Google vs. BMW, a sanity check

Sure, Google can do whatever it wants (within the law). And you can switch search engines if you don't like it. And BMW got what they deserved. Gosh, we really are overreacting.

I'm sure if Google starts to act in ways that many users would find unprincipled, it would be blinding clear from the close scrutiny we give to each and every search result we get.

And of course, you're right, we should only be scrutinizing the behavior of the government in any case. As long as private companies aren't breaking the law (as currently written), they should be able to act with impunity.

So, no more tin foil hat -- I trust Google unquestioningly. And they're really not that powerful anyway -- Yahoo could dislodge them any day now.

There are some morons out there that believe BMW and Ricoh deserve special treatment because they are large international companies, and BMW makes one heck of a bike.

Personally I believe its awesome that Matt made an example of BMW and how stupid a company can be by either performing such outdated SEO spamming or contracting a company and opening up their website to one that doesn't have a frigging clue as to what they are doing.

I mean it's BMW for Christ's sakes, talk about an authority site on cars or even used cars! What they did would like farming out Wikipedia's SEO to MonsterLinkSWAP.com. It was meaningless and not needed.

Hopefully some heads will roll over this in Deustchland.

I apologize if this is a bit off topic but if people really want to see government censorship or double speak they only need to look at the country where Google is.

I agree it's good they apply the standards to big as well as small. Also that the marketplace may penalize bad decisions (though in name brand downranks like this it creates more adwords revenue for .... Google even though I don't think that motivates the decision.

But there is a "philosphy of good search" issue when you throw out quality sites to "teach them a lesson". As a user I'm more interested in finding the right info than NOT finding a site that is gaming Google/Yahoo/MSN.

Also, ya gotta admit that Matt does look a little bit like Josef Stalin....

> The thought that there's some "unchecked" power is the most
> amusing of all. The ultimate checks and balances are at work
> in Google's case. If its users start to dislike the results
> they get, they'll seek out alternatives. Google's power will
> diminsh.

To some extent, yes. But, "dislike" would come only when they come to know what they're missing out, right? Queries are not all "recall-centric", a lot of them are "discovery-centric". Only when they get all results as irrelevant and that too when they're not in self-denial mode to accept that will they move on.

Wow, Google has had everyone googled for quite a while now but nobody googles the fact that googling is gonna google "the Google" lots of Google.

(Fill in the Googles)

What I mean to say is with all this hue-and-cry over Google summarily reducing BMW.de's page rank to zero and with all the questions of ethics and morals being thrown about, aren't we overlooking something?

"This entire ruckus is actually giving BMW.de the publicity it wants!!"

And all this while we have been wondering how the song goes...

I'm largely with Jeremy. Google is not like an RBOC in the 20th century where you were stuck with whatever they gave you. And if one index is less useful than another the people will speak, quickly, with a change of their homepage or browser toolbar.:)

Who knows if it was the right decision to remove the BMW shite but debating the issue beyond a business level seems plain silly. Google is protecting its income and that leads them to make certain decisions -- Those can be good or bad on a business level but they certainly don't represent true censorship, even when they're engaged in censoring. Why? Because they're an *optional* service that one can choose to use or not. I don't believe web site owners have some intrinsic right to be in the Google index at all. We really have to stop looking at many search engines as public trusts and recognize them for the businesses that they are and the shareholders they represent.

"The ultimate checks and balances are at work in Google's case. If its users start to dislike the results they get, they'll seek out alternatives."

How can users know about the results they aren't getting?

Your logic seems to imply that corporations aren't capable of not acting in the public interest. You don't really believe that, do you?

Search engines are powerful gatekeepers in the information society. Questioning their the motives and behavior of their operators is an important part of healthy democratic debate. Putting down the questioners as tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists is lame.

For an insightful look at why we can't necessarily rely on market mechanisms to keep search engines unbiased, read "Shaping the Web: Why the politics of search engines matters," by Lucas Introna and Helen Nissenbaum.
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/searchengines.pdf.

Got an extra period on there correct link is:
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/searchengines.pdf

Google is right to exclude BMW, I should be able to skip their commercial sales pitch just like I use my TiVo to fast foward past TV commercials. Google is finally stumbling upon the principles I have outlined in my new movement, Web 3.0, the AntiSocial Software network. Value is created by excluding content, not by including it. The world is flooded with too many random bits of useless information, we need more help in eliminating the useless crap. I don't need help in finding the information I want, there are already too many services pushing that information at me. I need services to filter out all the noise from the signal, to elminate the information I don't want to see.
Web services like Google would give their users the most value by excluding the overwhelming tide of useless information. Anything not ruthlessly filtered out would by default be of value. Google is already learning, albeit reluctantly, to exclude link farms and spam blogs. Google is already eliminating monumental amounts of worthless data, destroying the equivalent of several Libraries of Alexandria every day. Nobody in the history of mankind has ever eliminated such huge volumes of data, this is a noteworthy achievement.

Well all BMW has to do is put AdSense on their site, and get high enough click-thrus and then they'll be at the top of the rankings... We know they goose the listings of top performing AdSense sites, so game the system that way! :)

Maybe I'm missing your point, but your argument seems to be that because they're a private company, they can do what they want?

So if a private company were to own the water infrastructure, it would be fine for them to disconnect the water supply to any individual for any arbitary reason?

As I see it, owning access to Information can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Rupert Murdoch owns private companies, so it's fine and morally correct for him to distort the media for his own personal gain?

I can't see any strong evidence that Google are acting with corrupt intent at the moment. However some comment that their friendly stance with the Chinese government could give them a political and therefore financial advantage in the future and that's a slippery slope to be skating down.

I don't see how any of this relates to the BMW situation. They were keyword stuffing the term "BMW Neuwagen". Google say that's against their guidelines and they refuse to advertise web sites that don't follow their guidelines.

Ironically, as a side effect, BMW now have some pretty powerful backlinks and it's clear that Matt Cutts believes that they can be reincluyded as long as they don't break the guidlines in future, so they will gain in the log run.

'Can' is not 'should'.

Can they do it? Yes.
*Should* they do it? No way! they should improve their algo instead to neutralise the negative aspects.

If you dish out punishments for offences *you* created, then people will dish out punishments right back for offences *they* create at the first opportunity.

Loren,

At Wikipedia we don't intend to do anything which would cause Google or any other search engine to have any reason to do anything unpleasant to us. Besides, they know how to reach us and we'd be happy to explain our reasoning and discuss what to do about anything which concerned them.

Since we think we might eventually end up serving more pages per day than Google or Yahoo in the US, and since we're already targetted by spammers in some ways, we might well act similarly to Google. We certainly have done on a smaller scale in the past. The reasoning is effectively identical to Google's: people doing it are directly undermining our objective, so we're going to make their life as hard as necessary to dissuade them.

If that means working with the search engines and feeding them information on what we block as suggestions for what they might block, that's what we'll do. No current plans to do this, it's just one of many things we've discussed.

I am sorry, Rob, but you must be livin in a "different reality".e

> So if a private company were to own the water
> infrastructure, it would be fine for them to disconnect the
> water supply to any individual for any arbitary reason?

This analogy is so wrong on so many levels, it ain't even funny. Google does not own any pipes to their customers, Google doesn't do (because it can't) any lock-in w.r.t. to their search-service.

> As I see it, owning access to Information can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

The only information that Google has access to (w.r.t. their search-service and the web) is the information that everybody has access to (including other search-engines) and the information that Google themselves generate (like ranking). There is nothing exklusive about what they have.

And finally the thing that a lot of self-proclaimed "critics" seem to have a problem grapsing: A URL (with whatever service/company behind it) does NOT equal a stat. Comparing whatever happens there to Stalinisim or some such is not only plain ridiculous, it's trivializing the horrors that really do (or have) happen(ed) in the real world.

And - because I know those people are going to warp and distort what I said - I am all _for_ critizing companies for what they actually do, and for potential dangers that might arise from certain market-situations. But some of what is written under that disguise is just plain propaganda, distortion of the facts and tin-foil-conspiracy-theories. And if you look at what prompted Jeremy to write his post, it's clear in which category that belongs.
And neither he nor I say anything about valid criticism... (simply because it's not the topic here).

Charles said:
> Value is created by excluding content, not by including it.
> The world is flooded with too many random bits of useless
> information, we need more help in eliminating the useless
> crap. I don't need help in finding the information I want,
> there are already too many services pushing that information
> at me. I need services to filter out all the noise from the
> signal, to elminate the information I don't want to see.

Agreed. But, would you want that to be done by humans or by inventing better algorithms? At least, what would you "expect" *Google* to do?

May I add some info from a BMW spokesman to put things in perspective. Only 4400 of 1,1 Mio total Users in jan came from google. This does not answer the question about google being evil or not but may be taken into account ....
~frank

Frank where did you get that? If true BMW's search marketing department is ... defective to say the least. That's .44% Google traffic vs industry standard of closer to 50% or over 100x that number!

hi joe,
read it on http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2F69264&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

its on lots of well known sites in Germany as well.

why must it be a german site? are there no proper american sites that could be used to make an example? allthough bmw had started to remove the pages they were killed. would you do it the same way? why did it happen this way? publicity?

bmw is a brand name, let's guess how many really spammy sites are left in the index, abusing brandnames and without good content, that should have been killed first. btw, google did it manually - what's about their spam-detection algos? the bmw doorway-pages are one year old.

>industry standard of closer to 50% or over 100x that number!

It doesn't sound unreasonable to me for a well known brand name.

I've done sites for ousehold names and search engine traffic is a tiny amount of the total. By far the majority either guess the URL or type it in from URLs in offline promotional material.

You also get a good whack of people clicking on links from other sites on the net. If it's a well known brand, people just click on it.

Even so, your 50% figure looks pretty high to me. I have no-namer sites that I've done for myself that rank in top 5 of Google for all keywords. Not even they get as high as 50% of their traffic coming from Google.

I need to correct that 3rd paragraph. My brain was elsewhere I think...

You also get a good whack of people clicking on links from other sites on the net. If it's a well known brand, people just link to it from their own sites.

It may be "their index", but at what point (if any) should such a ubiquitous and, some would say, necessary service such as Google BECOME a public utility and be accountable to the public?

In my eyes, it's sooner rather than later. As a matter of fact, if I had any say on the matter, I'd suggest that Google be moved down that road before they make any more questionable decisions in the name of "business practices".

You have a great blog, by the way. And "High Performance MySQL" is a great book. Keep it up. :-)

Jeremy,
You are absolutely right. The mainstream media is putting a twist on this story saying that Google is Big Brother and that they do not have the right to be censoring results. The media must not use the SE's to research because not censoring the results would be lowering the quality of the web.
Google was only following their own rules as stated in the Webmaster guidelines.

Google had re-indexed BMW.de. Of course BMW.de had to trim down its site to fit with the Search Giant's submission policy. But it was re-indexed.

Howzzat Jeremy?

A few questions:

1. Isn't this an example of monopolistic muscle-power by Google?
2. Are we so addicted to Google that we can't think of alternative anymore? Or is it already a TINA landscape?
3. When it comes to searching, what matters the most: Speed, Accuracy or Relevance? Apparently , it seems its all a game of speed currently...

Google should NEVER ban an ENTIRE site - because of disapproval of tactics that DO NOT COVER the Entire site....

Searchers who could benefit from the information the site provides are NOT getting access to the site - through Google.

Only SEOs understand the act of Banning - the average surfer does NOT know the technicalities!

IF Google chose to neutralize the ALGO benefits that objectionable practices could have on the SERPs - that is logical....

If they also chose to eliminat just the Objectionable Pages individually - that is logical...

Google is to important a power to not go unchecked.
You don't react with a Cannon when a fly Swatter will do!

I guess you are right! Only SEOs understand the act of Banning