Actually, the title of this post is a case of deceptive advertising.
Because it should really be “Why People Think Something’s Wrong With Google.”
I’m not talking about governments, by the way. Governments aren’t people. Unfortunately. Governments are always going to be going after Google.
Okay… down to business.
Many people complain about Google’s search results, that there are too many bad (spammy or inappropriate) results.
They complain when Google makes changes, that the results still include bad results, or that it made things worse.
The explanation for some complaints is obvious: It was their ox got gored. Meaning their website’s rankings crashed, they are losing traffic and money, etc. etc.
Sorry about that.
But the main thing is people just not understanding Google. You need to know this one thing: Google is an engineering company and as such, they test and engineer EVERYTHING. Engineers don’t try to be perfect. They try to make things work.
Their whole approach to Search is to increase how often people are happy with the results, by making changes to their algorithms.
Now over the years, these have gotten very sophisticated. By Google’s own statement, they take into account over 200 signals (factors) in ranking a page for a search terms.
That doesn’t mean it is perfect. Far from it.
One reason for this is the constant battle between Google and spammers, people who are trying to game or trick Google into giving them undeserved high rankings.
A lot of times the spammers win. That shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, there are billions of dollars at stake, and there are a lot of smart (if unethical, even criminal) people playing the game.
The only real question is this: are Google’s results improving over time?
Well, the users vote with their keyboards and mice, and they say the answer is “yes.”
Don’t believe me? Google’s maintained their market share of searches over the last couple of years – just under 2/3 of all U.S. searches.
That’s despite Microsoft pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into advertising Bing. Oh yes, and running a Black PR campaign against Google (see: FairSearch.org), and working VERY hard to get more people using Bing as their default search engine (see: Windows).
Don’t believe me? Microsoft is constantly, proudly rolling out new features for its search engine and for its pay-per-click platform – things which Google’s been doing for years.
Bing loses a billion dollars every year, while Google makes billions. Yahoo, the #3 search engine, just fired another C-level exec (their CEO, who had falsified his resume!). Approximately the umpteenth time in the last few years they did that. It isn’t because they are doing Just Great.
Call me a Google Fanboy if you want. I’m just talking reality here.
If you want to play “Internet” you need to understand the rules, and the rules are largely made by Google. The fact is, they are doing an amazing job of being fair at it. But then, engineers tend to be like that.
And, if after this rant, you want to understand Google, read the book “In The Plex” (Steven Levy, Simon and Schuster, 2011)