Dear Google, I am writing an open letter from the search wilderness

http://www.tnooz.com/article/google-open-letter-search-wilderness/

by sunnykgupta • 12 years ago

41 84 12 years ago

natch• 12 years ago

TL;DR: Lamentably, Google has facilitated a transition to organic search results being strictly a money game for most categories, removing the joy of discovery and disproportionally impacting small businesses.

What's missing is a suggestion of how to fix it. Not an easy problem.

grey-area6• 12 years ago

I was wondering about this the other day, and considering another approach to search, which I'm sure others have thought of too as it's fairly obvious. To restate the problem:

For any given search term there are millions of hits

Of those hits, only the first 20 or so in a given ranking will ever be seen

This renders a huge amount of the internet invisible and a huge amount of indexing/linking moot

At present google uses what sounds like a very complex mix of signals about linking, reputation, novelty etc which it constantly tweaks, and delivers a relatively stable ranking which guarantees that those with deep pockets will win the game of ranking highest simply by buying top position or buying authority in various ways (sponsored blogs, buying authoritative domains, content farms etc).

Another approach would be to constantly inject random search results for a given term into results, and use solely reader reactions to results to rank them (registered user voting, do they come back to search results or not, sites chosen as high quality by this user, that sort of signal). So always have some randomly chosen results to guarantee mixing, and always include some degree of user input to give better and more relevant results chosen by humans. I think you could build good results like this, while completely ignoring any sort of complex ranking algorithm which is both too stable, too prone to gaming, and in conflict with the revenue stream of ads. Obviously you'd have to be careful about which users you listened to, but that is a solvable problem if you can persuade people to register to get better results.

It's definitely well past time for a few serious non-corporate competitors to google to emerge, if only to keep Google honest.

lingben• 12 years ago

how would you track the user inputs in order to create then rank the results further? via browsers? or...?

while I like your idea, I'm not sure if it is feasible and second, if there is an 'acceptable' method which most people will not object to or try to game.

for example, imagine 1000's of mechanical turks being paid cents to click and browse to a specific link in order to fool the algorithm you've set up

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

The problem with injecting search results is that most of the time, it is going to give users a worse experience, not a better one.

harryh2• 12 years ago

Which results users click on, and especially which results they click on and then don't come back is a huge input into Google's ranking algorithm.

In fact, this is pretty big barrier to entry when creating a competing search engine. Google's scale enables them to get a much better signal from this input than anyone else can.

lazyjones• 12 years ago

Not a solution, but a thought: it's easier to game a single search engine that owns the market than it would be to game 3 or 4 competing and different products with a significant market share each.

Google's success has its downsides.

mgamache2• 12 years ago

Okay. It's not Google's goal to provide the absolute best answer. They just want to avoid a wrong answer while providing an acceptable answer for a majority of searchers. Google has over-valued authority domains at the cost of smaller sites/blogs that have rich/deep/narrow content. Faking an authority domain is difficult using black-hat seo techniques so it's the sledge hammer that Google uses today. So yes, big sites are rewarded and the little guys are locked out if they try and compete.

evntik• 12 years ago

Gah! SEO posts are so tedious and annoying.

Maybe if your business depends mostly on search traffic to survive it shouldn't.

Further more publicly announcing that you must be entitled to it is embarrassing, specially when the plea is a thinly veiled "you used to be better" diatribe.

If it was written as a bug report I would be more sympathetic, as it would identify specific problems, highlight desired behavior and suggest a solution, but more importantly it would be brief and to the point.

anon13852• 12 years ago

It's always fun to see Google employees admitting that yes Google only exists to extract as much wealth as possible from the rest of the world and doesn't give a single shit about anybody or anything else. If only you were able to bring the same enlightenment to some of your colleagues who post here.

mgamache2• 12 years ago

The post is a bit winey, but it's a real problem. Google's search results are not much better then they were five years ago (worse in many cases). They are having a difficult time combating web-spam. Also, are you suggesting no business should try and create an ad supported website? To get the volume of viewers any public site needs organic search is a must.

lnanek2• 12 years ago

Don't really understand his point. Just because he is a little business and hates big brands doesn't mean users in general don't want big brands preferred in their search results. If someone is searching for a music video, yes, they most often mean the big brand currently at the top of the charts. If they are searching for electronics, yes BestBuy probably gives them better results than a tiny shop. Google does track clicks on results, so they do know which results the users actually prefer.

Kalium20• 12 years ago

It's basically a long-form complaint that Google doesn't show users what he wants it to.

RichardDHH5• 12 years ago

Nope its not. It illustrates the divergence between Google mission statement based on technology and position and evoved reality.

jccalhoun3• 12 years ago

his point is that his business isn't ranked as high on google as he thinks it should be.

bsenftner2• 12 years ago

His point is that none of the businesses in his industry can get a listing within their industry. His point is that intermediate "marketplaces" inject themselves into an industry and then control consumer access to that industry's products. These "marketplaces" are not actually in these industries - they are in the internet business aggregate industry, and serve the consumers very poorly, because after all the consumer is NOT their customer, their customer is their investors.

sroerick7• 12 years ago

His point is that Best Buy pays for that spot. If users truly wanted Best Buy at the top of their results and that happened organically, then great. That'd be great.

Instead, what has happened is that big brands are the only ones who can afford the cost of SEO, which raises the barrier to entry for everyone.

Call it Search Neutrality, if that helps get the point across.

Kalium20• 12 years ago

TL;DR: Google is giving users what they want instead of what I want, please change this.

Seriously, what this guy wants is a search engine that promotes what he wants over what users want. He fails to understand that Google became popular specifically because it didn't do that.

sunnykgupta• 12 years ago

Sensible summarisation.

asuffield3• 12 years ago

He goes a little further: he's objecting to the fact that Google is not acting as a "leveling" force to break up incumbent industries and change society. He appears to want them to act as a far-left government.

I don't really feel a need to rebut this desire, beyond saying "no".

anon13852• 12 years ago

It's kind of fascinating how the supposed economic and social benefits of the open web that people spent 20 years or more evangelising are dismissed as 'far-left' once powerful incumbents have cornered the market. Suddenly advocating for the destructive forces of open competition is the same as being a radical socialist.

sroerick7• 12 years ago

He's raising the observation that the easier it is to game Google, the less useful Google becomes.

He's not prescribing a solution. Much less the solution of Google becoming a "far-left government."

But screw equality and open access, right?

sroerick7• 12 years ago

I don't think that's an accurate TL;DR.

He's saying that Google is a plutocracy, not a democracy.

I have an joke/axiom for social networks: "It's not really a social network if you can buy your way onto it."

A search engine follows the same principles. If I can pay a SEO professional to have my results promoted, then information is not truly being organized.

kaoD2• 12 years ago

Your logic is flawed. Random results (which can't be gamed) are more organized by your standards.

I don't think so. It's the fact that results are organized what makes SEO possible.

bsenftner2• 12 years ago

Actually, what I read him saying is that none of the businesses in his industry can get a listing within their industry. His point is that intermediate "marketplaces" inject themselves into an industry and then control consumer access to that industry's products. These "marketplaces" are not actually in these industries - they are in the internet business aggregate industry, and serve the consumers very poorly, because after all the consumer is NOT their customer, their customer is their investors.

AJ0072• 12 years ago

He's not happy that aggregators are outranking the hotel's official website. I think this is a very valid complaint. The money aggregators take is used to fund Google visibility (paid or free) rather than for the hotels to use on other things.

There have been times in the past were Google's listings definitely were bad, like the whole Demand Media/content "farm" fiasco. The model of writing low quality and outright false content has largely moved from the how to articles on to news now, for better or worse.

The bigger issue is mobile means less results. A few ads and one or two visible organic listings. Google has to milk the hell out of desktop users to make up for lost revenue. If we move to voice search its going to really be different. You either dominate or get nothing, no in between.

Google has a model that works and makes a lot of revenue. They will not and can not innovate because those innovations will destroy the model. It is the same for any entrenched legacy corporation. Search is a good area to do innovative work in today.

Update: One other note. It was always clear to me that Google's business model was to provide huge volumes of free traffic, and then remove it. If you didn't buy traffic and you relied on that free organic stuff you were asking for trouble. Many companies have ranked organically for a term. Expanded, took on long term liabilities, and then lost their rankings and failed. Most of the business owner Google complaints we hear come from those type of people. You give someone a free drip of heroin, and then take it away and ask them to pay. They will not be happy.

Kalium20• 12 years ago

Often, aggregators are more useful than any given hotel's website.

If I am looking to fly somewhere, I probably don't want to be taken to United's or American's homepage. I probably want Orbitz or Hipmunk or some other site that will give me the comparison tools to make my own decisions.

His mistake lies in assuming that a hotel's site offers more value to users than the aggregators.

pessimizer5• 12 years ago

Google is giving users what they want

In what way? How did the size of SEO and marketing budgets somehow become the result of consumer desire rather than a manipulation of it?

Kalium20• 12 years ago

His complaint seems to be that users are shown links for aggregators rather than links for individual hotels.

I don't know about you, but when I google "Las Vegas hotels", I don't want to be shown Rio, Palms, Bally's, or Mandalay Bay at the top. I want an aggregator so I can compare and make my own decision. The same applies to flights - there's a reason I use Hipmunk and Orbitz instead of united.com.

Aggregators can offer more value to a shopping consumer than a hotel's site does. That's why Google is giving users what they generally want - a shopping user wants the ability to make comparisons.

RichardDHH5• 12 years ago

Users, specifically in this industry, often don;t find what they want. They find what the aggregator wants them to find, that's more often that not margin generated!

Kalium20• 12 years ago

Then perhaps what you actually need is a better aggregator rather than denying the value of aggregators.

It's almost like what Google did that made it popular!

jccalhoun3• 12 years ago

"There is however one area of Google’s vast and growing empire that gives rise for serious concern and this is its foundation, “Google Search”, the most used and admired search engine on planet Earth and in fact, our solar system, unless Jupiter’s moons are hiding a quantum search tool."

If this is how he always writes then no wonder his stuff isn't ranked higher. Eschew obfuscation!

sbierwagen• 12 years ago

Google doesn't owe you traffic.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

I agree, Google has increasingly focused on big companies, ever since they announced the "focus on brands" 5 or so years ago.

us0r• 12 years ago

This guy is ranking pretty good for most of the circle jerk linking scheme on the bottom of his page (which violates Google's policy - LOL if they slap him).

aurumpotest• 12 years ago

And yet the images he used in his letter came from Shutterstock, rather than directly contacting a photographer and checking they're okay with their image being used to illustrate the point he's making.

Not saying this isn't a problem, just that he doesn't like it when it brings him less money, yet he uses it in other industries because it's convenient.

Having some way to filter out the big agglomerators would be nice - obviously you can use 'buy used car -autotrader', but the majority of users don't realise they can do that, even if they would like to.

bhartzer• 12 years ago

Images are good, but not needed to get his point across.

RichardDHH5• 12 years ago

I am the author and there are no images, except a header at all in the original. They were added by TNOOZ.

Original is here: http://open-letter-to-google.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/open-let...

ohitsdom• 12 years ago

I don't think Google Search's goal was to ever help the user discover an unknown business. Its to give the user the best results for their search term (which, surprise, is the more popular businesses).

Not strictly on topic, but a post like this is hard to read with so many exclamation points! Just make your dramatic point through logic, don't force it on the reader via punctuation!

Dear Google, I am writing an open letter from the search wilderness

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