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That Google Thing You Do

Posted by admin on December 30, 2006 in SEO Theory

Matt Cutts gave us two Google history lessons this week. Over at SearchEngineLand’s Q&A with Jimmy Wales, Matt posted this comment:

I respect Jimmy’s opinion that he’d rather have “hubs” with reviews of hotels rather than the hotels themselves. The pendulum hasn’t always swung in that direction though. I remember when a different search engine (now absorbed by someone else, and named for a Gaelic word) was making the rounds talking about the query “grocery stores” and how their search engine returned individual grocery stores instead of directories or hubs that listed grocery stores. At the time, Google leaned more toward returning overview/hub sites, but we had the ability to change that. So that’s something that existing search engines can adjust if they think users prefer a different mix; I know because we’ve changed that balance in the past.

Emphasis is mine.

And on his own blog in his thoughts on recent Google tips (the little tips you may be seeing at the top of search results promoting other Google services), Matt shared this:

…There’s a continuum to showing tips. Toward the “hawk” side of the spectrum is the notion that a company can show whatever reasonable content they want on their own web site. Toward the other side of the spectrum is the desire to show the best services, whether they are competitors or not. Historically, Google has been much further toward the “dove” side than most other companies.

As Google introduces more features and services, it becomes increasingly competitive with other services that — in the past — were once well promoted in Google search results. They are beginning to wrangle more with conflicts of interest than they have had to in the past. And it may take time for one of these conflicting interests to bubble up to high visibility.

For example, does Google Code’s introduction of project Wikis portend a Wikification of some Google service archives? Think about that. There could be a use for GoogleWikis at Google Custom Search, Google Webmaster Central, Google AdWords, maybe even Google Booksearch.

If Googlers start Wikifying their project areas (I am guessing this is not a corporate initiative at this time), at some point sufficient momentum would be reached that Google Wikis would start competing with Wikipedia and its shadow sites for attention in the Google search results.

And that could be achieved from an entirely algorithmic approach, as people would undoubtedly link to those Wikis (although Google can also arbitrarily improve the visibility of its own archives if it so chooses).

As people have been quick to point out, Google is not the first search engine to use its popular query tool to cross-promote other services. It’s generally accepted in online marketing that you use your best-performing resources to springboard other resources. Even the upscale search engine Ask is now using its front page to promote other services.

But one should ask whether these expanding services will directly impact search results. The natural competitiveness of search engines opens the floor to many questions, some of which may seem more or less reasonable than others. For example, who indexes the most pages from Google Groups? Who indexes the fewest pages?

While Google Groups is the descendant of the old Dejanews service, it includes the increasingly feature-rich Beta Groups service, where you can create custom groups for public or private discussion. Beta Groups is, at this time, not quite as feature-rich as Yahoo! Groups but it hasn’t been overwhelmed by the advertising that Yahoo! has dumped on its groups service (that originated as eGroups — both Yahoo! and Google went out and acquired other services for their Groups features).

What’s ironic is that Windows Live apparently has the smallest index of MSN Groups. Live appears to be the least influenced by its own sister services. Is that a deliberate act of restraint on Microsoft’s side, or is it simply a typical stage in the maturation of a search service?

In fact, every major search service that has restructured itself into a portal has lost market share. Google’s market share increased from around 45% to over 60% throughout 2006, but Google’s reinvention of its own front page throughout 2006 has made it increasingly more complex and less focused. The classic streamlined Google design first appeared in April 1999 (the previous beta interface was pretty ugly).

While Google resists the temptation to put news headlines and advertising on the front page, it now has 15 links in addition to the search box (not including hyperlinked commemorative or celebratory logos on special days). Soon after Altavista turned itself into a Yahoo!wannabe DEC’s old workhorse was put out to pasture. Yahoo! survived the dot-com meltdown and reinvented itself as a media property (search is not really its primary focus any more) but it has nonetheless lost market share.

People have not turned to Google solely because its search results are so good (in fact, they are not really any better than Live’s or Asks, but their results pages are still somewhat more useful and historically have been much more useful). The clutter of advertising dilutes the appeal of a search results page and while people will be quick to point out that Google has been increasing its advetising, they appear to have been doing so at a slower pace than other services.

The secret to success in the search market is to remain focused on search and contextual advertising at least complements search if not enhances it. But at some point Google risks hitting a saturation level where users become unenthused enough to try a more streamlined search tool.

Which leads me back to the history lessons from Matt Cutts. Google has apparently been paying attention to what users (and maybe Webmasters) like and don’t like in the search results. I do remember when Amazon review pages flooded Altavista and Google search results. I remember when Open Directory Project and Yahoo! directory listings topped out many query results. I remember when the user had to put more effort into finding relevant content.

I personally don’t like Wikipedia and all of its shadow sites because of the reams of propaganda and misinformation that it indexes. Although people now complain about seeing Wikipedia top out in so many search results at Google, you can thank largely clueless Webmasters who don’t know any better for linking to so many Wikipedia pages. Google has yet to commit the cardinal sin of actually favoring Wikipedia (the way Ask does, and their search results quality has declined considerably since they started adding favored sites to the top of SERPs in addition to poorly labeled advertising).

While Google may not be the completely undisputed leader in indexing and search quality, it remains the leader in user experience quality. Google has adapted itself remarkably well in the wake of user complaints, despite the fact that such adaptation takes longer than people prefer. The current flood of complaints about search quality results at Google are not likely to die down soon, but my feeling is that Google will take some measurements and make some adjustments.

And how does this all relate to SEO Theory, you may ask? I’m glad you did. In my next post, I’ll talk a little more about user experience and how the optimizing Webmaster needs to work with that.