May 3, 2006
Are advertisements killing search engines?
by Stephen Baker
I’ve given up on Google for travel. The results are too polluted with optimized sites that fail to give me the answers, phone numbers and addresses I need. So instead of exploring the whole wide world of travel options, I box myself into Orbitz. It gives me limited options, but it works.
Yesterday at the Search Meeting in Boston, Stephen Arnold was making the case that optimization is perverting search and displacing “relevance.” He warned of serious consequences for research, since many current students rely heavily on search engines and rarely visit a library. He also pointed to the dangers of an optimized/adsense-dominated search scene. Imagine parents whose child is having a severe allergic reaction. They rush to Google for answers, but instead of finding the answer–perhaps on an un-optimized government site–they encounter pages and pages of promotional sites from pharmaceutical companies.
Of course, search isn’t that bad for most subjects. But looking ahead, the market forces driving optimization are only going to grow. Is there a way for us, as we swim through oceans of data, to filter out the hawkers and hypesters and get the answers we want? Or will we find clarity only in enhanced fee-based services?
09:50 AM
Comments
I know we all think of Google and the web as some vast storehouse of information, but that’s a naive viewpoint to have. The barriers to entry for publishing a website are so incredibly low it’s not even worth discussing. While there are valuable and accurate medical resources on the web such as WebMD, going to google and typing in ‘allergic reaction to carrots’ is like walking down down to Times Square and shouting the same question and taking the advice of the first stranger who happens to give you an answer. There’s no ‘truth’ or ‘accuracy’ factor that google uses when ranking results. While the ranking algorithm is made up of over 100 factors, one of the most important is the measure of a website’s inbound link authority or trustworthiness. The theory being if a site has lots of links from other trusted sites we’ll assume it’s trustworthy and therefore accurate. While many government sites have this trust, the site architecture is so poor, other signals of quality or topical relevance don’t exist, and subsequently the search engines can’t find the good pages.I don’t think most publishers of the adsense pages set out with the intention of providing false or misleading information, they are simply filling a void that exists between search ranking algorithms and unnavigable and non user friendly site design and construction. If there’s one thing to remember it’s that nature abhors a vacuum.Posted by: graywolf at April 26, 2006 10:39 AM
Fascinating discussion. It reminds me of the critiques of Overture in the late 1990s, before it became the business model that everyone copied–including Google.Posted by: Heather Green at April 26, 2006 10:40 AM
the fundamental flaw that i see with all meta search solutions is that they are working from a polluted pool. in an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible, google, yahoo, et al grab everything they can find, and then apply their algorithms.this backdrop provides for a cat and mouse game between savvy web marketers and the search engineers. because the stakes are so high (for both sides), a great deal of time and money are devoted to manipulate the results, one way or the other. in time, other sites will fill the void for searchers looking for more relevant results.Posted by: greg at April 26, 2006 11:05 AM
Steve,This has long been a concern to small business owners. If you do a search for Pacesetter Mortgage (My mortgage company), http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pacesetter+mortgage You will not only find lot’s of ads but if you look to the right hand column, you will also find companys who are posing as Pacesetter Mortgage. My company’s identity is being stolen from the likes of: applyontheweb.com fundslender.com expert-expert.com zessco.com If you click on some of these thieving websites you will see that they do a pretty good job of confusing the consumer to make it look like it is actually me!!!!! I have written Google and Yahoo about this practice to no avail. I am all for search and what the internet has done in terms of productivity, but having another company out there stealing my company’s identity pisses me off!! To make it worse, there doens’t seem to be any way to prevent it. David Porter President/CEO Pacesetter Mortgage Company “Pissed off in Okemos”Posted by: David Porter at April 26, 2006 11:23 AM
Hi Stephen,The fact that you abandoned Google for Orbitz is just another signal that people are beginning to favor “Vertical” search engines, and “Local” Search over a global search engine like Google. Vertical and Local search provide a narrower and more relevant search result. IMHO, it seems that Vertical and Local search is the way people will be conducting most of their searches in the not too distant future. BTW, human-edited web directories (DMOZ, Best of the Web, etc.) are also a good way to get highly relevant information.Posted by: Shimon Sandler at April 26, 2006 12:12 PM
The web is a great source of both info and dis info. It’s not the advertising that makes things hard. That device invented by Alexander Gram Bell called a telephone has become. You can’t have personal contact with business. Everthing is voice mail. It woud be nice to be able to make a simple phone call instead of bouncing around web sites all day. In short, no voice, I don’t buy from them!Read more…
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