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Stuck In Google's Doghouse
hansoloaf writes "The NY Times is running an article about a business, Sourcetool.com that seem to be in a sort of a doghouse with Google. Initially Sourcetool uses AdWords to help build up its business. The business centers around providing links for business that sell industrial products. The owner, Dan Savage, explains in detail how Google over time used its AdWords bidding system to limit or reduce Sourcetool's ranking and revenue because the site's landing page is not 'googly' enough. Savage wrote a letter to the Justice Department as they are reportedly looking into Google and Yahoo's proposed deal." The article is nuanced in its observations about the complexity and ambiguity of anti-trust law. Even if Sourcetool and similar businesses aren't "Googly" — which is a Google proxy for "what the customer wants to see in search results" — should Google be able to pick winners and losers among industries and business models?
If
The Google rules are:
1) well understood
2) documented
3) Non-arbitrary
I'm sure google will be able to defend them in court.
However, whenever I hear people discussing them, 2) is not true, on the argument that they would be gamable otherwise.
I predict a loss for Google. Without documentation they can't prove they're not arbitrary. If they're arbitrary, they're acting like a monopoly and need to be struck down. From "do no evil" to "do the only evil that's actually explicitly forbidden by law for a company". It's quite a drop
RTFA - his site is more than just a collection of ads. It's a huge searchable directory that had some ads on it to generate profit.
I know reading the article isn't popular, but on this occasion it's important. Parent really isn't being insightful.
Amnesty International
Bingo...
The website is a link farm. and it's a whiney butt complaining that their semi shady business is pissing off google.
Honestly, I think any link-farm site needs to be delisted.
"googley" stands for a honest and real website and not a site page that is designed to list links to other places purely to build google page ranks for other sites.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One of the greatest annoyances of Google (to those of us techies searching for answers) is "Expert's Exchange". Google gets to see the answers, but anyone searching for those answers doesn't get them, but is told to sign up and pay money for a "premium subscription".
There are ways around this, but this is all an annoyance and a pain to deal with, because the answers are readily and freely available on the Internet, and they would be much easier to find if the search results weren't clogged up with this type of garbage result.
So why aren't they in the "doghouse" too? (while we're at it, It would be great to move all the scientfic access-for-pay journals to a separate "scientific" google while we're at it -- they end up being half the results of my searches sometimes, but at least they aren't the tease that the EE site is)
...has morphed into a "pay to play" scam, where you either pony up what Google demands, or else choose not to do business with Google. I've used AdWords for a couple of years now. This past year, I've noticed a disturbing trend: When I select relatively obscure (but valid) AdWords, with low CPC traffic estimates, it takes about a day before Google exponentially increases the price -- sometimes by a factor of 10, even more. And here's the kicker: Google does not give you the choice of paying to rank "in the middle of the pack". Instead, it's all or nothing: Either pay the exorbitant price tag Google now demands for the number #1 slot, or don't run your keywords at all.
This makes sense, in that it ensures that Google can take in maximum revenue for each keyword, rather than varying levels based upon what customers are willing to pay. As is to be expected from a publicly-traded company seeking to maximize shareholder value.
As a small business owner, I simply can't compete with (1) the click fraud that's rampant in AdWords, (2) the ability of well-heeled businesses such as eBay to bid up random AdWords to excessive CPC values, and (3) legitimate companies who can afford the number 1 AdWord slot for a keyword.
The sooner people realize that Google is not craigslist and has no reason to support anything that does not directly and positively affect its bottom line (thereby further enriching its shareholders), the sooner we'll get alternatives out there from companies and individuals who truly believe in enhancing usability and accessibility for the typical Internet denizen (read: you and me).
Many industrinal suppliers have horrible web sites. I buy a lot of Allen-Bradley products, and while I've learned to navigate their web site, I hate it with a passion.
Imagine that you need to know something about a switch, maybe an 800T-J91A. Do you want:
Guess which usability model they went with...
Roughly 2 years ago I wrote Google about my mother searching for cancer information only to be presented with link farm results. They promptly replied with an uncanned email to the effect they were fully aware of the situation and that they were actively weeding out the "pollution" (their word not mine).
That said, even if there is a remote possibility Sourcetool.com is not farming pay-per-click links (and I highly doubt it), he is simply a casualty of war and one which I'm glad Google is actively fighting.
Yes, except you've forgotten a critical point... Companies who advertise and pay them money are their customers, not the masses who use their services for free.
Hmm, so Honda, Toyota, Ford, etc. should care what their dealers want, and not what the people who buy their cars from the dealers want?
Allow me to address briefly the two principal charges against Sourcetool: (1) that we are an arbitrager and (2) we are a link farm. Regarding the first point, I would argue that anyone conducting an online business these days is a arbitrager in that they hope to make more money on a visits to their site â" or on the repeat visits â" than it costs them to get people to their site. Even an ecommerce site is conducting a form of arbitrage. Unfortunately, with Google being the only game in town, we either have to figure out how to appear in the organic results â" which is virtually impossible for any directory other than Google Local â" or buy ourselves traffic from AdWords. While a handful of consumer websites might be able to capture word of mouth buzz and build an audience outside of Google, that is virtually impossible for B2B sites, the vast majority of which are lucky to get 100 visits a day. Most of my competitors in the business to business space charge companies for their position in their organic, which by the way is a much more profitable way to generate revenue on B2B site than running AdSense. I decided to do things in a very transparent way, clearly labeling the AdSense ads which made it much more obvious how I made money. The arbitrage issue dovetails into the link farm issue. How and when does a site become a link farm? Is Google a link farm because all of its results lead directly to other websites? In fact, 26 percent of the time people visit a Sourcetool result page, they click on an ad, which, by the way, is almost identical to Googleâ(TM)s organic to paid listings ratio. I invested $400,000 trying to get my organic results right. During the first 2 years, ironically, I paid Google $200,000 to license five Google Search Appliance services so that I could get the ordering of the listed businesses based on Googleâ(TM)s enterprise page rank. More recently, Iâ(TM)ve obviously been forced to cut costs and am using the open source SOLR search software to order the results. The NY Times reporter told me that Google complained that Sourcetoolâ(TM)s results led to a company profile page, rather than directly to the company website, something Google never mentioned to me in spite of numerous conversations on the topic. If I did that, I would be much more of a link farm than I am. In fact, I have invested well into six figures profiling the companies listed in Sourcetool and gathering the information that could be useful to a business buyer. Itâ(TM)s easy to throw around terms like link far and arbitrager, but itâ(TM)s demeaning to entrepreneurs who are honesty trying to build a valuable service. Clearly, Sourcetool.com could be a better site, and, if Google hadnâ(TM)t cut us off, we would be a much better site today. During our peak traffic days, we were receiving hundreds of company profiles each day, many from the emerging B2B companies in China. We had hoped to introduce videos of factory walkthroughs so buyers could visit plants without getting on a plane. But all of this takes money, and why would you invest money in a business that is controlled by somebody else who has proven to be a highly unreliable business partner.