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12.12.07
Who will clean up Google’s mess?
Has anyone else felt that Google is coming off like an overbearing tyrant lately?
If you are not a webmaster, you probably think, “What? Google? Don’t they just help people find things on the web?” But, for us webmasters, it’s a bit of a different story. Behind that red curtain is a little man pulling some BIG strings.
The Internet has been maturing quickly over the past few years and it’s users have matured with it. In turn, webmasters have seen increasing competition and strive to draw attention in a burgeoning marketplace that somehow seems to grow more crowded each and every day. Competition is fierce and low-cost advertising has become all but extinct.
So, what’s an eager entrepreneur to do to advertise their site?
Basically, you have a few advertising options but most are ineffective. It would seem that resorting back to buying links and banners on websites is the grass roots of the Internet. I mean, in the beginning long before Google (hard to believe there was a time before Google, isn’t it?), the only thing we had were links and banners. In fact, they are the ultimate foundation for all things Internet.
Quite a commotion, however, has been stirred recently due to a rash of “de-listings” related to businesses buying and selling text links. Who’s place is it to tell people how they can or can not advertise their businesses? Google was founded on the idea of “Link Popularity”, but it sounds like they are unable to cope with “Purchased Link Popularity” to the point that they are just grabbing at straws now.
Realistically, it is up to the Search Engines to write an algorithm that takes into account things like purchased links and advertisements. It is not up to the Internet to bend to Google’s will or any other search engine’s will for that matter. I keep getting this overwhelming impression that webmasters are supposed to believe that “whatever is good for Google is good for the Internet.” It is arguable that people should not sell “PageRank”, because it is not a reliable indicator of true importance and because it can be manipulated. However, if you take away the “PageRank” or any other indicator of importance, what do you have left? Is the page then more or less important than it was before? No, not at all.
It is nice to be able to glance at some sort of indicator and get an idea of how important a website is considered, because that could help decide whether or not to advertise on it. But, uh-oh, that means we might be tempted to buy a text link or a banner on an important site. Is that bad?
Back in the day, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had the epiphany that links were a trustworthy judge of importance. As with everything, things change. People adapt, and so the webmasters adapted. As webmasters matured in knowledge of marketing, they began to realize the importance of the most basic forms of advertising. Perhaps a good many have tried to take the easy road to success and manipulate their way to the top, but the root of the problem is that -like all things- search engines and their algorithms must evolve.
Continuing on the current path will simply cause millions of webmasters to stop outbound linking to sites (at least not without rel=nofollow or using some other tricks), and that could potentially lead to a lot bigger problems than we have now.
The bottom line is that search engines must evolve and adapt or simply become obsolete. If that happens, who will be there to clean up Google’s mess?
read users' comments (13)
December 13th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Now you can say good bye to your page rank, boy!
December 13th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
I wholehardedly agree with what you say here especially the line about thinking the internet should bend to Google’s will! For a long time I’ve felt like Google’s biting the hand that feeds them but, because they’re so big and powerful now, they simply don’t care, they seem to get some kind of perverse and twisted pleasure out of messing with webmasters who simply want to earn a honest and decent living online. Did you ever see the indie film ” A Day Without Mexicans?” I wonder what Google would do if there were a day, a week, a month, or a year without advertisers?
December 13th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I think Google is going to be another MS!
December 13th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Maxine,
I haven’t seen that movie, but that’s an interesting thought! I agree with you about them biting the hand that feeds them. I saw a post a couple of months ago by someone who said that “Google made their livelihood off of links and now they want to pull the ladder up behind them.” Very insightful -to say the least.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
[...] just started this blog recently, and one of the first articles I wrote was an article about the mess that Google is creating. I had been writing that article in my head for months, and when I finished it; I showed it to a [...]
December 18th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Very good post, I recently lost all my page ranks because I used PayPerPost - who are Google to play god over what I post on my site.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Sorry to hear that, Pete. I totally agree. I think they should spend less effort trying to change human nature (i.e. to make a buck) and more effort on a better algorithm.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
The flipside of the argument is that Google’s authoritarian decision evens out the playing field for the little guys. Big companies or thosewith money to burn will have to go out and build backlinks the good old fashioned way– by hand or semi-automatic software which requires a person doing some actual work.
Never seemed fair to me that someone with a lot of money could buy PR& or PR8 backlinks and get themselves extremely well0ranked.
The Internet is suopposed to help the little guy make money. Not just the rich and powerful.
Google is a bully, to be sure. But I think this time they may have accidentally done a good thing.
That’s my two cents.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Well for crying out loud!!!!!
This sounds like the perfect opportunity for someone to build a search engine based on relevancy……
How about being able to do a search with ranking based on the most number of links (paid) (unpaid)
How about a search based on ranking due to traffic?
How about a search based on only the newest sites on the net in the last 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, etc., etc., etc. (that’ll get google googling, yahoo yahooing, and go going)
How about a search based only on actual total number of relevant keywords? or content? or whatever?
How about a search based on all of these items with the search engine determining the weight.
In other words, lets not gripe about how bad it is. Let’s create something people want.
And thats about all I’ve got to say about that!
Mark J. Montgomery
p.s. http:///www.largeincomes.info
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Hi Mark,
I totally agree and I did just that. I built a proprietary crawler, search engine, and ranking algorithm. My results are some of the best (although veeeery slow), but you need money or connections or both (in Google’s case) to really make an impact.
Thanks for the comment!
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I should append my last comment and say they “would” still be some of the best but I had to turn off the crawler due to the lack of horsepower on that dedicated server. But, it’s still a good proof of concept.
http://www.neobus.com
http://www.neobus.net
March 4th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
[...] way of “brainwashing” and “propaganda.” I see an opportunity for someone to clean up Google’s mess and provide good results the Google did back in their first few years. My first round submission [...]
April 28th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
THANKS…