Media Giants Want to Top Google Results
Argue That Professional Sources Should Be More Recognized Than Blogs
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Major media companies are increasingly lobbying Google to elevate their expensive professional content within the search engine's undifferentiated slush of results.
Many publishers resent the criteria Google uses to pick top results, starting with the original PageRank formula that depended on how many links a page got. But crumbling ad revenue is lending their push more urgency; this is no time to show up on the third page of Google search results. And as publishers renew efforts to sell some content online, moreover, they're newly upset that Google's algorithm penalizes paid content.
"You should not have a system," one content executive said, "where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately."
Last November John Kosner, ESPN's digital-media senior VP, renewed the charge at a meeting of Google's Publishers Advisory Council, a small, invitation-only group for professional publishers to pow-wow confidentially with the search giant. Members include BusinessWeek, ESPN, Hearst, Meredith, The New York Times, Time Inc. and The Wall Street Journal. "This wasn't the first time that it had been raised, but John certainly put a bright spotlight on it," said one person in attendance.
Then in January, Martin Nisenholtz, New York Times Co. senior VP-digital operations, got up at the annual Online Publishers Association summit in Florida, an event closed to the press, to blast both the algorithm and the results presentation on the screen.
Priorities
He'd just run a search for Gaza, which had been at war with Israel since Dec. 27. Google returned links to outdated BBC stories, Wikipedia entries and even an anti-Semitic YouTube video well before coverage by the Times, which had an experienced reporter covering the war from inside Gaza itself.
Search results for "Gaza" on March 20 began with two Wikipedia links, a March 19 BBC report, two video clips of unclear origin, the CIA World Factbook, a Guardian report and, most strikingly, a link to Gaza-related messages on Twitter.
And every item looks about the same, whether it's a link to Vanity Fair or to FreeGaza.org, undermining the power of known brands. That's especially ironic given Google CEO Eric Schmidt's charge to magazine publishers last October, when he said brands were the way to sort out the "cesspool" that the net is becoming. "Who's actually driving people to these secondary, tertiary and Looooong Tail sites?" one big-time publisher said. "It's Google."
Publishers said they're not asking for a leg up over amateurs and link-happy bloggers. "This would in no way mean that only professional content publishers would get an advantage," one said. "It really just says that the original source, and the source with real access, should somehow be recognized as the most important in the delivery of results."
Google says it's trying but can't just flip a switch to deliver pro publishers' dreams. "There's absolutely value to original content," a spokesman said. "There's value to derivative content, too. We look at this in many ways from the point of view of the user. But the truth is there are so many shades of gray even within, quote, original content."
'Plaintive cry'
Not everyone supports the publishers' push. "It's the plaintive cry of people who have lost their monopoly trying to scrounge a little of it back," said Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair columnist and founder of Newser, which aggregates and links news from around the web. "Sometimes it's true that you'd rather get what The New York Times has to say about something rather than a host of bloggers. But more interestingly it's not always true. And it is in fact less and less true."
Publishers are nonetheless looking forward to the next closed-door meeting of Google's Publishers Advisory Council on April 30, when many hope to get some solid response from Google. They don't just want "We'll fix it." They want more insight into Google's black box of data and decision making.
They're also beginning to cast around for new leverage. Publishers on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly adopting the Automated Content Access Protocol, which intends to tell search engines what they can use and how. It's focused on copyright, but widespread adoption might give publishers new clout with Google.
Some publishers concede, however, they could help themselves more too. "Google has designed an algorithm," one said. "They don't owe us that we show up a particular way. They do publish a whole lot about how to make your site show up as much as possible. If people haven't taken action on it, that's their own damn fault."
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My key point - and actually the same one made by the article - is that big brands have an investment they have to defend and they have the $$ and market clout to do so (so why aren't I on the publisher'
s council - easy, I don't spend millions to expand my brand). Big brands, if they are smart, can as easily manipulate the search rankings as anyone - so why give someone with large $$ to spend doing so a leg up (more than their budgets) over folks who, for example, may have something honest to say that is critical and where they are "content owners." A Big Brand can hire reputation management firms , for example, to push critical results down the page - this bias just helps them do so.
Google needs to maintain a "neutral point of view" in its results. It should neither favor nor reduce the power of any voice, big or small.
As the article points out, just because CNN invests big $$ in a story doesn't make it the "best" arbiter of what is news. The large news companies tend to operate in a very "careful" range of viewpoints - they need big audiences, and so can't go too far afield for fear of angering one viewer segment (which includes powerful Washington interests). As a result, many times a smaller media site (eg Arianna Huffington's site) may have a more "representative" point of view, especially for certain audiences. We just can't afford to punish that. If we do, then we risk the web becoming another media channel dominated by a few large and powerful entities.
As for the Times, give me a break. It's a news site. In no way does it automatically deserve extra weight for breaking news. That's what the news listings are for. Their assumption that they, and resources like theirs, are more relevant is absurd.
Here's why. I too have to spend money too for google adwords. I don't have nearly the purchasing power that the huge conglomerates do to even secure top ad positions with google. That's fine with me. It's business. But organic rankings are not supposed to be influenced by the allure of ad dollars. Organic rankings give us small potatoes companies the opportunity to gain visibility in the big pool. I don't agree with under-handed tactics to achieve artificially high rankings either, but I don't see anything wrong with google having a proprietary system that powers their indexing - and not sharing it.
If google offers points or favors to the big ad spenders, what does that leave the rest of us? If it's paid advertising, the $ should determine positioning and visibility. If it's "free", we should all play by the same rules.
It is sad to say but as a society we have become more interested in opinion than fact.
http://www.proudtoliveinamerica.com
Search engines pride themselves on the relevance of their results. If media giants were to present research data showing how Google users (and not the media giants themselves) would have actually preferred seeing their content at the top of Google search results, rather than whatever else came up there, then they might have a real case.
Not surprisingly, I bet that the thought of taking the customer's pov has never even come up, which explains why yesterday's media giants are getting less gigantic by the day.
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Langston Richardson
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