.
There are other reports of the quality score in the account not being accurate, etc. For the purposes of this article, these glitches are not an issue. Google engineers checked on several accounts and assured us that the quality score display bugs are not affecting the actual performance of these accounts. How Quality Score Affects Ad Display When a keyword has a low quality score, several ad features stop working: Ads are not displayed in the premium positions (above the organic results).
Hard-Coding Bias in Google "Algorithmic" Search Results. Disclosure: I serve as a consultant to various companies that compete with Google. But I write on my own -- not at the suggestion or request of any client, without approval or payment from any client. Google gives its Finance and Health services top on-screen positions. Search for a stock ticker (example: CSCO), and the three most prominent links on the page -- the large-type all-caps ticker symbol, the large price chart, and the left-most details link -- will all take you to Google Finance.
Google Finance isn't the most popular finance site; according to ComScore, Yahoo Finance claims that title, and indeed ComScore puts Google Finance in position #60 (as of April 2010). Nonetheless, the three most prominent links all promote Google's in-house finance service. Searches for health-related keywords (example: acne) show a similar pattern: The top-of-listing title, inset image, and left-most details link all link to Google Health. Diagnosing Hard-Coding: "The Comma Test" Google chasse les avis négatifs de sa méthode de ranking - Journal du Net Solutions. Pour lutter contre les pratiques de référencement naturel peu scrupuleuses, le moteur de recherche a modifié son algorithme. Les sites aux pratiques de rabattage douteuses en sont pour leurs frais. Depuis mercredi, Google a doté son moteur de recherche d'un nouvel algorithme. Objectif visé : empêcher que les commentaires et critiques négatives émises en ligne sur un site favorisent son positionnement (ranking) dans le moteur de recherche.
On le sait, parmi les critères pris en compte par Google pour faire remonter un site dans ses pages de résultats, le nombre de liens externes en est un de premier plan. C'est ce levier qu'a utilisé Vitaly Borker, propriétaire du site de ventes de lunettes en ligne DecorMyEyes aux pratiques commerciales douteuses. Voire carrément crapuleuses, de nombreux utilisateurs s'étant plaints d'envoi de lunettes contrefaites, de surfacturation ou encore de commandes non livrées. La partialité du moteur Google démontrée - Journal du Net Solutions.
Le moteur favorise ses propres services en leur appliquant un mode d'indexation particulier. C'est ce que démontre un chercheur de Harvard dans une thèse qui vient d'être rendue publique. Certains pouvaient en douter, d'autres ont cherché à le prouver. C'est le cas de Benjamin Edelman, chercheur à Harvard, qui conteste l'impartialité du moteur de recherche le plus utilisé au monde. Les services de ce dernier (ses sites Web dédiés aux cours de Bourse ou à la santé notamment) échapperaient aux méthodes classiques de référencement de Google. Lorsqu'elle est juge et partie, la firme de Mountain View truquerait donc les résultats en sa faveur. Dans un premier temps, le document de Benjamin Edelman mis en ligne hier, constate comment deux requêtes effectuées sur google.com privilégient les résultats issus de sites estampillés Google. Idem pour le mot "acné". Plusieurs dirigeants de Google ont mis en avant l'impartialité des résultats Test de la virgule Ampleur du phénomène.
Bruxelles pourrait ouvrir une enquête anti-trust sur Google. L'UE ouvre une enquête sur Google pour abus de position dominante. L'enquête fait suite à des plaintes de services de recherche en ligne concurrents. Google viole-t-il la législation européenne antitrust avec son moteur de recherche ? Pour le savoir, la Commission a décidé d'ouvrir une enquête. Cette décision fait suite aux plaintes émanant de "fournisseurs de service de recherche en ligne" pour qui "leurs services seraient pénalisés dans les résultats de recherche payants et gratuits de Google".
Bruxelles avait reçu en février 2010 des plaintes du moteur français Ejustice et de Ciao, un comparateur de prix de Microsoft (Lire Bruxelles pourrait ouvrir une enquête antitrust sur Google , du 24/02/2010). Les plaignants, parmi lesquels se trouveraient donc des comparateurs de prix, estiment que Google les a volontairement abaissés dans la hiérarchie des résultats naturels. Les liens sponsorisés sont également visés. Bruxelles enquêtera par ailleurs sur des exclusivités que Google demanderait.