Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
If you run a web directory, feel free to post your experience here.
What a silly comment - the 1st Amendment, as far as I understand it, would only really be relevant if Google were a publicly owned entity, when in fact it is a privately owned business that can do whatever it damn pleases. We should just feel lucky that it has done so much good for so many of our businesses, not start taking that for granted and whinging.
Just my 2p worth!
>>The only way that arguement could even remotely be valid is if the information was not acessable anyway else. Can a site be found by ANOTHER search engine? Can someone type an URL into their browser to find it?<<Wish to reply to this part separately.
Google has a search market share of around 40%. That means 40% of searchers will be denied access to sites which Google deindexed!
Lets assume a country population of 275.000.000 . And assume only 30% are connected to the net, which makes 82.500.000 people.
40% of that figure which is around 33.000.000 people are denied access to sites which Google deindexed.
Does that what the 1st Amendment call for?
Ok....let's look at this another way. Since most (if not all) of the complaints revolving around google have to do with the loss of income many seem to feel entitled to, I'll use this anaolgy:
I've built the biggest and best shopping mall on earth, using my own funds, and those from investors. The mall receives more customer traffic by far than any other similar shopping destination. The mall is populated with vendors that I pick and choose at my discretion (it's my mall, I get to decide who sells there).
Now...you sell purple furry widgets and demand access to my mall as a vendor. I amy allow you access, I may not. it's my mall, it's my decision.
Google is no different. Don't get me wrong, I personally feel that Google's overall quality (both search experience and serp quality) has gone down enormously over the last 2 years or so. In fact, I think it's latest moves (adwords changes, etc.) are nothing short of attempting to squeeze too much profit from a flawed business model (i.e. single income source - adwords).
Having said that, they built a better mousetrap, it's their engine, they get to decide who get's in, period. It's my responsibility to drive traffic to my site, not Google's. Free traffic is great, but you're not entitles to it. If I build an engine that lists the best places to get purple furry widgets on earth, and 90% of the world's population uses that engine to find purple furry widgets, I STILL get to decide which vendors of purple furry widgets get in - and there's nothing (legally) those vendors could do to "make me" include their sites.
having said that...get over it, move on, adapt and overcome, etc. etc. I also had an older, income producing site drop significantly in the google serps on July 16th. Asopposed to whining about how badly screwed up google is, I simply keep doing what I'm doing. the fact is, if your site is worth a damn, traffic keeps coming regardless of google. Google gives a nice boost, sure, but I get thousands of visitors a day from bookmarks alone.
Choose carefully what city you try this on! If you are in New York city plan on closing your doors!
Some years ago a large town nearby forbid the opening of new Chinese restaurants because there were too many of them compared to other types of restaurants. Was this against the law or some type of discrimation? No, it was to increase the diversity and it worked out quite well.
Please. We are not talking about malls and widgets here. We are talking about a corporate publicly annonced mission.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
[google.com...]
Now let me ask you this simple question. Do you believe that Google is organizing or attempting to controlling the world´s information?
And for the sake of further discussion, allow me to recall the difference:
organize
# To put together into an orderly, functional, structured whole.
#
1. To arrange in a coherent form; systematize: organized her thoughts before speaking.
2. To arrange in a desired pattern or structure: “The painting is organized about a young reaper enjoying his noonday rest” (William Carlos Williams).
# To arrange systematically for harmonious or united action: organize a strike.
control
1. To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over; direct. See Synonyms at conduct.
2. To adjust to a requirement; regulate: controlled trading on the stock market; controls the flow of water.
3. To hold in restraint; check: struggled to control my temper.
4. To reduce or prevent the spread of: control insects; controlled the fire by dousing it with water.
5.
1. To verify or regulate (a scientific experiment) by conducting a parallel experiment or by comparing with another standard.
2. To verify (an account, for example) by using a duplicate register for comparison.
Now let me ask you this simple question. Do you believe that Google is organizing or attempting to controlling the world´s information?
Google is attempting to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible" by separating the wheat (useful information) from the chaff (duplicate content, spam, etc.) and presenting the results in what it considers to be the order of relevance. That's what search engines are supposed to do.
Google couldn't possibly "control" the world's information, because Google is just one gateway to that information.
Now let me ask you this simple question. Do you believe that Google is organizing or attempting to controlling the world´s information?
Google may be attempting to dominate market share, but no one entity CONTROLS the world's information.
The heart of the matter here (as we all would admit if we were really being honest) isn't some hypothetical argument about google "controlling" the flow of information, it's about google controlling the flow of money into your pocket.
I "lost" about $6k a month in adsense revenue when a older content site of mine took a nose dive in google's serps on July 16th, but the site wasn't "cut off" from the world reaching it. Plenty still find it via other engines/links/bookmarks, etc...allowing to still earn a nive high four-figures per month.
Having saig that...let's suppose you're right, and google is "controlling" the flow of information. What do you propose to do about it? Your argument has already been effectively invalidated in US courts. It's the users that drive google, not us. If and when the users move onto the next "new thing" in search, then and only then will the pie get sliced up a bit more.
Having said that....there are still far too many webmasters whose businesses can be made or broken by google. But that's their fault, not google's.
>>Having saig that...let's suppose you're right, and google is "controlling" the flow of information. What do you propose to do about it? Your argument has already been effectively invalidated in US courts. <<
But my argument hasn´t been invalidated in The European Union courts, I guess.
I know many people posting here is just a reseller of Google and looks Google as its own business. All you are wrong. What is happening now with many honest webmasters, can happens with you tomorrow... and sure will happens.
Is no written rules for what Googlebot does. We need to take adivination and astrology master for understand what he does and why (and read what some Google speakers said at some forums as this one).Business are more serious than that.
As I said few days ago, we placed Google where it is now, and we need to remove for get better internet for the future.
Now MSN is looking pretty good! And can you say Yahoo!
Google was the Buzz, now the Fuzz.
To All Deleted Site Owners!
Contact The BBB.org Hit Them Where It Hurts!
email them now!
I know...we've been a member for over 10 years now, and they know what a frivolous complaint is.
Having said that....what would it accomplish? If google had the world's worst BBB rating, what would webmasters do - ask them not to include their sites?
The BBB exists for U.S. Based consumers who have conducted a business transaction they are unsatisfied with. Unless you've been paying for all the free advertsing google's been giving you - you don't have a complaint they will bother with.
Ask Search King how trying to go after google postively affects your business ;-)
But has not the right to ignore . Unlist and ignore a relevant websites is a public ban,is an offense
How is it an "offense" for Google to refrain from indexing spam, duplicate content, or other material that reduces the value of its search results?
Are you going to file a BBB complaint against Yahoo and the ODP because they don't list every site that wants to be included?
At any market, let a company with more that 50% is always a bad business for all, included consumers.
We need to find the way to place back Google, and let the market with another distribution, doing opposite effect to the one we do few years ago, helping to create this monster.
"How is it an "offense" for Google to refrain from indexing spam, duplicate content, or other material that reduces the value of its search results? "
Google listings can not be more devaluated as they are now, full of spam and with irrelevant and obsolete content.
As I said before, Google is unable to separate honest webmasters from spammers, and all bans they do, do not resolve nothing. Spammers stay there (much more that at Yahoo or MSN).
[edited by: carlosnx at 11:00 pm (utc) on Aug. 16, 2005]
Many coments and ideas of webmasters posting here are a very nice original content for start a information network about Google practices, contradictions and perversions of Google system.
At this moment only exist in internet 2 or 3 critic websites with Google with no impact at consumers. If anyone here thinking Google is not the better option for consumers, starts now an info website... network can grows fast. And think:
Term "Google" has 29.000.000 of searchs following Overture Term Suggestion Tool. "Sex" has only 8.000.000 That means, a network like that can get a lot of traffic.
