Google Update Gives Nod to Big Brands, Google's Own Properties

Big G takes on the content farms in this satiric video

It was just a few weeks ago that we wrote a rather mild little story headlined, "Forget Congress, Google Has Big Public Perception Problems."

We noted that the search engine once applauded for helping consumers find just what they're looking for faces not only an antitrust investigation but a growing public perception that it is using its dominant position to push its own products and squash competitors.

Late last Wednesday, Google implemented the latest update to its search algorithm and by the weekend, we were No. 2 on the latest Big Losers list, having lost more traffic than anyone but Myspace.com, according to statistics from Searchmetrics, which chronicles the ups and down of what's known as search engine optimization (SEO), the techniques sites use to try to stay on top of the search results returned by Google, Bing and the other search engines.

Now, no one is suggesting the trip to the woodshed was intentional but the industry watchers who write about SEO issues are finding it worrisome that while Google-owned properties rose in the latest algorithm update, sites that might be seen as competing with Google fell.

Losers

Here are the top ten losers, as compiled by Searchmetics:

Winners  

 And here are the top ten winners:

The biggest winner was none other than Google's very own YouTube.  Other sites that moved way up in the ratings were big corporate video sites -- Hulu, MTV, NBC, CBS and HBO.

Could it be that the new algorithm gives more weight to heavy video content?  Or might it be that Google is giving higher rankings to big corporate sites that get more "direct" visitors -- meaning visitors who find the site themselves, without using a search engine?

Might it be that Google thinks its previous rankings gave too much credence to text-heavy sites?  Maybe it thinks its users can't read very well and would rather just look at videos?

The answer, of course, is no one knows and Google certainly isn't saying. About all it shares are the internal working names of its various updates (we are currently in the "Panda" era).

"We're continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users," a Google spokesperson told WebProNews Friday. "This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year."

Google has always maintained a heavy veil of secrecy about just what goes into its searches, making the reasonable claim that if it went public with the information, everyone would rejigger their sites to serve up whatever Google was looking for.

Self-determination

On the other hand, maybe if the specifications were public, users could make their own decisions about which sites best met their needs instead of letting Google make that determination in advance?

Google's claim that it knows best begins to sound a bit hollow if one asks how it sounds when governments make the same claim.  Do we admire China for blocking content its rulers don't find helpful?

Not long ago, one of ConsumerAffairs.com's founders started a small local news site, planning to draw on his 50 years in journalism to light up a little corner of the world.  But when he applied to be included in Google News, the search giant responded that his site didn't meet certain standards.

Which ones? he asked.  Sorry, can't tell you, replied Big G.  Google seems to find it worthwhile to list every newspaper that carries an identical AP or Reuters story but seemingly finds no value in a small local site that actually has content not duplicated elsewhere, even though it has always maintained that "original content" is high on its list of positive factors.  

Whether ceding prior approval of which news sites should be revealed to public view bodes well for vigorous journalism might be a suitable topic for debate in the groves of academe.  

Others think all of this is irrelevant since the Internet, in their opinion, is a marketplace for goods and services, not ideas.  Some of Google's harshest critics have adopted this viewpoint.

A widely-watched video uses satire to cast aspersions Google's way.