One of the original goals of Google has always been to help people find the information they are looking for and get out of the way as fast as possible. It was a point of pride, and in fact a design principle, to get people off the search results page to other places on the Internet. Yahoo was the site that tried to keep you from ever leaving, Google was the opposite.
Well, it was easier to send people away when Google was just a search engine. Now it has apps and Gmail and Google Maps and Google Books, and a lot of other reasons to stick around on Google itself. But there is still a clear demarcation between its content/communication sites and search. At least there was until late last week when it launched Google Places on Google Maps. Google Places is a local search page for restaurants and other local businesses that brings together the address, phone number, Website, maps, description, directions, photos and reviews all on one page.
When you click on a pin for a local business or place of interest on Google Maps a bubble will open up, and if you click “more info” sometimes it will take you to the Google Places page. So far, so good. Google Places is simply making Google Maps better, right?
The concerns arise, however, back on Google’s main search page, where Google is indexing these Places pages. Since Google controls its own search index, it can push Google Places more prominently if it so desires. There isn’t a heck of a lot of evidence that Google is doing this yet, but the mere fact that Google is indexing these Places pages has the SEO world in a tizzy.
And Google is indexing them, despite assurances to the contrary. If you do a search for the Burdick Chocolate Cafe in Boston, for instance, the Google Places page is the sixth result, above results from Yelp, Yahoo Travel, and New York Times Travel. This wouldn’t be so bad if Google wasn’t already linking to itself in the top “one Box” result, which shows a detail from Google Maps. So within the top ten results, two of them link back to Google content.
Your chances of clicking on a Google page for this particular search are pretty high. Google isn’t sending you away anywhere. And if you do go to the Google Places page for Burdick Chocolate, it is made up of rehashed content from other sites: snippet descriptions from InsiderPages, Judy’s Book, a menu link from AllMenus, photos from CityGuide and Yelp, and reviews from Igougo and CitySearch. On the right is a small Google Map and below that are Google search ads.
It’s actually a pretty useful page, and there is certainly value in aggregating all of this information in one place. Google might even license the data, which would mitigate any protests that it is “stealing” the content like we see with Google News. But nobody really cares about that. The real issue is whether or not Google is going to favor its own pages in its index when it comes to local search. SInce Google’s algorithm is a black box, there is no way to know one way or another. But the question is out there.
Maybe the Google Places page for Burdick Chocolate ranks highly only because Google used it as an example in its pre-briefings and a lot of bloggers subsequently linked to it. The point, though, is that these Google Places are getting into Google’s index. (Tartine Bakery is another example). Even if they make it onto the first page of Google search results for legitimate reasons, their very presence goes against the fundamental principle that Google’s main purpose is to link out to the best information on the Web, not to hoard the links for itself.
We know what will happen if it keeps going down this path. It will turn into Yahoo.
Update: It appears that Google is now taking steps to remove Places pages from its organic results. It’s added a “Disallow: /places/” tag to the robots.txt for Google maps. (The robots.txt tells Google’s search engine how to treat the content on a site, and a disallow tag instructs it not to crawl indicated portions of a site).
Update 2: A Google spokesperson came back with the following explanation:
From the time of launch, we did not intend for the Place Pages to be crawled or appear in organic results – we even confirmed that publicly. We did discover that some URLs were still open (the example in question, Burdick, was the one that we heavily promoted in all our blog posts, as Matt [Cutts] pointed out), so we’ve blocked those over the past 24 hours to stay consistent with our original plan for this launch. These should no longer appear in our organic search results.
Also, I know there have been some questions about the URL structure: they were designed to be “friendly” URLs with the specific intention of making them easier to share and link.
Though I may not agree with Google prioritizing their content before others. It’s their site and they can do whatever they want. So for better or worse you’ve just got to adapt to the way Google presents it’s content.
I find I’m liking the service less and using it less. A tipping point for me is when I tried to search for a local movie Cinema and found that Google was using their Cinema app to display search results for the movie instead of refer to the actual cinema’s website I was searching for.
In other words Google is prioritizing their own content instead of the content I wish to find. Their filter for cinemas is actually not accurate, missing session times from the website I was searching for. So I choose to use Google search less now.
Oh and once you’re inside the cinema movie search results page for Google there are *no* links out to the original content. They even refer you to other cinemas that may be located near, however still within Google.
Not a single link back to original content, which is what I’d expect.
Yes “it’s their site” but the issue is more what lack of competition will do. I’m not an economist but I would think that when monopolies are created it reduces innovation. Simply put, I’m less likely to launch a product is I feel that a bigger entity will use their capital to defeat me. The battle becomes less about efficiency and more about size.
There is no problem with this, but let’s bitch about Apple?
Their iPhones and iTunes..
LeBard, not true. There are direct links to IMDb beside each movie, for example. In fact, Google makes it easier to leave and check out information than movies.msn.com or movies.yahoo.com.
Every major search engine shows movie information themselves if you search for (say) [movies 94043], because most users find that helpful and want that.
Matt,
Google just recently did the same thing in the health space. They put their link #1 for about 2000 medical search terms for their Google Health.
No use of algorithms. It’s not even original content.
Google is trying to monopolize its own search results. Period.
Matt, so Google have decided IMDB is the place I should be linked out to when I search for a movie playing at my local cinema? You’ll notice on the below link it says Showtimes for Roseville with *no* links to the Roseville cinema’s page (which is where they got the content from). Attribution in name only, no link to the source where Google got the content from. If I copy and pasted content from another website I’d sure hope I remember to include a link back to the original content.
http://www.goog...7c7d371c064f3d2
Link to original content:
http://www.rose...vies.asp?type=1
Replying to Bob Johnson: Bob, when I do a search like [diabetes] on Yahoo, 7 out of 10 of their onebox links go to Yahoo. On Google, only 2 out of 5 links go to Google; that’s considerably fewer links go to Google than on Yahoo. I tried to trigger Bing’s health onebox, but even on queries they’ve mentioned before like [depression] it’s not triggering right now. I do think that when someone does a search like [heart attack], offering helpful resources such as the Mayo Clinic, MedlinePlus, or (yes) Google Health can be useful to a searcher.
LeBard, I don’t know whether that information comes from crawling or whether we licensed it to display. My guess would be that we licensed it; I’m afraid that I’m not an expert on the movie onebox in Australia, but I’m happy to ask about it within Google.
“Attribution in name only, no link to the source where Google got the content from. If I copy and pasted content from another website I’d sure hope I remember to include a link back to the original content.”
LeBard, I checked with the relevant team and we license that data from a completely different source. So that information didn’t come from Roseville Cinemas at all. The team will keep looking for ways to improve the UI and experience though.
google always boasted it always works as launchpad. but finally learns that time on site matters too.
local business always been a good market, govt regulation on search engine is need of the hour as reported by TC recently.
Clearly you’ve never used google search for local content BEFORE they released these pages. The results when you search for something like cityname plastic surgeons were from these aggregated link farms that had shitty content.
This is improvement, and it will get improved even more.
I agree with you here. They’re only doing it to improve the information that users can find, and by making it more relevant to the user. If anything they’re helping users find the information they’re looking for faster, not slower by having users sift through irrelevant link farm content that has nothing to do with what they were looking for in the first place.
Sure Richard, but adapting, especially over time, just might mean abandoning Google. There’s plenty I don’t like about Google’s tools. It wouldn’t take that much for some of us to get pushed over the fence. Bing, with some maturity, is not a bad search engine.
Interesting take on the idea of a personal website.
I do agree with you .. infact I feel Microsoft has really worked on its search engine . I have been looking for few resources .. which I got easily on Bing rather than on Google .. which came as a surprise to me ..
Best,
Daina
Oooh, we got ourselves a spammer, check it out. Alyssa Myers was Becky Grant on the last TC article, and had the same “photo blog” with the same images of herself pointing back to the same fling site. I guess she thinks the geeks will jump right on…it.
No one can argue that the days of honouring the “don’t be evil” mantra are long gone. With the bulk of search traffic in one pocket, Google is now moving to close the loop by delivering content. No surprises, although their continued retorts to the contrary are disingenuous at best.
Sadly, given the myriad issues that your government must attend to, breaking Google up doesn’t seem like an imminent response.
> No one can argue that the days of honouring the “don’t be evil” mantra are long gone.
Agreed, been replaced with… try it and only retreat when backlash occurs.
yes google monopoly is the obvious conclusion, just wait for it.
I fail to see how this is really any different than the one boxes….nor is multiple hits leading to Google content that new – try searching for any video that is likely to be on youtube and you’ll probably get more than one link back to youtube. And as to whether or not they’ll be fair, they’d be idiots not to, because if their search result quality goes down, they’ll lose market share, whose traffic would make them much much much more money than those content pages. I just don’t see the incentive to do it.
Ha, Ha,
Yelp has been gaming google with it’s seo tactics… don’t be fooled Yelp grew largely as a result of great SEO… they would like you to think it’s “word of mouth”
and now they are going to be pushed down the rankings by google places.
Yelp sucks and it’s about time these extortionists get a little taste of their own medicine.
and that’s talking to you Jeremy
you know the CEO who doesn’t have a blog you can comment on:)
Yayuh Burdicks shout-out
Hold on a bit. You missed a key fact about this query from Mike Blumenthal’s article: “If you search on the Burdick Chocolate Cafe Boston, an example that Google disseminated widely during their pre announcement briefings…” So Google was using this specific query to discuss Place Pages. That’s why the maps.google.com url ranks for this query, because lots of press/blogger people linked to it as a result of prebriefings.
If you recall, the same thing happened when Knol launched: a backpacking Knol ranked well, and everyone worried that Google was going to favor Knol in Google’s rankings. But it was a Knol that was used in press briefings, so lots of people linked to it. A year after Knol launched, I don’t believe anyone today claims that Google has favored Knol in our rankings.
These pages can show up if enough people link to them, but picking the query that Google used to prebrief press/bloggers is not really a good datapoint.
Microsoft doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to operating systems, and Google no longer gets the benefit of the doubt when it comes to search.
Your comments notwithstanding, perception is everything.
Perception is for the naive and ignorant. By reading this site I would think you would have realize that by now. Searching for the truth, even if its spun by Techcrunch, Slashdot, Digg, or other sites is what we do. So this is a a wonderful time to make the following comment:
The general public doesn’t really care about rankings as long as they can find what they’re looking for in a reasonable about of time with the least amount of effort. It’s only in the realm of geeks, webmasters, content producers, etc. that search engine rankings matter.
You talk about “perception” for a rather esoteric topic that only a relatively small percentage of people care about. Those people who have that “perception” of ranking unfairness also have the wherewithal to find the real reason why this may have happened. Matt Cutts provides this explanation quite clearly. This is where your comment falls apart into a silly lowest-common-denominator sort astroturfing we see so often on the internet.
I don’t know why people like you try to make your position sound so narcissistically self-important by referring to the silent billions of people who perceive an issue a certain way. Its the same concept when politicians on both sides of the spectrum talk about the “will of the American people.”
Anyway, my point is your argument is about as dumb as saying that perception in earlier times was the earth was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. Who cares what people “perceive” if its not the truth?
Love it.
I hate posting on Techcrunch under a lame pen name or should I say nom de plume? Unfortunately, its becoming very difficult to comment on places like Engadget, Digg, and even here because the signal-to-noise ratio is abysmal.
Actually I digress. Its not the signal-to-noise ratio that is the most troubling but its the one sentence “me too” comments, spammy links to people’s websites, or the witless humor of attention-seeking trolls.
I suppose I’m happy posting on Slashdot for a reason. The community there will write long and intelligent comments. Those that don’t make the cut will be moderated down by a randomly chosen set of moderators with a limited number of mod points. Sites like Digg with limitless moderation points turn what should be a moderation system into a referendum on the comment’s acceptability by the mob. Remember, this is the same mob that gives us so many inspirational commenting gems on websites like Youtube.
Anyway, I made my point… I just wish there was a better way to track responses but I don’t see myself checking this page with an atuo-refresh tool in the hopes of finding a response.
I get your point, really I do (that sounds sarcastic but it’s not). But if we take your point of people once believing the world was flat, well, it means you’re a product of your time. Revisionist approaches to demystifying truth are equally worthless.
Who would care if you told them the world was round back then? Nope, you were likey incarcerated, beaten or ostracized.
Perception DOES matter, despite its inherent truth. Doesn’t make it right. It is what it is.
Whoa, Tom. Narcissistically self-important? Silent billions? Feel free to join us back on planet earth.
Perceptions matter. In spite of Matt’s (very good) explanation. You’re obviously interpreting my comments as saying Matt is being dishonest. That’s erroneous. I believe Matt and have no reason to think otherwise.
But, back to your question: Who cares what people “perceive” if its not the truth?
In short, everybody. Ever heard the phrase, “perception is reality”? Ignore it at your peril.
>The general public doesn’t really care about rankings as long as they can find what they’re looking for in a reasonable about of time with the least amount of effort.
hey you, get out of my head. as long as i get my search done in a reasonable time and it’s correct or mostly correct, i don’t give a shit about anything else really. i just want to be as least annoyed as possible. i used to care about ranking, but i just gave up on any hope that yahoo would compete with google (because often yahoo gives you a random list of results that don’t have to do with your query) and became a dedicated googler. the rankings don’t mean anything to me because i still have to sift through the information and use my own judgments to see which link i will click on. google helps with the titles/headers and now with the little blurb from the sites underneath the links, but it’s still my decision. the rankings really don’t have anything to do with it, but i’ve also heard that some people don’t go past page 1 of their google search results listings.
How can I get my site used in a Google press briefing? Is there a form for that? LOL.
His explanations make perfect sense to me and although perception is indeed everything, you frequently can’t control it either even if you’re innocent, especially on the fast moving Web.
The particular query, in this case the business name plus it’s city is a VERY COMMON search query for many local businesses. Yes, it will take links to get these pages to rank well but that’s also the point of the pages with that link button in the upper right corner. People will be using those links and business owners will be linking to their own places pages. Many small businesses have been linking to their presence in Google Maps from their contact pages, about us pages, etc…, now they have a nice clean URL to use instead of a complexly coded url. So these place pages will get linked to and some will end up ranking decently in the search results. Not just the one or two examples that were pre-briefed by Google to the press/bloggers.
Matt, I didn’t miss that, actually. From the post:
“Maybe the Google Places page for Burdick Chocolate ranks highly only because Google used it as an example in its pre-briefings and a lot of bloggers subsequently linked to it.”
If this is a one-off, then ok. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. It appears that Google made a change to the robots.txt. It now has a “disallow” tag. http://maps.goo....com/robots.txt
It seems like Google had a change of heart and now agrees that these pages shouldn’t show up in regular search rankings.
Matt, would you care to comment on that or clarify Google’s position?
The disallow tag has been in place since launch. I posted about it here: http://bit.ly/R78cN
I’ve been tracking the indexed pages and it has never exceeded 100, pages come into the index because of heavy linking but the robots.txt file seems to win out and the pages are removed in the long run.
As for Google’s long term intentions, who knows, the pages may become indexable.
However, if they really planned on choking out all search traffic to the content originators like Yelp, Citysearch, Metromix etc; these businesses may fail as they are heavily reliant on search traffic from Google.
If these content businesses are no longer around to populate the information found in Google’s Place Pages, Google then would technically become a parasite, choking out what originally gave it life, and in turn make the Place Pages less valuable.
If anything, Google should want to make sure that it continues to feed these valuable content originating sites with the traffic it needs to continue producing valuable information.
WTF dude..
Allow: /searchhistory/
holyshit they want to index my search history??? are you serious???
COP, that’s not your search history, that’s pages *about* the search history feature. But it turns out that line wasn’t really needed, so we removed it just for you.
Erick, the robots.txt entry was live for the launch. As the Mike Blumenthal’s article said: “Peter Wypanski, an SEO in Philadelphia, noted that the Google robots.txt shows a nofollow for Places: Disallow: /places/. “
Matt,
Then how are “places” getting into the results if they have never been (permitted to be) indexed?
Markus, I wrote about this in a blog post in 2006: http://www.matt...lebot-keep-out/ . The answer is that robots.txt forbids a url from being crawled, but in some situations Google can still show the reference to the uncrawled url.
For example the Library of Congress used to block all crawling in robots.txt. But because enough people linked to loc.gov with the anchortext “Library of Congress,” we still could reasonably infer that people doing the search [library of congress] would find the url loc.gov useful, even though we weren’t able to crawl it.
Thanks for the reply Matt, I guess that makes sense (at least for the example given above) because there is no snippet for the places result.
It wasn’t quite there at launch, at least here in the UK. When it first launched the entry was missing from robots.txt, and Places results where showing up in results using normal snippets. (often quotes from the javascript structure) – but within a few hours it was added and the results reverted to snippetless/titleless results.
Hopefully it’s just the heavy link love from the many blogs that linked to this specific example following the press briefings. The market will respond negatively and shift even more towards social search and discovery if they stop trusting Google’s results. As stated, Google would morph into Yahoo and Facebook/Twitter would gain even more share in providing search results and discovery that is influenced heavily by your social graph.
In terms of what’s on the Google Place Pages themselves, have they provided any clear info on what businesses can do to make sure their own content is included in those pages without feeling extorted by Google in the process? Is there an open framework for pushing structured data into them?
I have a fledgling place review based site and this certainly has worried me a bit this week…
However I’ve been watching search stats since Google Place Pages launched and it hasn’t made a noticeable dent in search traffic – yet.
I’ve been looking at the Place pages in terms of more opportunity for links from Google. But my big concern is how Google is picking out what it aggregates and links from the Place pages themselves. Why are some sites so well represented in reviews and photos while there is a clear omission of for instance Yelp? For places that my site traditionally claims top ranking, we aren’t represented at all on the Place pages.
Its a little disturbing that Google is firstly apparently picking and choosing what site has authority and second that they aren’t giving links to the sites that they are aggregating until you dig a little deeper.
At first I saw it like Google News but now its a little clearer that Place Pages are about – as you said – keeping the eyeballs for themselves.
In essence this could potentially totally squash my site in search rankings before its even gained a foothold. So far I don’t see evidence of it happening but we’re only a few days in. Over time it could become a real handicap in gaining the authority that Citysearch or Judysbook currently has.
Competing in the future with Google for search traffic is definitely a frightening proposition…
http://www.goog...mp;oq=&aqi=
now, that’s funny.
Simple. If Google knew (this) was Evil, it wouldn’t do it.
The FCC should really start looking at Google more seriously. I can’t believe that Microsoft is not allowed to sell Windows with IE and Google is allowed to use existing product reach to market others.
Max, how much do you pay for each Google search you do? Nothing? And are there other search engines out there?
Hmmm. Doesn’t sound like a monopoly to me.
A few more thoughts related to my earlier comment here – http://bit.ly/BJ4JY. Google needs to step carefully here.
Interesting – isn’t this the stuff that SEO tricksters are usually penalized for by Google, i.e. search saturation? It’s also interesting that it’s being exercised in the local product first. I don’t see what would stop Google from doing this for hot news topics as well, creating aggregated pages, using Google News as an anchor, as Maps is for Google Places.
I think going forward, internet businesses need to start thinking of the (very scary) idea of owning their own traffic (via closed loop sites, invite-only access, etc.). This may prove to be very valuable down the line as Google already has a massive monopoly on web traffic ownership.
@Deap Ubhi,
I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this myself, as I have been persuading clients with the resources and means to house their own data rather than relying on google (email, web analytics, website-user data in particular).
The “scary” thing isn’t so much Google’s control of web traffic – if you’re creative enough, have enough things for users to do, or have enough interesting things to say, you too can generate massive traffic. I think the bigger issue is Google’s control over user data – what we search for, what sites we look at, etc. It opens the door for social engineering.
Erick, I’m mixed on the issue. It reminds me of the schizophrenia that people had with Microsoft back in the day:
1. I don’t like what they are doing
2. If I were them I’d be tempted to do the same
However, I’m glad you mentioned Burdick’s. That place is a gem.
Even if they make it onto the first page of Google search results for legitimate reasons, their very presence goes against the fundamental principle that Google’s main purpose is to link out to the best information on the Web, not to hoard the links for itself.
And if one of the best information on the web is one of their own pages, why should they not link it too?
As long as it is not permanently first result in capital bold letters 36 font size, no biggie.
Bingo. The link is there because searchers find it useful. While it’s fun to turn every Google move into some stupid conspiracy theory, that’s really all there is to it. If you insist on believing otherwise, there are at least 2 other fine search engines out there for you to try; hope you’re not disappointed.
Yes, use AAfter Search to find local stores faster than any other search engine. Search just ‘best buy’ and click on ‘Yellow Pages’ to get your local store.
So, Google is pissing in their secret sauce right when MS opens a flashy new cafe in town.
Smart.
why does first screen shot has logo as “Googlle”??
It was their 11th birthday, the logo had two 1s in it in place of the single L for the day
It’s simple – just pass a law that says that Google can’t prioritize it’s own content above others. Net Neutrality 2.0.
That’s what I thought when I saw this post on TC UK last week “Google News UK picks up more traffic from searches for celebrities than any other type of news”. Google sending traffic to Google.
http://uk.techc...google-news-uk/
this is a majorly unethical issue for me. Time to take a 2nd look at Bing.
Another great example of Google’s monopoly. When will the FTC look deeper into Google’s monopoly practices?
Open up search. Open search data. Open search APIs.
Forbid google from pushing further distribution of all of it’s web properties (local, products, news, videos) through search and destroying innovation in the market!
If you ask me, it looks like Google is starting to *shit* where it eats.
Hi
Even if they make it onto the first page of Google search results for legitimate reasons, their very presence goes against the fundamental principle that Google’s main purpose is to link out to the best information on the Web, not to hoard the links for itself.
http://www.pakjeet.com
Even if they make it onto the first page of Google search results for legitimate reasons, their very presence goes against the fundamental principle that Google’s main purpose is to link out to the best information on the Web, not to hoard the links for itself.
Oh yeah, one more pat on the back for Google and their new Place Pages…
Don’t miss the subtle Adsense ads to your right while you’re looking at all that mouth watering chocolate, people.
Hmmmm, so let me get this straight Matt…
1) You create your own (scraped) content for your own organic results on your own “Search Engine” (doing the Dr. Evil air quotation marks gesture).
2) You list the above self-created (scraped) content on page one of your own organic results (of course).
3) You therefore are able to drive free traffic to the above self-created (scraped) content on page one of your “Search Engine” (doin’ that Dr. Evil air quotation marks gesture again).
4) Then you display Adwords ads on the (scraped) Places Pages which, by the way, could end up being a direct competitor of the business you’ve so graciously (scraped) listed.
5) Congratulations! You’ve just created the perfect MFA website!!! Hooray For You!!!
And they said it couldn’t be done… not by us peons at least, but you proved us all wrong! IT IS Possible to create a MFA website and get away with it… you just have to do it from the “inside” HA!
~ Vic
P.S. “Do No Evil” my ass.
Yahoo Local has been flooding Google organic results with business listing pages and business category pages (with static URL’s) for a couple years–what is the difference?
If the page is relevant and popular, why shouldn’t it rank high?
yupp. yahoo’s been gaming it for a long time. this is nothing different.
Whatever happened to “Don’t be evil?” I forgot…that was long gone especially when trying to promote Google’s own revenue.
Boo Google! Not nice.
As a user, I don’t care where Google brings me to as long as it contains the information I want =)
Great post, since I’ve also noticed this lately, and it makes searching a PITA… can I get a google lite? (I’m sure it exists, so no need to reply with a “already done” link)?.
KISS always made the most sense to me, and I’ll predict someone will undercut google after it’s burdening complexity overwhelms the user. Bing obviously isn’t the answer either–(motive==profit, not searching power). Hopefully Google undercuts itself with an even better product rather than the mish-mash shown above…
Google may have optimized their pages for their search engine Google
So there pages rank better.
too little data and too early to worry about the things you mention.
As long as the page is useful, it should show up in the top search results. Doesn’t matter if it links into Google again.
I hope you don’t mean that they should NOT show any of their pages in search, useful or not. Thats not the meaning of “we aim to get you out of google as soon as possible”. It means, they aim to get you to a page that’ll be helpful as soon as possible.
As long as they do that, i think we can all unclench and relax
These days ,i don’t like google
This is a nonissue. Needs way more investigation before accusations start flying. But why actually do any sort of good faith research? Journalists are all biased and everyone knows that so there’s no point in putting any energy into investigative rigor, right? Techcrunch is sorely in need of some standards like real journalists have.
In related news, what’s the deal with Google taking business away from local libraries and travel agents and software giants? And how dare those phone companies destroy telegraph operators. Free market competition.
Google has already been doing this with their Australian search results, which they call Google Local business results. The data is closely integrated with Google Maps.
I hope these example links work for those of you who are in the US:
http://www.goog...lient=firefox-a
http://maps.goo...lt&resnum=9
And when everyone is first on Google, no one will be. There is becoming less and less web search information above the fold. Google’s key product for this user was the quick and easy search. I worry that Google’s real competition is it’s own need to grow and evolve.
A quick site:maps.google.com/places shows that only 14 of these pages are indexed – so I wouldn’t start throwing toys out of the pram just yet.
I think more worrying is Lior’s comment:
No conspiracy theory here, as I’ve mentioned when we talked Place Pages are not meant to be crawlable with this launch.
Why such vagueness? Not in ‘this launch’ suggests to me its probably in the roadmap for the future.
Some more speculation on my part: think about Place Pages being like Seth Godin’s ill-fated Brands in Public – just on a bigger scale. By not indexing these pages initially, Google is essentially making them ‘opt-in’. But wouldn’t it make sense to allow the page owner to ‘turn on’ indexing once they’ve claimed the page? That might (finally) provide sufficient incentive for businesses to claim their listing.
To be fair to Google, they are free to offer the best service they can to their customers and users. And their users (us) want accurate information, so if Google can provide accurate information through their Places service, so be it. While customers (who pay Google) will desire a compelling presence.
That aside, Google have in fact lifted some of what they offer in Places directly from a competitor and it will be interesting to see what transpires…
This isn’t as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be.
1. These pages will only rank if people link to them.
2. Google doesn’t have a directory structure like http://local.yahoo.com which does get indexed and uses PageRank Sculpting to rank high in Google.
3. Even if people do link to these, all the IYPs and Directories should have enough links to outrank the place pages. If they don’t they aren’t taking their directory serious enough.
4. If anything the Onebox for business name searches would have been the biggest blows to the directories not these pages.
5. Nobody seemed to care when Yahoo! did this. Take a look at the results for “Taxi in San Jose”:
http://bit.ly/3AMe4
Yahoo! ranks #1 and #2
I think people who collect content on their sites should band together and prohibit scraping by Google or any other automated aggregator. This is completely unacceptable for a search engine to steal, basically, the entire essential content from a bunch of sites and then present it as its own.
If web site owners don’t organize into some sort of a union against Google and similar, they will face an enormous competitors in the future – possibly one that will kill them all.
Interesting thought Peter – Google is really starting to flex its muscles and demonstrate just how much leverage and control they have.
Gotta keep innovating and enhancing the user experience and hope that it’s possible for us ‘Davids’ to stay one step ahead of the biggest Goliath in the history of the world, I guess.
I own GoogleUnion.org if anyone is interested in starting some kind of publishers’ rights group. Drop me a line.
i never understood why they didn’t exactly this with Knol.
They’re not linking to their own content, they just know how to “optimize” their own content so that it shows up at the top of the rankings in Google.
Don’t worry, no one self-links more than TechCrunch. Your record is safe.
Google should not try to become Yahoo.
Thank God we didnt give them our content.
Thanks for publishing this blog post. It’s healthy for concerns like this to be raised. As we have seen, when issues like this are exposed, often the company responsible will quickly offer a remedy.
I share the concerns expressed by the author, and felt obliged to link to this article on my own humble blog:-
http://www.tima..._too_much_power
I sometimes watch consumer programmes like Watchdog on the BBC here in the UK. When an unhappy customer of a large company appears on TV, usually the company will quickly solve the problem, e.g. offering a full refund before the programme is broadcast. However, one cannot help but wonder about other situations which may not have benefited from such publicity.
This is only a Google attempt to control those companies trademarks and intellectual property rights. By having them agree to subordinate thier rights inorder to be featured on Google’s page. Google will receive 100% advertising revenue from sponsored links featured on the business page and will also benefit form the goodwill established by said compaines.
Google will be the only company that can benefit from this clever format. Google’s
definitely raises yellow flags yes.
red flags…. nah
Google is one of the best things which happened to the internet and all of us are kind of addicted to it. There is no harm in increasing revenue and making more money – after all, they are the giants and need revenue to upgrade and improve constantly.
Quality Research