Media Giants Asking Google To Weight Its Content Higher

from the if-their-content-were-more-valuable... dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in the story from Ad Age, where a bunch of media giants have apparently been demanding that Google change its weighting algorithm, because they're upset at how low they appear, compared to other sites, including blogs. This is pretty amusing for a variety of reasons. A big part of the reason those media sites appear so low in the Google rankings is their own damn fault. For years, they tried to lock up the content behind paywalls and registration walls, and made their sites as un-user-friendly as possible. Thus, no one linked to them, they weren't a part of the conversation, and Google treated them exactly as it should. It's only now that those publications have realized the importance of the web that they're demanding that Google change to work with them? It seems more reasonable to simply point these media giants to an explanation of how the algorithm works, and tell them to get back to work creating a site that is more user friendly, with great original content, such that more people link to it. And then they'll be fine. But, apparently, that's just too much work.

Filed Under: google rankings, media, news, page rank