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Old 01-04-2012, 12:21 AM   #31
BigV
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google returns search results for search terms.

in normal operation, the uppermost "hits" are often paid for advertisements. They usually have a pastel colored background. It's very subtle, and the text looks like the text of the other hits out in the regular internet. for uncareful users, they might be clicked on. this is good for the advertiser because now they have the potential customer at their site. yay capitalism. the location in search results is a HUGE big deal. Higher is better. You, or any other person can "buy" what google calls "adwords".

You could "bid" for having your ad appear when a given search term(s) is submitted to the all-knowing google. So could I. If I bid more than you then my results would appear higher on the page than yours. we could both have active bids, both have active hits, both have our ads appear for the same search term. this is google's genius business model. people pay to have their links/ads appear in the search results from google.

Of course, google returns non commercial hits too. they have a formula more secret than coca cola and kentucky fried chicken combined as to what constitutes a good hit. many people make beaucoup bux by reading the entrails and producing web pages that will rank highly. And, it's a moving target. But it is possible to do, let's face it, SOME hit will be the top hit (non commercial). There's a concept/act called a googlebomb, for example. Back in the day, if you searched for "miserable failure" you'd get George W Bush as the number one result. ha ha. Poor Rick Santorum. folks have figured out ways, sometimes by brute force, to get a search term to land on top.

Now, consider these ingredients: google sells ads/search results for profit. google produces some products, including a browser called "chrome". google has a lot of fanboys with really big brains. the next part is ... speculation.

if the fans all got together and made one of these guerrilla campaigns to cause google's product, browser chrome, to have especially high search rankings, it could be viewed as unfair. Like back in the day when Microsoft bundled internet explorer on computers with windows. they were found to be cheating, using their advantageous position to promote their own product. Google wants to avoid even the appearance of misconduct (there are real, actual, published rules) and so they've *manually demoted* (moved lower, I know you know what demoted means, but in search terms/hits, this is literally true, lower on the results list, and it's the kiss of death) the hits that "lead" to a link for chrome. They don't want to be accused of using their own tool, which is absolutely ubiquitous to promote their other product.

Does this help?
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Old 01-04-2012, 12:27 AM   #32
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This may help also ...
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Old 01-04-2012, 08:16 AM   #33
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Thanks V, that does make more sense to me now.

So then, I have a follow up question...
I got the feeling from reading about this episode that maybe
Google actually paid some "fan boys" to do the manipulation.
I don't know if they were paid $ or something else, or it was just my interpretation

Do you get that reading too ?
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Old 01-04-2012, 09:35 AM   #34
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Nah, This looks like an honest mistake and G00gle is just being precautious.
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Old 01-04-2012, 01:04 PM   #35
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Today's news makes it apparent payments were made to bloggers.
Maybe this restores a bit of confidence in the directions of new management at Google.

Computer World
By Gregg Keizer
January 4, 2012

Google downgrades Chrome ranking after paid-link monkey business
Slaps own browser with 60-day penalty, buries download page in search results

Quote:
The decision to demote Chrome's PageRank
-- the rating Google assigns to sites based on how many other sites link to them --
came after bloggers Aaron Wall of SEO Book and Danny Sullivan
of SearchEngineLand revealed a marketing campaign that paid other bloggers
to create generic posts which linked to a video touting Chrome to small businesses.
The problem, said Wall and Sullivan, was that Google's own rules prohibit paying for links.<snip>

"We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently
in order to provide better search results for users," said the Google spokesman Tuesday.
"While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations
of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard,
so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."<snip>
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Old 01-04-2012, 01:19 PM   #36
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No, I don't agree that that story make it clear that google was paying for search results.

I followed the links in your story, the fellow that is making the complaint is in the business of making money by claiming to improve search results for his clients. And in fact he bemoans the "hoops google makes small businesses jump through" to rise in the ranks. He's clearly got an interest in the story, in fact, an interest somewhat adversarial to google's since he shows his frustration at their policies that make it hard for him to make money.

I don't see any other claims, any other evidence that google was the payer for the marketing campaign. Have you heard anyone else saying this or offering any evidence?
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Old 01-04-2012, 01:40 PM   #37
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https://plus.google.com/109412257237...ts/NAWunDzJSHC
Quote:
Matt Cutts - Yesterday 5:36 PM - Public
Sorry that it took me until now to comment on the situation that Danny wrote about at http://searchengineland.com/google-c...d-posts-106551 . I’m in Central America this week and my ability to reach the internet hasn't been great.

I’ll give the short summary, then I’ll describe the webspam team’s response. Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either.

However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos--not link to Google--and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines, which you can find at http://support.google.com/webmasters...answer=35769#3 .

In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page.
Read the comments as much as you like, there's a vast amount of context there, more than I can regurgitate here. The upshot is that the thing they tried to do, buy video ads for chrome, is legal, and legitimate and within the guidelines. Of the video ads they bought, one was made in a way that had an aspect that caused the pagerank to be affected, a violation of google's policies. this video ad produced by someone else and paid for by google, was what was being complained about by the two SEO entrepreneurs/authors. It has been corrected, and a penalty applied for the violation.

in the comments, there's a lot of back and forth about whether or not the rule is being applied fairly, some say yes, some say no. about whether or not the penalty is too harsh as it stands on the books, yes and no again. about whether or not google's punishing google the same wayfor the same violation as it would punish other companies, large and small. no surprise, some say yes, some say no.

TO ME. It seems that google's following their own rules. not only that, they're being extra diligent about following them since they're being punished for the actions of a third party. whatever. I also find it above and beyond that the manager in charge of this crap is answering the issue while on vacation in central america, and doing so in this very public way.

I believe this is acting in accordance with their words. Words are cheap. These actions though are not made out of hot air. This is what "doing no evil" looks like. Transparent, accountable, honest. That's my take on it.
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Old 01-04-2012, 02:10 PM   #38
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How can you stay mad at a company that has an interesting response when you ask for walking directions from The Shire to Mordor?

(has to be walking directions, not automobile, transit or bicycle)
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Old 01-04-2012, 03:15 PM   #39
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Well V, thanks for taking the time to follow up all this.

So as I'm now understanding the iterations and translations,
Computer World has added to the confusion that was originally
reported by CNET that was surfaced by others in the plural,
(probably those who were still circling the squirrel on the tree)
but should have been in the singular, about one blogger
who has a vested interest in pounding on Google,
but whose management has now gone well beyond
the norm of what was necessary to remedy a problem
they did not create in the first place.
,,, all this at the house that Jack built.

Right ?
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Old 01-04-2012, 03:25 PM   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lamplighter View Post
Well V, thanks for taking the time to follow up all this.

So as I'm now understanding the iterations and translations, Computer World has added to the confusion that was originally reported by CNET that was surfaced by others in the plural, (probably those who were still circling the squirrel on the tree) but should have been in the singular, about one blogger who has a vested interest in pounding on Google, but whose management has now gone well beyond the norm of what was necessary to remedy a problem they did not create in the first place. ,,, all this at the house that Jack built.

Right ?
Close.

I'm not sure who the first reporter was, so I won't speak to that.

One story, repeated several times, right.

There was one blogger, but he had no interest in pounding on google, he was apparently paid by a group at google to produce video advertisments. the ad he produced had the offending element in it (something about the absence of a nofollow parameter, I think).

The parties I implied that had a grudge are involved in SEO businesses/authors (Search Engine Optimization, from the perspective of a customer who would like to see their results move higher in the results list). There appears to be just the two of them that broke/are the source of the story. They are not the ones that were hired by google, not the ones that produced the ads, neither the valid non offending ones nor the one that did offend.

Yes on the rest about google's response, etc.
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Old 01-05-2012, 01:00 PM   #41
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I'll toss this into the fray ...
I can't paste a lot of what is there as so much of it is screenshots.
Definitely worth a look though.
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Old 01-05-2012, 02:02 PM   #42
BigV
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*SIGH*

It's the same story, by the same two fellows, Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of SearchEngineLand.com and Andrew Wall, author of some damn search engine book. I find it interesting that the exclamatory headline is only found on his site. I can't find anything like the same kind of apoplectic language anywhere else. Same story. Same two guys. Same, not additional, evidence. Still cites one post that does not include the nofollow attribute.

that story was from 02 Jan. the story on 03 Jan is that Google did what they said they'd do, they demoted the results for chrome.
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Old 01-05-2012, 05:01 PM   #43
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sorry. Looked like there was more info there to me than I read in the others from yesterday.
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Old 01-12-2012, 08:55 AM   #44
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I want to control what I put out there. I certainly don't want FB or Google or any other system I use to do it without my permission.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Google-Y...ews-13856.html
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Old 01-12-2012, 10:54 AM   #45
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Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”
Quote:
Google’s search results are undergoing their most radical transformation ever, as a new “Search Plus Your World” format begins rolling out today. It finds both content that’s been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings.

The change is live now, though not everyone will see it until it fully launches over the next few days. It’s only for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English. You’ll know when it happens, because Google will alert you with a message like this above your search results:

The new system will perhaps make life much easier for some people, allowing them to find both privately shared content from friends and family plus material from across the web through a single search, rather than having to search twice using two different systems.

However, Search Plus Your World may cause some privacy worries, as private content may appear as if it is exposed publicly (it is not). It might also cause concern by making private content more visible to friends and family than those sharing may have initially intended.

The new format and features will also likely cause Google to come under renewed fire that it is leveraging its search engine to favor its own content and crowd out competitors.

Below, a detailed look at what’s involved with Search Plus Your World, from how it works to some of the issues it raises.
Whats up with this? Thoughts from the more computer savvy, please.
Link
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