Google’s PlusBox has now been officially announced. It was originally brought to my attention by Jonah Stein, and mentioned in this PlusBox post, where I analyzed whether it’s beneficial for the internet as a whole. In the end, it’s good for Google, good for users, but bad for websites who’s bread and butter is providing basic information that comes with PlusBox, which is currently stock info and Google Map directions for businesses.
It’s a good day for Google, as KinderStart was defeated in the legal battle it started. Basically, KinderStart was unhappy that it went from ranking well (using black-hat SEO techniques) to not ranking at all, so it did what any good American would do - sue. And it lost, preventing it from becoming the McDonald’s Hot Coffee case of the web world.
Bruce Clay summed it up well:
Fogel’s ruling read, in part:
“While Yu has brought a novel challenge to a major corporation, it is apparent that to some extent he has overreached in doing so…Yu had a professional responsibility to refrain from filing such allegations if he did not have appropriate supporting evidence.”
That last line is the kicker! Not only was the case thrown out for being unmerited, but the judge found the whole thing so frivolous that he’s allowing Google to collect attorney fees from KinderStart. Huzzah!
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Something we often try to explain to clients is that, for better or worse, ranking in Google, or any of the other search engines, is a privilege, not a right. You don’t get to start in the big game simply because you showed up. You have to earn it. It goes back to the Bruce-ism that search engine optimization isn’t about making a pig fly. It’s about genetically re-engineering a site so that it becomes an eagle. Google rewards eagles; KinderStart is a mutated pig. (Please don’t sue me for defamation.) That’s why they’re not ranking well.
Other good related links: Search Engine Land (links to past articles) and Matt Cutt’s.
And the answer is “No.” A new policy was just added:
 “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.â€
Jonah Stein of SEOmoz recently took a look at the effect of Google’s new PlusBox.
PlusBox is a new plus sign that appears next to search results and shows additional information related to the query, such as stock prices.
Will this deprive users of additional traffic? Yes. Will it provide users with a better search engine experience? Yes. If this process continues, then all basic queries will eventually be answered by Google.
Will this be better for the internet? Perhaps. Many websites will lose significant amounts of traffic, and people will be forced to create more unique and advanced content. In any case, Google’s content advancement threatens many more basic websites and will rearrange the nature of the internet itself.
Google’s not going away for a long while as the top search. Why? It’s still got it. MSN, the #3 ranked engine, still doesn’t.
MSN recently filed a patent for removing duplicate search results, including removing organic results if the same page or site appears in the paid section. I have a feeling this is a “feature” that will never see the light of day because of how absolutely idiotic it is. I know why they’re doing this: the bottom line. It makes sense - if the organic listing is removed, people will be more likely to click on the paid listing, and M$ makes more money, right?
Wrong. Any decent search marketer with good, quality sites will immediately pull all money out of AdCenter because it’ll remove their natural ranking. And natural rankings are better because 1) they’re free and 2) they’re more trustworthy.
Once all these guys have pulled their money out, cost-per-click will drop drastically, meaning that the bottom for AdCenter earnings for publishers will drop out and they’ll be looking at a penny-per-click. Ouch. MS would, in one fell motion, blow the brains out of its entire ad operation.
On the other hand, Google just filed a patent for allowing people to remove pages from search results, and using this information to determine spam pages and affect ranking. That’s smart. Let the masses do the work of finding bad pages for you, and people have an incentive to do it.
When I run into a bad, spammy page, I don’t ever want to run into it again, so it would make sense spend the few extra seconds to remove it from my personalized search. Additionally, pages that deceive me in the search results would also earn my wrath. This new Google option would allow me to vent my anger by knocking the page out of my own listings, and putting a vote against it in the grand scale of the index.
Of course, there is the possibility of abuse, but I have faith that Google will have a stringent enough system in place to make it difficult, and have enough human fall-backs to catch the few cases that fall through the cracks.
Google: 1. MS: 0.
Looks like Google has added site-wide, subdomain, and subdirectory penalties to what look like spam pages to Google. Simply put, if it seems too concentrated with keywords and keyphrase, or too unnatural in its language, Google will penalize you (assuming you’re a spammer) for it.
Of course, some legitimate webmasters will also undoubtedly get hit, and they’ll have no idea, as they’ll never see it in webmastertools.
SEOBook has a fantastic summary of the current situation.
In Google we trust?
People have had mixed responses to Google’s Personalized search. Surprisingly little has been said about it- Graywolf is bitching about it, and Search Engine Land is cautiously accepting it. Who else is writing about it? (damn, I wish Google Reader had a search feature)
I think it’s the best damn thing ever.
In fact, I think it’s almost herald of the “new” generation. Granted, I use this term loosely, but if Web 1.0 was content based on computer algorithms, and Web 2.0 was user-chosen content, then the next logical step would be to have a hybrid; one that would take the user input, throw it into a personalized algorithm to give you an absolutely unique set of highly specialized results.
StumbleUpon has already done this - their algo matches up our interests with other peoples similar interests to give us personalized results. Unfortunately, their system is a bit too haphazard to work as a search engine, but is a fantastic tool for channel-surfing the web. In terms of idea, it’s far more advanced than Digg.
And what about Digg? Why isn’t it jumping along on the personalization bandwagon? It would solve many of their problems - how can you scheme onto the front page of digg if everyone has a different, customized page? And you already KNOW what people like - they’ve been telling you since Digg’s creation. Take that information and USE IT.
There’s going to be a lot of negative reaction in the web development market, because people aren’t going to know how to react, and testing will be more difficult - forever. That’s a bad thing for legit SEO’s, but an even worse thing for spammers and black-hatters.
Things are getting shaken up. Let the fall-out begin.
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