Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Google Press Release [izurl.com]
Answer highlighting helps you get to information more quickly by seeking out and bolding the likely answer to your question right in search results.
It's not a case of "you should have investigated further" but one of "I trust google to get it right, why should I go to a web site if the answer is in the results?"
I searched today, in the UK, for two words: (browsing-tool-name) bot
Google gave me 10 results, none of which even approached an answer (started with twitter, spurious whois, video etc). (I only get 10 results now since dumping google cookies.)
I switched to my other machine and entered the same search into startpage (which I mostly use now) and at least the first fifteen results of the 50 were relevant. I knew I should have done that in the first place but I hadn't then turned the machine on. :(
Furthermore, the results were a concensus of several sites, not one site's prejudice.
I'm having to keep google in mind for my customers' sites to make money but I don't have to use google for searching.
One of the judgment calls any site needs to make as this juggernaut grows is whether Answer Highlighting and Rich Snippets are helping them or not. I can imagine either possibility, depending on the specifics of the website. I would definitely test things like microformats pretty seriously before rolling them out sitewide for Google (or any search engine) to have their way with.
YellowPages ... Could even join the growing list of businesses that Google has steamrolled in recent times.
Or the list of companies who refuse to play friendly with Google...
Let's See:
Apple
Microsoft
Yahoo!
Mozilla / FireFox
NYT (Owns About.Com) & Murdoch
All 'Factual Information' Sites (How Many Are There?)
A Number of Webmasters (Possibly Large)
A Number of Advertisers (Possibly Large)
It seems easy to know things are not going to be friendly for you much longer when Apple and Microsoft talk about teaming up because of you... Personally, I would think all by itself Apple and Microsoft talks to displace you would be a little tiny 'hey, you've gone too far' signal, but they don't seem to 'get it' at Google...
[edited by: TheMadScientist at 1:33 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2010]
Google is treading on shaky ground. These actions may be a violation of copyright law.
If google is indeed finding the most valuable piece of information on a website, and publishing it without explicit permission
boplicity, they have permission through the ALLOW or DISALLOW in the robot.txt file, if that is not there, a htaccess file banning them from collecting data. In addition, their spidering and data collection TOS when you read it states that. If we don't want any info appearing on the SERPs, just DISALLOW. What they should introduce is ALLOW / DISALLOW snippets appearing and just what description we want them to in the meta description, and it's about time!
I could easily have a contradicting policy stated on my website they've ignored and they're visiting my site, not the other way around. (In fact I'm going to add one to all of my websites, which states: All visitors automated or otherwise have the right to use the title and description present on my website in reference to the website, but all other information present is intended solely for the use of my visitors while visiting my websites and any further unauthorized duplication or dissemination is strictly prohibited. Or, something to that effect with more thought through wording, because then IMO I have a better legal standing and if they disregard my terms of service it's on them, even if they use an automated system to do it.)
IMO They can set the terms for their website, but not mine. I'm fairly sure a good attorney could make a case against their right to consume and redistribute my copyrighted information because Google says I need to opt out on their website.
What you are essentially saying is I could re-use your site in whole or part anytime I felt like if I posted a policy on mine stating you need to opt out of me using it on my site to keep me from doing it... It's not a very good argument, IMO.
That's the legal side out of the way and I agree with you, however, seen suing G* by one or hundred million webmasters is not yet in the horizon, let's lobby for the introduction of ALLOW or DISALLOW ofsnippets of text appearing on the SERPs, surely that would alleviate this anxiety.
a judge would say why won't you have a lock (robots.txt file) and disallow them, they did not break an entry!
That doesn't seem to be the case WRT looting...
IMO No one has the right to enter your home uninvited and they certainly don't have the right to take anything even if they did not break and enter... It's still theft.
I let people into my sites to look around for free and doing so, IMO, does not preclude my ability to retain the right to my information or original work, especially since I have copyright statements on every page. If it did there would be no such thing as the DMCA.
A free showing of art at a museum or gallery does not mean the art is free... It means you can enter and look around, but does not mean you can take whatever you feel like, or reproduce the art contained within because I let you visit for free... It means I let you visit, not take whatever you feel like with you, the same way as if I let you into my house, even by leaving the door unlocked... If you leave with anything I did not explicitly give you it's still theft.
[edited by: TheMadScientist at 2:05 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2010]
If you leave with anything it's still theft...
On a serious note, what are we going to do about all this new revelation which it seems, it is for a lot of people. I am, like tesdter and many, no stranger to seeing on countless occasions on the SERPs most of the explanation I need without actually clicking to visit the concerned site, it's not new, what's new is the explicit and pin-point accurate large phrase.
Compare that to factual and news sites, most do syndicate content, but only allow a couple of phrases or so to entice the reader to visit the originator of that content, and of course publishing the whole work is not tolerated and in most cases is in breach of copyright. Instead, it is customary to only publish a synopsis or small summary with a link to visit and read more on the publisher's site. That was G*'s attitude and practice, to show a description or a snipped of the text and on the rare occasion, what the searcher was looking for was exactly that and did not need to visit the site, and that was a rare tough luck, but it's not so rare NOW, it's what exactly was sought will be shown I fear!
I believe the Caffeine algo includes dynamic presentation, that is if you search for "how to build green widgets using only brown widgets bought from joe blogg's store" will get you a site with a snippet: "hammer down four nails on top, wrap with aluminum foil, soak for 24 hours and you got green widgets using only brown widgets bought from joe blogg's store"!
On a serious note, what are we going to do about all this new revelation which it seems, it is for a lot of people.
Personally, all my sites informational sites will be AJAX where the information cannot be linked to directly (or spidered, which is more important) and if they get past that I'll ban 'em and promote the sites another way... No joke. My newest directory, which contains a number of addresses and phone numbers of businesses is pure AJAX and does not provide info to a search spider beyond the home page.
I think (hope) some of the major players (EG YellowPages) will do something similar, allowing access to the home page and not the actual information pages, and HOPEFULLY they will subsequently refuse to supply Google with the information for it's business directory... One of the things about Google is they rarely gather their own information and if they cut off the supply of that information (or drive the price up too much) then all the free services become even less profitable. (LOL)
People can think what they want about the type of visitor lost because of Google serving the answer in the results, IMO though, the end result is less clicks on the ads which hinders their revenue... Just because we don't click on ads or know how to search to find the answer doesn't mean other people can or don't. IMO The more times they provide the answer in the results the more everyone's revenue declines, including theirs.
Do you think people will click on a YellowPages ad when the answer is highlighted in the SERPs? How about the ad for a product on Amazon? Will they click that ad? Or, maybe that's the plan and Google will move to where the 'one-right-answer' is highlighting the text provided by the highest bidder? It's not Pay-For-Inclusion ... It's Pay-To-Be-Seen!
"hammer down four nails on top, wrap with aluminum foil, soak for 24 hours and you got green widgets using only brown widgets bought from joe blogg's store"!
LOL, Yeah & Scary at the same time...
[edited by: TheMadScientist at 2:59 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2010]
On a serious note, what are we going to do about all this new revelation which it seems, it is for a lot of people.
worry about traffic from other sources and foster the relationships you have with your customers or subscribers.
good follow up campaigns, spreading word of mouth, autoresponders, opt-in pages/boxes, list building.
start diversifying traffic NOW! start getting yourself off of adwords.
I've already made a happy home at yahoo and bing, microsoft has A+ top notch customer support for all adcenter users! I even have a.........PHONE NUMBER and......EXT to a rep that KNOWS ME and will SPEAK TO ME ON A PHONE
thats a real glass of cold water in the face to everyone that has used adwords.
no puzzles to solve there, you have a question they've got the answer and will work with you on fixing it.
Yeah, I'm not too happy with 'em, but I'll give credit where I think it's due and IMO they're just plain smart...
Or, maybe that's the plan and Google will move to where the 'one-right-answer' is highlighting the text provided by the highest bidder? It's not Pay-For-Inclusion ... It's Pay-To-Be-Seen!
IMO Without going through the whole, 'WOW, that seems to create an inflationary spiral in their favor...', thought I just had, I think the preceding is the 'one-right-answer' to where Google's headed... You'll still be able to have your site included in the index, but will you be found without paying IMO is another question entirely. Maybe I'm nutty, but it sure seems to make sense when you really stop and think about it for a minute or three...
If you go to Kinko's and try to photocopy a book, they'll stop you. Kinko's paid $500,000 dollars in damages because people were copying books (look up "Basic Books vs. Kinko's Graphics Co.")
Google is doing the same thing: copying books without permission. This violates copyright law. You do a search, and hey, there's text from a book about it. And hey! you can buy the book from... Google! This will kill publishing, authors, book stores, etc.
Google is using a legal ploy: they will "settle" a class action lawsuit with a few lousy million dollars which will entitle Google to be the sole authorized book scanner. It's a fake settlement.
The world's information becomes something controlled by a single company in perpetuity. Every book, every magazine, everything form of information... controlled by one company.
Google is out to collect information. What for? The issue of Chinese hackers is not about human rights or censorship. The Chinese hacked into Google's "Internal Intercept System", i.e., Google's backdoor into everything: every gMail account, every Google docs account, everything on the cloud. Why does Google have this? For the NSA and the Patriot Act. They are monitoring everything.
If Google really wants to do no evil, they must stop the book scanning and delete the scans. We can not have all information controlled by one entity.
If Google really wants to do no evil, they must shut down and remove the Internal Intercept System. A basic human right is freedom of expression. We should be able to read and discuss without surveillance. In China, in the USA, everywhere.
So all of you know: Google reads Webmaster World. They assign people to read these threads. They copy items and distribute it in an internal Google newsletter. So, Google, you're reading this. Yes, you, Sergey, Larry, and Eric. What you're doing is deeply wrong. It's "legal", but it's wrong.
So all of you know: Google reads Webmaster World.
<ot>
LMAO. I'm sure they do and keep wondering if my sites are going to be banned as a little 'hey, shut your pie hole' message or something? LOL... I actually think they probably enjoy watching us trying to figure out what they're doing, and if they're actually reading this I wish GoogleGuy would make a brief re-appearance to let me know if he and Singal play 1-on-1 Asteroids or if they play team-interoffice Battleship to make major decisions or when there's a dispute over a resultset between the spam / not-spam teams?
</ot>
Eventually, if nobody is visiting sites and just taking Google’s word for it, their index will go downhill because nobody is going to want to give them free information with nothing in return.
Now, you provide useful content to Google and Google provides you visitors. If they take the majority of the visitors out of the equation, there is no reason to keep providing them useful content now is there.
I predict Google will have less than 50% market share of search buy the end of the 2010 and it will keep declining. They have too many things going on and really have no clue what they’re doing anymore.
Alta Vista turned to dust practically overnight and it can happen to Google just as easily.
I think what this should be is a big wake-up call to everyone to run their website like a business, not a hand-out from Google (or any other SE) because those freebies can disappear rapidly and it puts people in a tough position if they're not used to having to do anything for their traffic.
I would say now, more than ever before is a good time to move away from not only 'Google Dependence' but overall 'free search inclusion dependence' because as much as I don't like it, the reality is Bing is probably going to end up going the same direction... Google's just getting there first in many ways, so they're getting the most heat. It's a catch 22 type thing, IMO...
I do think things will level out, which is good for everyone, but will Google disappear? IMO not soon if somehow they do. One of the cool things about this and the 'anti-Goog' sentiment it seems like we're having is it could bring about a more even playing field, which engenders competition and competition is good for all of us... Lack of competition leads to complacency and settling for 'good enough' rather than finding a way to do things better.
[edited by: TheMadScientist at 5:35 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2010]
There's been something of a slippery slope since Google declared that they did not wish to index search results pages. From the enduser's viewpoint, the fewer number of clicks to reach their desired destinations, the better.
This thread doesn't mention the second part of that announcement blog post of Google's: they have rolled out rich snippets for events, for sites which have the proper markup -- such as for pages which have hCalendar microformat information. I wish they'd mention when they might roll out some of the other types of Rich Snippet data types.
There's been something of a slippery slope since Google declared that they did not wish to index search results pages. From the enduser's viewpoint, the fewer number of clicks to reach their desired destinations, the better.
Yeah, and quite a few of the things they are doing are cool from the end-user's POV, even if I don't like it, and thinking about it led me to think 'Holy Cow, They Smaaaaaart!' ...
Here's the thought I started with earlier: Assuming the guys who started and run Google are fairly intelligent, what's their long-term plan to make this idea work if ad clicks are their main revenue right now?
IOW If they eliminate the need for the ad clicks, they eliminate their main revenue stream, so what's their long-term plan for viability?
They have to have one, so what is it?
[edited by: TheMadScientist at 6:11 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2010]
That's essentially the approach I took when I was in B&M retail, and it's the same strategy behind the idea of a loss leader, pioneered by supermarket chains. You lead with an offering that doesn't make you any money, even one that loses money, because it generates goodwill and customer retention. And good marketers know that customer retention takes MUCH less investment than customer acquisition.
they have permission through the ALLOW or DISALLOW in the robot.txt file, if that is not there, a htaccess file banning them from collecting data. In addition, their spidering and data collection TOS when you read it states that. If we don't want any info appearing on the SERPs, just DISALLOW.
Nonsense.
This is what Google and their countless fanbois have relentlessly promoted over the years: "Use robots.txt to prevent indexing." And this is utter nonsense.
There is no copyright law (not in the U.S., and not where I live) that requires webmasters to use a robots.txt file. Copyright has always been "opt-in" (you have to actively seek permission to use copyright protected works) instead of "opt-out" (you may use copyright protected works UNLESS the owner denies this). The only exception is "fair use", where under very tight rules you may use copyright protected works without seeking prior approval.
Unfortunately, with the introduction of the DMCA the copyright law has been seriously weakened in the U.S., because sites like Youtube could -in certain situations- accept "user created content" that is copyright protected (i.e. stolen). And the site owner has to take the infringing content down if the owner of the content files an infringement notification.
But this does not affect the way the copyright process works in general, and how it should be applied in this case.
On a serious note, what are we going to do about all this new revelation which it seems, it is for a lot of people.
Use your sites to promote other search engines and to write about how evil Google really is. Convince friends and family and customers and colleagues to no use Google as a search engine, and to avoid basically all Google products (be they Google branded or not). Stop using Google products yourself (including Analytics).
Including YouTube? That would be a hard one for me to sell to my circle.
Yeah, I know. We're all "on Google" to a certain extent. Some more, some less, some (like me) are on Google-detox. The effect is quite healthy, I think.
I am using Bing 99% of the time now, with Google only finding use when I really need a different view. I block Adsense, Analytics, Doubleclick. Bing maps is good. Yeah, I do play the occasional Youtube video, but for free video hosting there are other options.
But I suggest to start slowly and do not use or promote Google for search. This is the starting point. If enough people stop using and promoting Google search, the evil empire will come down:
Less search traffic >> less relevance for webmasters >> less incentive to jump through hoops for Google >> less incentive to promote Google (or let Google scrape your content) >> less relevant search results >> less search traffic ...
And of course, there is the commercial avenue:
Less search traffic >> less relevance for advertisers >> less incentive to advertise on Google >> less revenue for Google
So the real starting point is to deprive Google from its search traffic (while adding in non-Google traffic sources to your traffic mix).
Use your sites to promote other search engines and to write about how evil Google really is. Convince friends and family and customers and colleagues to no use Google as a search engine, and to avoid basically all Google products (be they Google branded or not).
So we get them to use Bing, which has extended snippets which do exactly the same thing, but to far more sites.
