To Live or Die by Google Search Brings an Escalating Cost (bloomberg.com) 91
"Where's the best place to hide a body? The second page of a Google search." The gallows humor shows that people rarely look beyond the first few results of a search, but Lee Griffin isn't laughing. From a report: In the 13 years since he co-founded British price comparison website GoCompare, the 41-year-old has tried to keep his company at the top of search results, doing everything from using a "For Dummies" guide in the early days to later hiring a team of engineers, marketers and mathematicians. That's put him on the front lines of a battle challenging the dominance of Alphabet's Google in the search market -- with regulators in the U.S. and across Europe taking a closer look. Most of the sales at GoCompare, which helps customers find deals on everything from car and travel insurance to energy plans, come from Google searches, making its appearance at the top critical. With Google -- whose search market share is more than 80% -- frequently changing its algorithms, buying ads has become the only way to ensure a top spot on a page. Companies like GoCompare have to outbid competitors for paid spots even when customers search for their brand name.
"Google's brought on as this thing that wanted to serve information to the world," Griffin said in an interview from the company's offices in Newport, Wales. "But actually what it's doing is to show you information that people have paid it to show you." GoCompare is far from the only one to suffer from Google's search dominance. John Lewis, a high-end British retailer, last month alluded to the rising cost of climbing up in Google search results. In the U.S., IAC/InterActive, which owns internet services like Tinder, and ride-hailing company Lyft have signaled Google's stranglehold on the market.
"Google's brought on as this thing that wanted to serve information to the world," Griffin said in an interview from the company's offices in Newport, Wales. "But actually what it's doing is to show you information that people have paid it to show you." GoCompare is far from the only one to suffer from Google's search dominance. John Lewis, a high-end British retailer, last month alluded to the rising cost of climbing up in Google search results. In the U.S., IAC/InterActive, which owns internet services like Tinder, and ride-hailing company Lyft have signaled Google's stranglehold on the market.
Ads cost money, news at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is no 'brand protection' on search terms, if your competitors want to get ahead, they'll compete with you.
I don't know why everyone needs protection from everyone, if that is the way this generation wants to go, then you'll literally have very insular experiences.
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This is a different scenario, akin to Wal-Mart bribing the phone book to list their phone number under their competitor's names. Search terms are the modern address and phone number, and if you don't exist under your own name, you don't exist at all.
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If that would be the case, nobody would be using the phone book.
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What's a phone book?
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gocompare.com was the top result on google search when I looked for "gocompare"
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There's absolutely no way a Google engineer would have just tweaked the algo after noticing a scathing Bloomberg or /. article. I mean, how would this engineer even know that disparaging comments had been made about Google so recently? It's not like Google constantly scans the internet or anything...
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Re: Ads cost money, news at 11 (Score:2)
Further I find it hard to belive any significant proportion of John Lewis customers would ever use Google to find something on their website, he says speaking as a reasonably regular customer (its one of the few places left in the UK where you can be reasonably confident you are buying quality). I just search directly on their website.
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That's fine if you know the actual website URL. Otherwise, you have to use a search engine and evaluate the results just to make sure you aren't going to end up on a fake page.
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Might I suggest you do a google quick search for "gocompare" then go over to duckduckgo and search for "gocompare"
I did that and also startpage [startpage.com], I was surprised at how much junk/clutter there was at the top of the google results. I had not used google for a long time. Startpage & duckduckgo are much cleaner and, to me, easier to read.
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" then you'll literally have very insular experiences."
If you literally meant "literally", then you are saying that people will have experiences on islands.
Could you, and others, please stop using literally when you don't literally mean "literally"? Can't you abuse some other part of the language? Like maybe using [sic] wrong?
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" then you'll literally have very insular experiences."
If you literally meant "literally", then you are saying that people will have experiences on islands.
Could you, and others, please stop using literally when you don't literally mean "literally"? Can't you abuse some other part of the language? Like maybe using [sic] wrong?
Insular does not mean literal islands, you moron.
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But what is the alternative? Random display? (Score:3)
Seriously, what's the alternative? People want the most relevant search results to what they are searching for. If every company in an industry optimizes their website to appear highly ranked for specific terms, but they still get bumped to the second page, then they need to pay up to get on the front page. Google makes money from this, and there's nothing wrong with it. You can optimize your website to a point, but it's essentially free service for your business, unless you are willing to pay to get ahead of others in the results. You are most likely paying to have your website optimized anyways, so why not pay to have it be a "sponsored" link?
Re:But what is the alternative? Random display? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Excite search engine. Oh wait...Altavista?
Webcrawler or Dogpile forever, to the bitter end!
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Meh. Veronica is where all the cool grandpappys get their search on
Nobody links gocompare, which is his real problem (Score:2)
> ? People want the most relevant search results to what they are searching for.
Exactly. Google's big innovation was determining the best results largely based on what other good sites* link to. If lots of good sites link to Snopes.com, that means Snopes is likely a good source of information.
If nobody links to gocompare, essentially nobody is voting for gocompare as being a great site, which should be at the top of search results.
The problem for gocompare is that people like their competition, and ther
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They changed the link algorithm (Score:3)
They changed the PR algorithm to one based on directed graphs, so *spammy* links barely work anymore.
It used to be you could create 10,000 dummy sites, all linking to your real site. That would give essentially 10,000 "votes" to your real site. (Though each one would be a low scoring vote).
Now it's a directed graphs of links from top quality sites. If Snopes links to X.com, and X.com links to you, that's great. If Snopes links to X.com, then X.com links to Y.com, then Y.cok links to you, that's good - b
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All true, but this has had some arguably unintended consequences. It means that formerly niche sites (or in fact, niche pages on sites) don't rank very highly because the "big players" don't link to them. Once those pages would rank highly because of relevance, and the (possibly numerous) links to them from other niche sites. However, these days, that whole "class" of niche sites that linked to each other all score less highly than "the big guys", even for things that may be more relevant.
The cynic in me th
True, and maybe good (Score:2)
That's true. In one hand, Google's reputation is better if their top results are sites cited by Snopes, Wikipedia, the eeicam Medical Association, and the BBC than if the put sites cited by niche KKK or birther sites at the top.
On the hand, it doesn't place high value on highly specialized sites that may be good for a very specific topic.
On the third hand, even for specialized topics, the sites listed at the top of Google may be more useful for a *general audience*, while specialists may prefer the speciali
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All true - but it's left us with "general audience" only. As noted, G takes the lions share of the search market, and so if you're looking for something a bit unusual, you'll more than likely use G and end up thinking that whatever you find is the most unusual there is - even though there's plenty of other choice around.
I'm not sure what the solution really is - whomever is the dominant search provider will always end up doing something like this, so we can't really expect G to do much better. We just need
Specific audience, specific site? (Score:2)
> All true - but it's left us with "general audience" only.
> I'm not sure what the solution really is - whomever is the dominant search provider will always end up doing something like this
Perhaps there is still room for directories and search catering to specific audiences. Perhaps you don't need to use a general audience publication for everything, just as each industry has its own industry news publications - NYT or CNN/Fox isn't all their is.
Back in the day, I had a site which was a directory and
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Is the premise accurate?
I just searched for "gocompare". I saw zero ads and lots of links to their website and information about GoCompare.
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umm, why can't they just put it all on "one" page. You scroll and reach the bottom and hit "more" and more appear and quickly. It's still technically a second page but if the whole display doesn't have to reload if "feels" like you never left that specific webpage.
Yahoo News does this until it begins to repeat, but it feels like one long news page. Search results could easily be displayed in this fashion and that whole "2nd" page feel would be gone.
I just stop using google personally but 80% of consumers li
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I'm completely not up to speed on how google search ranking works right now, but way back when, page ranking ruled the day. It didn't matter what you did to your site, your rank was determined by how much your site was referenced by the web. Has that changed? If so, what was wrong with it?
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Pagerank was too easy to game by making thousands of domains that point back to you. Google tweaked and tweaked, but it did practically nothing in the grand scheme of things because of how fast black hat optimisers could adapt. Some years ago there were even massive blog farms paying people to write keyword rich article spam that you'd pay to be linked to from all those articles on all those domains to inflate your pagerank, and then google said "no more." They did something to stop that from working, but y
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Google doesn't take money for search rankings. All anyone can do is bid to appear in the ads for a particular keyword, but the search results are not influenced by that.
Search Engine Optimization doesn't work very well with Google. The best way to get your site up the rankings is to make it useful and accessible. Spamming keywords in a hidden DIV or creating a fake network of linked sites will just get your down-ranked.
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What you say is literally correct, but practically not. Google don't take money to promote organic results (that we know of. They have been known to manipulate the results but not for financial reasons, rather because the algorithm embarrassed them somehow.)
BUT they've loaded the top of the page so heavily with non organic results, from paid links to AMP and local results that to your average normie they may not even get to the organic results. And because they don't offer brand protection people googling f
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Do you have any examples of this kind of thing? Where the first page is loaded with non-organic results or it fails to give you the domain you searched for?
The only one I know of is with sites like The Pirate Bay where instead you get a bunch of proxy/mirror sites that let you bypass your ISP's blockade.
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I tried shades-blinds.co.uk and got what I expected. 3 Ads and an unhelpful AMP article about blinds. I had to scroll a tiny bit to get the top result which was their domain.
What I do know for damn sure is that I've had to go explain to the boss why "we don't come up in google" too many times and I have more interesting problems to work on than fight com
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I tried shades-blinds.co.uk in an Incognito window with uBlock running. Their domain was the first result, suggesting what you saw was ads. Perhaps they need to make the ads a bit more obvious.
Below that was Trustpilot and below that a rival blind company.
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> People want the most relevant search results to what they are searching for
Correct - so why do you then go on to advocate companies paying to bump their results further up the list? If that's possible, then by definition the search results are no longer showing you the most relevant - but instead are showing you the most affluent.
Don't like google, use the Yellow Pages (Score:5, Insightful)
in the 80's we had these 1000 page books with yellow pages. the yellow pages was commercial ads and white pages was people's numbers.
if you wanted to advertise your business you paid the phone company for an ad in the yellow pages. the more you paid the larger the ad
Re:Don't like google, use the Yellow Pages (Score:5, Insightful)
This is basically complaining when people look for Plumber Joe in the phone book, they'll see ads for Plumber Joseph nearby.
Re:Don't like google, use the Yellow Pages (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but you didn't get to put an ad in the Yellow Pages that took people there if they were looking for your competitor. You might want to be AAAAAA Plumbing Ltd. to be at the front of the plumbing section, but that didn't affect customers of ZZ Top Plumbing who just wanted to go and find their phone number. Now if you search for ZZ Top Plumbing, AAAAAA Plumbing Ltd. gets to stick a (potentially) misleading ad on top of the search results to grab customers.
C'mon, it's clearly a different thing.
Re:Don't like google, use the Yellow Pages (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes and no. If you had a business number, it was listed in the yellow pages just like residential numbers in the white pages. It was a basic benefit of having a phone number, and the phone books were free if you had a phone. Of course, all you got was an alphabetical listing under your service category, so if you wanted to make a bigger splash, you bought an ad, price per square inch. So, if you wanted to find book stores, you went to B - Bookstores, Retail, then looked at the listings. Everybody was ranked equally in the basic listings (alphabetically). Nobody was hidden, nobody was masked, nobody was pushed to another page or category, and nobody was buried behind irrelevant search results like "bookies", "sports books", or "phone book agents". You designated what category you were, and the phone book put you there. It was fair, with an option to buy additional visibility, but it there was a basic fairness for all. That is what has become ever more glaringly problematic about Google search, no inherent fairness.
On the flip side, the phone book listing was a basic service for those who paid for phone service from Ma Bell. It's called "customer service", but it was a benefit of being a paid customer. Modern businesses looking for a "basic benefit" listing on Google are paying nothing to Google, just assuming a free benefit from an entity with whom they have paid nothing and have no contract. So, perhaps they ought not expect too much.
The phone book was always a very handy thing, and for those who have never used it, you are missing something that has benefits missing from online search. It seems to me that the solution would be to have all of the phone carriers, landline and mobile, have an industry consortium where they maintain a bona fide white pages and yellow pages on line for all to access.
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And, when you looked up engineering, it said "see boring" ;-)
I just Googled "GoCompare" (Score:3)
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I searched for one of my brands by name, and it occupies the first four results on page 1. I don't pay for ads (I'm really not even ready for people to find it in any volume), and have never done any SEO. I'm not saying that Google's innocent of all charges, but I think the guy doing the complaining may be barking up the wrong tree.
But then again, I don't pay for ads or do any SEO. So maybe I'm not on Google's hit list. -shrug-
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I searched for one of my brands by name, and it occupies the first four results on page 1. I don't pay for ads (I'm really not even ready for people to find it in any volume), and have never done any SEO.
"Doing SEO" just means creating meaningful content and giving it meaningful meta tags, which any competent CMS will do for you. If I search for "hyperlogos" while not signed in the top two results both go to my site, and four more of the front page results are related to me as well. All I've done is create content. That's it. I have done zero advertising for my vanity blog site. And while some of my web content is among the oldest still on the interwebs, I haven't had this domain all that time.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Which TLD? (Score:2)
People who already know the name of your company typically don't need to use Google to find it.
How do people know what top-level domain name your company is under without a web search?
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People who already know the name of your company typically don't need to use Google to find it.
They do because they never learned how to use a web browser. Their home page is a search engine and they'll type amazon.com into the search box and click the first result. We know this for a fact because if traffic is lower than expected there's a very real chance someone has supplanted us on the top ad slot for our own domain. We fix that (by spending more money) and the traffic comes back. We are lucky to be able to roll with the punches like that. If a small business' niche gets noticed before they get a
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Yeah, this. I only click on the ad link for a company I'm searching for by name if I hate the company. I'm sure as shit not clicking on the "local alternative" when I was actively searching for a particular company, if anything that makes me distrust that brand more since it likes deceptive advertising.
Now... if I search for "insurance comparison" an ad might work; interestingly (to me) neither gocompare or the company squatting on their name appear on the first page of that Google search, but that might be
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I only click on the ad link for a company I'm searching for by name if I hate the company.
I used to do that, but then I developed an unhealthy hatred of google and the thought of them getting money outweighs the thought of another company I don't like being costed money.
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Ads are typically ignored, anyway...
Perhaps among the savvy users, but not for the majority of people. Ask anyone who has worked the hell desk. People will click scummy, spammy ads all day and night because reasons. The number of people I had to help clear malware out of their systems because the top THREE ads for Google Chrome were malware taught me all I need to know about the average user. Freakin' google chrome. On google. (I might be misremembering but was this back when the chrome team got busted for black hat optimisation and the searc
Google optimizes its ad revenue (Score:5, Interesting)
As a side responsibility I was running Google Ads for a very specific service my company provides. I could be 100% certain that people using specified search terms looking for this service and I knew exactly who advertises these terms. Google penalized me with relevance and first page costs in cases where there is no competitors. That is, I would see about 50 clicks from search per month, and pay anywhere from $2 to $3 per click. If I lower the bid, then they just stop showing my ads on the first page - creating an absurd situation where "below first page" would result in no ads on the first page. Then some time around last year they started increasing prices, trying to charge us more. I ended up cancelling our AdWords account once they pulled "security lockout" stunt and demanded my mobile phone number.
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re: "security lockout" stunt
Yeah, I think that is BS too. "For my security" my ass. I'm thinking I need to buy a burner phone for this kind of crap. A side-benefit is that I'll be better equipped for When The Revolution Comes.
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A side-benefit is that I'll be better equipped for When The Revolution Comes.
For what? To throw your phone at someone? To watch porn while Rome burns?
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"To watch porn while Rome burns?"
U win teh intertubez 4 2day.
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re: "security lockout" stunt
Yeah, I think that is BS too. "For my security" my ass. I'm thinking I need to buy a burner phone for this kind of crap. A side-benefit is that I'll be better equipped for When The Revolution Comes.
My experience is that using a phone for two factor authentication makes things less secure and less reliable. The phone can be compromised trivially and it allows false positives. What the fuck are secure account names, which Google does not bother to use, and passwords good for?
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Exactly right.
Old questions, new applications (Score:3)
Free Will versus Determinism once was a question primarily of interest to theologians and philosophers.
Now it's core to the profits of billion dollar industries.
What is the difference between a perfect sales pitch based on massive modeling data of individuals and their behavior, and compelling the purchase?
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Free Will versus Determinism once was a question primarily of interest to theologians and philosophers.
We have no choice but to believe in free will.
Runner-up. (Score:2)
" In the U.S., IAC/InterActive, which owns internet services like Tinder, and ride-hailing company Lyft have signaled Google's stranglehold on the market."
YOU HEAR THAT, BING! Stranglehold I tell you.
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Bing is better. Especially for images and videos.
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That's because you're only looking for pr0n.
I start on page 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
The first page of a google search is nearly always useless. When I search for a product's web page, I want the manufacturer, not a dozen shills. That information is rarely on the first page.
I've started using other engines. (Score:4, Insightful)
I start on page 2
The first page of a google search is nearly always useless. When I search for a product's web page, I want the manufacturer, not a dozen shills. That information is rarely on the first page.
I do a lot of searching for other things than products. Google used to be useful for that. Now it either buries what I'm interested in so deep I don't bother any more, or doesn't show it at all. I've been using other search engines in order to dig stuff up.
It's particularly annoying when I search for my old slashdot posts, using my handle, site:slashdot.org, and stuff from the posts, but they don't show up at all.
I'm not sure how much of this is the early-page ads and how much of it is Google's political correctness filtering. But I really don't care. The way you lose the top-dog spot is to stop being useful. Eventually your former customers will find some other way to get done what you will no longer do for them.
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Suffering? (Score:2)
GoCompare is far from the only one to suffer from Google's search dominance.
I have to wonder what the GoCompare situation would be if Google didn't exist. If there were a half-dozen search engines, would he end up with the same situation, but multiplied? Or if there were no search engines (or search directories), would he have any business at all?
Actually, it seems to me that Google's dominance is less of a problem for price comparison sites than Amazon's dominance. I personally rarely bother using Google when trying to buy something, much less some other intermediary site, I
Not News, but... (Score:2)
... if the only way your online business can survive is by paying for Googod's advertising, you're going to end up working for Googod.
slashvertizement? (Score:2)
Fixed that for you...
Re: slashvertizement? (Score:2)
Not sure that there is a large crossover between slashdot and a UK price comparison website which in my experience was worse than their competitors (probably moneysupermarket and comparethemarket being the main ones) last time I tried it. They all advertise heavily on UK television with highly distinctive branding. Gocompare revolving around a slightly annoying tenor singer (even have a Stephen Hawking advert) and comapre the market all being about meerkats (as not comparethemeerkat). I really don't believe
Cry more (Score:1)
Don't blame Google (Score:3)
"But actually what it's doing is to show you information that people have paid it to show you." GoCompare is far from the only one to suffer from Google's search dominance...
Cry me a bleeping river. Many of the most popular search engines BEFORE Google came into the scene as the saviour for internet search degenerated to the point they would have 100% Ads on the first few page results, and the Promoted listings were often in no way displayed as Distinct Sponsored search results.
That and there would potentially also be Banner Ads and Popup Ads after searching.
This is Not because of Google's dominance: Google is the disruptor that started countering the search engine spam plague - made sponsored results distinct, minimized the amount of advertising, and made internet search good again. Did you ever try one of the search engines that came before Google?
There were MANY of them back in the day -- Infoseek, Webcrawler, etc; and over time they all got to be 1000x worse than this than Google is today after eCommerce took off..
Spammers took to using tricks to keyword bomb - fill text and META tags with keywords and brands marginally if at all-related to their content and get themselves to the top result - before Google invented PageRank 1 --- have been a problem since the 90s And above that pervades ALL search not Google search.
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I do miss AltaVista. I used Google for many years, but became concerned about pervasive surveillance so I switched to DuckDuckGo.
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Predictably Google is more and more turning into those old ad-ridden search engines.
Same tactic Amazon used: drive the competition out of the market by offering a less profitable or straight unprofitable service and once you've outlasted everyone else start squeezing and go back to the old days. Seems to be the business model of many major tech companies.
He's not wrong (Score:2)
"Google's brought on as this thing that wanted to serve information to the world," Griffin said, "But actually what it's doing is to show you information that people have paid it to show you."
He's hit the nail on the head. Searching for some things has become an exercise in futility.
Just like on Amazon- 5000 products come back from a search, but sort them and half will disappear even though they're highly relevant.
The ones that are left are usually 500 variations on the exact same thing sold by a handful o
Re: He's not wrong (Score:1)
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Just like on Amazon- 5000 products come back from a search, but sort them and half will disappear even though they're highly relevant.
And of the rest 10% are the same products repeated on every page because the seller paid for search ads.
That's one of the big reasons I stopped using Amazon: their search results are shit and they waste my time by showing me the same promoted product again and again and again and again. They don't want to sell me what I want to buy. They try to sell me what THEY want me to buy.
So what? (Score:2)
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However, in the UK if you're looking to change utility providers or renewing car or home insurance, these sites provide simple means to check literally hundreds of suppliers that offer an interchangeable commodity product.
I could go to one of the four insurance companies that spend millions advertising on the television or I could let a comparison site show me an identical product from a company that skips that advertising spend and instead reduces the premiums it charges.
Guess which I do.
I miss the Phone Book (Score:3)
Where does it stop? (Score:1)
Lee Griffin figured it out! (Score:2)
Having Bloomberg publish an article referencing your company's name can't hurt.