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I'm not sure that the article's premise is very well supported, though. For example:
Search for "flowers," and more than 90 percent of the top results are online florists. If you're doing research on tulips ... [snipped for length] you have to wade through a sea of florists to find what you're looking for.
Well, if you search for tulips instead of flowers which one might assume you'd search for given that that's the research you're doing, the #3 result today is a very handy resource from a reliable source - not an online store at all.
The author doesn't fault Google for the search results he finds, either.
You can't really hold Google responsible for these blind spots. Each of them is just a reflection of the way the Web has been organized by the millions who have contributed to its structure.
Chicken-egg? Egg-chicken?
Does the author really think that a million online florists pop up for a search on "flowers" because of random human organization? Interesting, and perhaps Joe Public still thinks that this is the case, too.
But, even though the support of the thesis in this article is a little shaky, one of the conclusions is a pretty common sense one:
We're wrong to think of Google as a pure reference source. It's closer to a collectively authored op-ed pagefilled with bias, polemics, and a skewed sense of proportionthan an encyclopedia.
maybe the day of horizontal search engines are gone. google apparently seeks to cut its fat off the general index and to categorize into froogle, blog, news etc..so that i wont be suprised when someday all commerical pages will be choped off the general index and replaced into froogle, to turn google into an info search.
I think one reason why Google hasn't gone that route is the difficulty of determining what's a "commercial page" and what's an "information page." Consider:
1) A mail-order vendor of tulip bulbs might have a wonderful section of information on tulips: the different varieties, how to grow them, their history, and so on. So Google would need a way to filter the site's e-commerce pages from the non-commercial index without losing the information content.
2) An information site might have e-commerce or affiliate links. So Google would need to be sure that a link to Commission Junction, Linkshare, or TravelNow in the navigation bar wouldn't flag an editorial page as a "commercial" page.
One solution would be for Google to rely on site owners to classify their pages and to provide both a carrot and a stick to help Webmasters to honest. In other words:
CARROT: Site owners would have the opportunity to label their e-commerce or affiliate pages "commercial" and to have those pages appear in the commercial index.
STICK: Pages not labeled "commercial" would stay in the general information-oriented index, but they'd be pushed down an arbitrary number of places in the rankings if Google found enough indicators (a shopping cart, certain page layouts, affiliate links, boilerplate text, etc.) that suggested the page was primarily commercial in nature.
Many commercial Webmasters and SEOs seem to believe that the average user uses the Web primarily as a shopping and booking resource. If that's the case, then it makes perfect sense for Google to have a separate commercial index that users can visit when they don't want their SERPs cluttered with editorial or information listings.
Ideally, i still think, on the grand scheme of things google does, it knows that web is growing organically and in future, it will be unmanageable to pull out something relevant due to the excessive noise. they would want to chop off the fat in their index. i.e. more segregation of their general index.
remember commercial websites have info too..comparision of the product, history of the general theme of products, how to repair it etc...etc..so i would think more along the webpages and not the websites, and that is how google always looked at the web:)
poof!
Terrible, worthless piece
I don't think this piece was worthless at all - it sure got everyone talking. ;)
it makes perfect sense for Google to have a separate commercial index that users can visit when they don't want their SERPs cluttered with editorial or information listings.
If they did that - separate commercial/noncommercial areas - how many nanoseconds would it take for people around here to circumvent the system?
We've been saying this for a long time [webmasterworld.com]:
If you're searching for something that can be sold online, Google's top results skew very heavily toward stores, and away from general information.
Mission creep, code bloat, and the decline of tech skills:
They sold so much real estate on their pages to online stores and other advertisers that their results became less reliable, which gave Google its opening in the first place.
I wonder how much they bet?
blogger Dave Winer bet the CEO of the New York Times Digital last year that in 2007 bloggers will rank higher than the Times in Google searches.
Because I'd like to bet daveo, that Google as we know it, won't be around in 2007. It will be stomped out of existence.
Because I'd like to bet daveo, that Google as we know it, won't be around in 2007. It will be stomped out of existence.
That's a weird way to put it--does that mean Google is gone or will Google simply have a different focus? The best comment in this thread is merlin30's, when he said:
With regard to Google seperating commercial from non-commercial pages, it seems to me Google are not only happy with information pages also having some commercial value but are positively supporting it with Adsense.
Let's say that Google is able to gain more ground with AdSense. My assumption would be that based on the early positive results people are reporting -- "AdSense is equalling or besting my affiliate sales" -- holds true for the forseeable future. Why do I suspect that the early returns will hold steady for webmasters?
- More competition in contextual advertising (Overture etc.)keeps the effective CPM propped up for the webmasters using AdSense
- If Overture is cheaper across the board than Adwords for terms, wouldn't that conversely mean that Adsense users have a bigger share than Overture's context ad program?
Given those factors, if, for the next few years, the potential for affiliate revenue = the potential for AdSense sales: Over time, sites that provide good content will compete with the me-too affiliate guys. And it's not the real ecommerce players, it's the affiliates that are munging up the works. Flowers affiliates included.
Flowers content sites will get to percolate back to the top spots--they're getting the links naturally, they're highly incentivized, and I don't think you can be a spammer and run AdSense, with the approval process. Not to mention the hobby site people who eventually get wind may work a little harder at their existing site. The so-called "Googleholes" that were opened are filled in. Google taketh away, and Google giveth back.
I'm just saying that I would give Google a little more chance of not being "stomped out."
With regard to Google seperating commercial from non-commercial pages, it seems to me Google are not only happy with information pages also having some commercial value but are positively supporting it with Adsense.
I wasn't suggesting that Google might not consider pages with ads to be "information pages."
To use an analogy, a Web "information page" with an ad is like a magazine page with an ad, while a "commercial" page is like a page from a catalog or a direct-mail piece.
I think one of the problems facing search engines (and users) is that, until now, people--and search engines--have lumped everything on the Web together. It's as if people and librarians didn't differentiate between newspapers, magazines, books, direct mail, catalogs, and brochures, but instead lumped all those media together under the heading of "printed matter." Can you imagine if THE READER'S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE, BOOKS IN PRINT, and THE MAGAZINE INDEX were all dumped into one undifferentiated master index? Or if your public library shelved books, magazines, newspapers, advertising, direct-mail circulars, etc. together so that the Fodor's guidebook to London was shelved next to a London hotels brochure and a flyer for London city tours? That's what Googe and other search engines try to do--and while the toss-everything-into-one-hopper approach may have worked a few years ago, it's obviously becoming less practical as the Web has expanded into the billions of pages.
remember commercial websites have info too..comparision of the product, history of the general theme of products, how to repair it etc...etc..so i would think more along the webpages and not the websites, and that is how google always looked at the web:)
That's pretty much what I said in one of my earlier posts. And if Google were to put commercial pages (as opposed to commercial sites) in a separate index, that wouldn't keep a tulip grower or florist from having a "Tulip Bulb Buyer's Guide" or a "How to Select Tulips for your Sweetie" article that would belong in the information index.
It also is a sound business plan for SEs. Commercial sites are an advertising medium and the gravy train for free advertising that now only exists on the web will be forced to switch tracks in the not so distant future.
remember commercial websites have info too..comparision of the product, history of the general theme of products, how to repair it etc...etc..so i would think more along the webpages and not the websites, and that is how google always looked at the web:)
That's pretty much what I said in one of my earlier posts. And if Google were to put commercial pages (as opposed to commercial sites) in a separate index, that wouldn't keep a tulip grower or florist from having a "Tulip Bulb Buyer's Guide" or a "How to Select Tulips for your Sweetie" article that would belong in the information index.
I'm beginning to think that there may be a case for the return of meta tags, in a much modified form. Previously they were abused because they were stuffed by unscrupulous webmasters with thousands of words, often unrelated to the site.
But what about a tag that identified a page as either commercial or non-commercial? It could only be one or the other. There are probably more people searching for information than those out to buy things, but those wanting commercial info would be much more motivated to make a purchase. So I don't see it as being something that webmasters would want to lie about, on the whole.
But what about a tag that identified a page as either commercial or non-commercial? It could only be one or the other. There are probably more people searching for information than those out to buy things, but those wanting commercial info would be much more motivated to make a purchase. So I don't see it as being something that webmasters would want to lie about, on the whole.
That might work if Google had a separate commercial index where users would go when they wanted to buy something--or if the Google search form had choices for "I want information about:" and "I'm interested in shopping for:".
OTOH, some entrepreneurs would simply create two slightly different versions of their site--one for the information index, and the other for the commercial index.
I mean why not complain about not finding "the navy" when searching "the"?
Google's not perfect. I couldn't find "fiona apple" by looking for apple?
If I look for "apple mtv" she's in the top ten, "apple musician", same thing, ditto for "apple song".
That is assuming that someone couldn't remember the name "fiona" and saw her on MTV or whatever.
FWIW. "apple song" doesn't hit any "fiona" sites til #11 at good ol MSN.
