Does Google Need An Independent Review Board To Look Over Rankings?
from the one-idea dept
As yet another lawsuit gets underway about a site that's unhappy with its Google ranking, Jack Schofield at the Guardian has a suggestion for the company: have an independent "ombudsman" review complaints to make sure that Google is treating sites fairly (BugMeNot pointlessly required to view the link). The suggestion was made to a VP at Google who promptly ignored it (or, rather, looked thoughtful and said "Um.") While these lawsuits seem silly, this suggestion could have some value. One of the big complaints about Google is that it acts like a big faceless monolith when it comes to some of the decisions made. People get upset not just because their rankings decline, but that there's (1) no explanation for why and (2) no way to appeal. Having a process for appeals -- even if it doesn't change many rankings, could help many sites feel more comfortable with their ranking.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Quiet Right
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Puh-leeze!
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RE: Quite Right
You need to hire someone to verify that you are maintaining your yard to your neighbors satisfaction. After all they do have to look at it.
Also, we should hire agents to ensure we are dressing properly and that we have no BO.
As the last 3 post have pointed out - it is not Google’s job to change their product to make certain websites happy - it is their job to maintain their product ... a commodity - not a necessity, as they wish. If they screw it up it will cost them in the long run.
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I agree...
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Shades of the Nineties!!
Anyone remember "doorway pages"? You'd see them every so often in search result summaries: unreadable gibberish whose only purpose was to present some combination and frequency of keywords, in order to get a high search ranking. Doorway pages' "killer feature" was the Javascript that redirected you to the target.
Yahoo! got tired of fighting this method of artificially getting one's customers' pages to rank highly, so it began selling information about how it ranked pages. It even changed its strategies just to be able to have new information to sell. At the height of the craze, there were *quarterly* revisions.
Then Google showed up, right when I was in the midst of grokking the whole thing in order to knock off some very, very expensive software which generated thousands of these pages--and "deployed" them using dedicated "cloaking servers" to prevent blacklisting.
Yes. The major search engines actually spent time and money to detect "too-frequent" updates/deployments.
Google's arrival blew the whole thing right out the water, in my opinioin. My main proof of this is how quickly and sharply they were demonized for having developed a more fair (and less tamperable) ranking scheme.
So now people seem to be getting upset because *they* can't influence *their*own* rankings as well as *they*think* someone else is influencing *theirs*. I guess the game looked easier than it has turned out to be.
The whole thing gives me hope for modern politics, which is all about marketing, anyway. I guess you really can fool some of the people all of the time.
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tough call
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Well...
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once you start hand ranking 1 result, you have to hand rank them all.
There's no minimal amount. It's all or nothing.
if one person complains and gets a better rank, everyone will.
if one of these website owners were to follow the matt cutts blog, or the webmaster guidelines put out by google, they wouldn't see any problems at all.
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Search 2.0
Of course, now with a billion or so sites--you can't expect hand reviews, however, why can't we as users rank them?
I, like many others, have the google toolbar--why can't I search on my phrase, and then when I find the site/information I was looking for--rank it on the toolbar so it sends it back to google?
If the millions of users did this--gateway sites, and cluster keyword sites would eventually drop, and the cream would rise.
I know that "Web 2.0" is being overhyped, but having users rank/manage your content certainly works for Amazon, Craigslist, etc--why not for a search engine?
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Re: Search 2.0
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Re: Search 2.0
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choice
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It's important to note that websites are not Google's customers (except through ad purchases). Searchers are.
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No
Google provides a service and if people don't like that service, they can complain to Google. If Google chooses not to respond or resolve the complaint, then that opens up the doors for litigation by the offending/offended parties. This is how capitalism works, you have the right to run the company largely in your own way, but if you piss off your customers, then prepare to accept responsibility for it. The legal system gives everyone a fair chance to resolve their issues in court, regardless if its Joe Blow web Schmo or Google.
While there are universal laws about how a company is supposed to be set up and maintained and protects both entrepreneur and customers rights, the moment the government steps in and says this is how your supposed to run your company specifically, then that is the day communism takes over the world.
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The Rating is the point
So I don't see how you can nag at someone because they think your website isn't the best in the world.
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It would be nice if Google could counter sue these mindless nutsacks for these frivolous lawsuits.
PS. There are other search engines out there.
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Relax
The post above by Ryan describing a slippery slope whereby instituting any sort of review of individual complaints completely destroys Google's current system is ridiculous. That just isn't how it works. Just because people CAN do something doesn't mean they WILL.
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NO
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The beauty of Google is it's granite-hard OBJECTivity.
Google shouldn't tarnish that beauty to satisfy manipulative whiners who would prefer that rankings be SUBJECT to their own self-interest.
These people calling for an ombudsman are upset that they can't effectively fake popularity to Google's algorithms. They need to focus more on the appeal of their own sites than on overriding Google's method of measuring that appeal.
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It boils down to a vector based text based system than uses many layers including forensics to determine when, what why how and who. Just look at the rise and fall and history of the company SEO Inc. and how they fell hard when Google decided to shift it's algorithm to defeat SEO Inc.'s linking scheme. Much can be learned from that event.
Google has been very on point with it's mechanism to determine fair play and give a shot at the rising underdog who plays by the rules of Google. It is just another example of people will large amounts of cash looking for a shortcut. The web has many sites which have faller prey to the fallacy that there are shortcuts for being found by Google. I for one believe that Google is correct. Play by the rules or get lost forever.
There is a great tutorial that outlines these rules by a website named seo-guy. It is a point by point reference to how to get found by Google's spiders and bots. Check it out. There is much anecdotal evidence as to how Google find and ranks sites. Much of this information has been put together from many hard lessons over time. (Can you say Link Farm ?)
Ignoring the rules of Google and thinking that there is an easier softer faster way to get found by Google is done at great peril. Anyone telling you that money can buy you fast 'page rank' is either lying or has no clue.
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Why?
Because when I'm trying to research a product, I don't like the fact that 90% of the search results are stores trying to sell the product and not an objective site with a review or information on how to use the product.
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erm...
I think this smacks of 'it's not fair' .... boo hoo (as Roy said earlier)
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Independent recview board!
The idea is simply not feasible.
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Do I smell socialism?
Google invents something that everyone wants, but that noone absolutely has to have.
Now people are gaming the system (as people always do), and other people are complaining that they are being unfairly treated.
So, instead of the onus being on the complainers to be smarter than the gamers or put more time in or invent something of their own or improve what Google has or ANYTHING productive, the suggestion is...
Have Google spend a bunch of time, money and energy on placating the whiners, so that they don't have to do anything themselves. Marx would be so proud.
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Google Page Rank Lottery!
Fortunately I continue to score well within its search placements for various terms associated with British Vacations, which tends to demonstrate that there is no direct correlation between Google search results and Google Page Rank!
When it comes to locating on-page information the likes of Yahoo are far better to use for searches.
I fear Google is now penalizing websites that derive a revenue from advertising on their websites, which if you think about it is where Google likely receives most of its own revenue from!
For my own part I no longer concern myself too much with Google searches and Page Rank results – why spend half of your life trying to court Google, especially when they change the rules so often?
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