Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
if you then click on the film names, you get another of google's own pages with more info and google's own user reviews.
my point is this... if you do a search for cinemas in london you no longer have to bother visiting any of the sites that come up on the first page. all you need is google's own information which they provide at the top.
they have effectively supplanted the index with their own stuff.
do you think google are starting to overstep the mark when they do stuff like this?
i doubt very much that they are employing someone to update all this film data by hand. they must be getting it from the sites in their index and then regurgitating it, at the expense of us.
in the case of google news, google was quick to point out that newspapers benefit from being listed because the site drives traffic to their papers. but how is this going to drive traffic to the cinema's sites? google has scrapped all the juiciest bits and served it up to the user already.
Moderator note: Normally we don't allow the posting of specific searches or market areas. For the purposes of this discussion we'll make an exception, but let's limit it to search terms already noted.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:06 pm (utc) on Aug. 28, 2009]
do you think google are starting to overstep the mark when they do stuff like this?
How so? If your site is about widgets and you've got content about widgets, won't you link to your own widget content before you link to third-party pages on that topic? Wouldn't you expect any Web site (including Google.com) to do the same?
there is no need to visit any of the sites listed below.
in five years from now... people will go to google to find information, and google will give it to them off the cuff. we won't get a look in.
[edit-]
do you remember when the EU had a go at microsoft for monopolising stuff. people need programs, and people need an operating system to run them, so when the people who make the operating system bundle it with all the programs for free, that is unfair on the program makers. because they don't get a look in.
what is the difference between that and what google are doing?
people need the information on websites, and they need a search engine to find them. so when the people who make the search engine bundle it with all the information for free, that is unfair on the website owners. because they don't get a look in.
the EU should start looking at splitting google up and separating the search engine from everything else.
Do you mean that Google's page came up first in the organic rankings (earning the top spot on its own merits)? Or was it artificially placed above the organic rankings?
have a look at the share price one too, that is a better example. why would anyone need to visit the links below?
You can see this kind of thing in many types of searches, and the phenomenon is growing. For example, if you rank #1 on a phrase that suddenly becomes a big news topic, then you may well get pushed to #2.
We're talking about the Google mechanism known as Universal Search [webmasterworld.com]. When a search phrase is deemed a candidate for a Universal Search result of some kind, that result does get sort of forced into a certain position, often #1 or #4.
Here' the way I see it - look at the phrase "supplanting our top pages". It reads like a complaint that implies some kind of wrong-doing. Google never said they were running a contest that would hand out "top page" awards. They say that they are organizing the world's information.
If our pages get displayed prominently in this free traffic source, then that is a kind of boon for us. But it's not a right of ours that Google later violates if they organize the information in a different way.
It does hurt to lose traffic, especially when that traffic source has become a regular thing over many years. However, Google clearly has every right to create results pages as they wish, and users will either like it and use it, or abandon it if they don't like it.
[edited by: tedster at 9:09 pm (utc) on Aug. 28, 2009]
they must be getting it from the sites in their index and then regurgitating it
If this is the case, then I agree that it is unethical and potentially actionable. However, if Google identifies an area of interest where they can go directly to the source for the information (which I think applies to both movies and stock quotes) then they have every right to display it in their results.
...people want some information, so they type in a phrase and are given a list of sites containing that information.
but now google are actually giving them that information themselves -- that is a whole different thing.
i don't see the difference between that and the microsoft example.
people need search engines to find other sites, just like they need operating systems to run programs.
if the search engines are now providing the actual information above the search results, just like microsoft were providing the programs along with the operating system, then why do we need the websites?
they need to separate the two.
obviously i know it's not that bad yet, but that's the way it seems to be heading.
[edited by: londrum at 9:15 pm (utc) on Aug. 28, 2009]
in five years from now... people will go to google to find information, and google will give it to them off the cuff. we won't get a look in.
If your site is merely supplying raw information that can be obtained anywhere or licensed from a multitude of sources (a la stock prices, movie listings, metric-English conversions, or the current National Weather Service forecast), you aren't planning for the future. Instead of complaining, wouldn't it be more productive to add value to the information so users and search engines will find it more attractive?
now they are providing actual content
They have been doing that for several years and in many areas. Google accesses many sources of information in many areas through partnerships, and they then blend that into the page. They are constantly testing which search phrases should and should not display this kind of information, and even at what time of day it should be included.
