
Google, These Aren’t Really The Best Answers For Users.  - obilgic
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/13/google-places-best-answers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
======
SlyShy
TechCrunch: The pages using Google Places are unfairly being put at the top.

Another explanation: The savviest webmasters (who promote their sites best,
know SEO, etc.) are the first to play with a new tool like Google places,
which is why you see their pages so highly represented in the top results.

This is another case of correlation vs. causation, something that journalists
seem incapable of grasping.

~~~
jshen
It is more than just places. Search for 'windows 7' and one the top results is
a google product page that is nothing more than an aggregation of others
pages. On it's face this seems fine, but google tells others that they don't
want their search results linking to what is essentially another pages search
results. Unless of course that other page of search results is a google
product.

Here's another example, I've always dominated a vanity search for my name
(it's an uncommon name). One day out of the blue I wasn't the top result, some
with my name was simply because they put a video on YouTube and being a google
product it gets special treatment.

~~~
adambyrtek
> because they put a video on YouTube and being a google product it gets
> special treatment

How do you know it gets any special treatment? Didn't it occur to you that
because so many sites link to YouTube it can be perfectly natural that it has
a high PageRank?

~~~
jshen
I didn't explain the situation well. It didn't show up as an organic result,
it showed up as a "videos for xxx".

But, the product pages are a much better example. I should have left it at
that. They are showing links to their product pages that are essentially a
page of aggregated search results. This is something they actively try to
prevent when the aggregated search results pages belong to someone else.

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naner
I'm pretty disappointed with Google's search these days. 99% of the time I
just want plain old text search results. No pictures, videos, maps, javascript
previews, etc. Just the text.

~~~
danilocampos
Don't forget their awful, automatic broadmatching for organic results.

Today I was searching for "(vendor name) promo code"

And back came results about programming. Because code, when not a noun, is a
verb for "to program." It's just awful. Sometimes getting no results is more
useful than getting broader results that I need to parse just to establish I'm
not going to find what I'm searching for.

~~~
ryanwanger
If you let google personalize your results, then this probably happened
because "code" usually means programming... _for you_.

------
adambyrtek
This is a classic example of TechCrunch trolling.

1) They search for places in NYC and seem very surprised that the place
information is associated with the search results.

2) They claim that locations and phone numbers are not useful. I think most
users would disagree.

3) They suggest that the fact that place information is associated with a
search result implies that somebody had to pay. This is false, information
about most places is imported automatically from yellow pages (although owners
can claim them).

4) They imply that Google is unfair with sites like Yelp and Citysearch, but
the screenshot posted with the article clearly shows that place results are
linked to external sites.

~~~
greyman
But they also imply, and that I find a bit worrying, that the organic local
search results might not be sorted primarily by relevance, as Google always
claimed to be so.

Ok, it might be just a coincidence, that the 7 most relevant results for "NY
Chiropractors" are the websites which registered with Google service called
Places, and all the others ranked below #7 just happen to not registered on
Places. But what is the probability this being the case?

It just looks like the websites who registered with Places got preferential
treatment in search results, and that was the main point of the article (which
you didn't mention in your comment). And this I don't find to be trolling, but
a legitimate concern.

~~~
tytso
If you look closely at the Places results, you'll see that many of them have
not yet been claimed by their owners. It was automatically generated from
public information such as Yellow Pages.

What it means is that Chiropractors who don't have a web presence can still
have information about them (i.e., address and phone information) returned via
a search result. Isn't that a good thing for the Chiropractors?

------
healsdata
I don't follow the logic here. Google claims that these are the best answers
for users and at first glance, I'd have to agree.

I tried the same query on other search engines:

1) Bing corrected me, assuming I meant "ny chiropractic" and 3 of the top 5
results are for chiropractic schools/organizations.

2) Duck Duck Go doesn't correct me but provides less information in terms of
reviews, approximate location, links to Yelp, etc.

Sure, both of those show different results, but how can we even begin to
quantify that they're "better" in some way just because they're organic? The
very first result on Duck Duck Go looks like spam to me.

It's the same thing as if I was looking for a taco in my town. Both Bing and
Duck Duck Go tell me about the three local Taco Bells but never mention the
two Mexican restaurants nearby that Google points out in the Places section.
Google doesn't even mention them in their organic results.

If I was looking for a decent taco, Google's the only search engine that'd get
me there apparently.

------
eitland
One very good idea for competing with google would be to replicate google a
few years ago, just with the necessary extra spam protection.

One example off the top of my head: If keyword doesn't exist in the page I'm
normally not interested, even if other pages links to it by that keyword.

~~~
nostrademons
"One very good idea for competing with google would be to replicate google a
few years ago, just with the necessary extra spam protection."

Google actually did that for their 10th anniversary: they set up a copy of
their 2001 index with the old ranking algorithm and old UI and let people play
with it. It was only up for a month (there's a heavy maintenance cost for
playing with code that old), but if you image search for [google 2001 index],
you can see a bunch of screenshots.

I just played with it down to about page 6 of the image results (now there's a
feature that didn't exist in 2001...), and didn't find a single query where I
preferred the results & UI of then over the ones now.

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tzury
I have read this article to the end, also read the WSJ article [1] (mentioned
at the beginning) and wondered what value / knowledge does this TC take added
to what there is at the WSJ original article already.

Seriously, next time, I suggest, just TC author should tweet about the WSJ's
article and attach the "attractive" title to it and that is all to it.

[1]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870405870457601...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704058704576015630188568972.html)

------
robryan
I don't really get it, places helps Google deliver the most locally relevant
data, which seems useful looking for a business like this. The preferred
alternative is to infer similar information from other similar services
online?

Things like citysearch and yelp are even built into the places listing, seems
better than just having the one that has the best SEO visible.

------
nikcub
If Google compromises search result quality for revenue, users will switch
away in the same way they switch from AltaVista et al to Google.

It is within the Google ethos not to fuck with their best selection. They
understand that their success was from showing the best results. I doubt they
will screw it up.

Screaming to the government to do something about it is just useless. If it is
crap, it will die.

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
When there was AltaVista, all search engines were kind of the same, Altavista
was perhaps just a little bit better. Google was the new kid in the block and
made things way better.

Now however, all search engines are the same again. Unless there is a new kid
in the block, who do you switch to?

------
aresant
Google's mission statement is to "organize the world’s information".

This is another milestone in realizing the full scope of that vision.

Long term I really wonder what, if any, search arbitrage businesses are going
to exist.

Companies like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Mahalo, lead generators (eg mortgage), etc
are going to have a rough time of it a few years down the road.

Ref:

<http://www.google.com/corporate/>

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/is-google-
entering-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/is-google-entering-the-
mortgage-quote-business/)

------
Groxx
> _Either way, the message is clear to local businesses: list your profile in
> Google Places and you will have a better shot at appearing at the top of the
> first search results page._

Correlation vs causation: correlation is pretty clearly demonstrated,
cause/effect is not. Maybe sites which appear near the top are more interested
in their online presence (actually, that's pretty much guaranteed), in which
case of _course_ they're going to have a Place page. That doesn't imply places
with Places are being favored.

Are they favoring displaying their own links, which they can inject into
results (and this doesn't imply they cause the result to rank higher!) more
easily than, say, a Yelp link? Yeah. Probably for that reason. Is this unfair?
Maybe... though saying it is simply because the _site you are looking for_
comes up higher than the Yelp review just means they have a good search
engine.

------
RexRollman
All I know is that Google's search results are becoming more and more
cluttered. Like almost every other Internet based company, greed is ruining
their product.

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mkramlich
Google is a business and so as long it isn't illegal, they have the right to
do it. Whether it's smart in the long term, profit-wise, compared to short-
term, is another issue. But you often see companies start making BDC (Big Dumb
Company) kinds of decisions after they reach a certain size and culture and
market/feature maturity -- they run out of places to grow their revenue in
less slimy ways, or at least, they think they have.

~~~
AndrewS
Who voted this down and why? Down-voting is not a tool through which you
demonstrate your disagreement with someone's opinion.

