Aral Balkan: Historical Archive — Google is an angry god

Google is an angry god

One good thing about being a monopoly like Google is that you can choose to play God whenever you like and no one can do anything about it.

In a good example of how Google has gotten too powerful to be trusted, it chose this week to play dice with the livelihoods of countless people by penalizing many major blog sites and networks by slashing the page rank.

My blog was among those affected, and I saw my page rank drop from 8 to 5 this month, no doubt because of the text links at the bottom of my site.

Other sites that are affected include Engadget (PR 7 to 5), WashingtonPost.com (PR 7 to 5), Forbes.com (PR 7 to 5), my friend Andy Budd's site (PR 8 to 5), and Tuaw.com (PR 6 to 4).

I wonder if Google realizes that it is hurting itself and its search results with this move too. By dropping the page rank of sites with useful information, like the sites mentioned above or the archives of my blog which contain about seven years of Flash-related information (aggregated from my previous two blogs as well as the current one), it is going to hurt the relevancy and quality of its own results.

It's a dual-edge sword: Yes, Page Rank is Google's to do with as it likes and they can penalize anyone they like, as whimsically as they like, but if this move begins to affect the quality of search results on Google then people will move elsewhere as quickly as they moved from Altavista to Google in the first place. It feels to me like Google is playing with fire here and there's a very real chance that they can get burned in the long term.

It also feels like this is a good time to look into supporting other search engines like Yahoo!, Altavista (remember them?), Ask, and MSN so as to even the playing field and not allow any one company God-like whimsical control over search results.

As Andy Beard states:

For a company such as Google with a stock price based extensively on anticipated growth and public sentiment, it doesn't take a huge swing in goodwill to have a dramatic effect on valuation. Google has just slapped their biggest fans.

The findability of information on the Internet is too important to entrust in the hands of any single entity. This is where RSS, aggregators, and other search engines play an important role. It might even be an idea to create a peer-to-peer, open source search engine that is not controlled by any one central entity. If successful, such an engine could help to democratize search results.

And, perhaps, as part of this, a global campaign by high-profile sites to voluntarily de-list themselves from Google may prove to be the most affective counter-attack to Google's opening salvo.

Yes, Google is very powerful but remember that it is our sites that make it powerful. Without our content, without our sites appearing as relevant search results, Google Search is useless. So perhaps we're not as helpless as it might seem but it will take a concerted effort to make any sort of dent in the frightening grip that this Goliath has over the Internet.

Relevant links:

Comments

And people think I'm barmy for suggesting that with a more semantic web (both lower and upper case, whatever those are supposed to mean) coupled with Moore's Law, we could each have our own personal Googlebot sitting under our desks - talking to each other in a secure peer-to-peer network.
by Tom Morris on 2007-10-26 17:53:04
Hey Aral, There must be something wrong with PR i think... My site went up from 3 up to 6... I don't think that's normal... They must be messing around with something... I find this VERY weird...
by Ronny Welter on 2007-10-26 20:40:47
Just to play the devil's advocate for a moment... hope you don't get offended... but you have the following links on the bottom of your home page. Golfsport | Auto Detailing & Supplies | Abnehmen | Mortgage Refinance Rates | Printers | Buy Text Links | Domain Registration | SEO Shopping Cart Software | Calling Cards | International Flower Delivery | Freezers | General Office Supplies | Free Data Recovery Software | Loi Robien Defiscalisation Immobilier | PlayStation3 Games,Pictures,Sport News | 不動産 | Big Forum | Registro De Dominio | Electronic Component | Hard Drive Backup | International Phone Card | Coolers | Contemporary Art in London | Most of these obviously have nothing to do with the content of your blog, and are paid links that work off Google's PR system, I would say misusing it to falsely generate higher page rank for the sites who pay for such links. By paying for these links, they are actually skewing the relevance of Google's system, and it seems Google is trying to counter this to keep their results relevant to real content. Is there some part of this I am missing? I had a PR of 7 and it hasn't changed.
by Keith Peters on 2007-10-26 17:36:11
Hello, Google is shooting in it's own leg. Everyone has to realize, sooner or later that they are not God. I will not be surprised if I see in near future more people turning to other very good and even better search engines, punishing Google for acting not so friendly. Flanture
by Flanture on 2007-10-26 17:55:05
Hi Keith, Yep, I've never hidden the fact that I got text ads at the start of the year and, as I stated in my article, Page Rank is Google's to do with as it pleases. It has every right in the world to lower my page rank because I have text links on my site. However, it will also end up hurting itself because it will deprive the search results of the relevant content from my site. It also comes down to this: My blog is popular because I have put years of effort into it. How I choose to monetize that should be my decision. I chose to do it via a method that didn't interfere with the ability of people to read the articles (i.e., big ads inside the articles, etc.) And, these ads made it possible for me to work on SWX this year. In other words, without those ads, we wouldn't have had SWX. And, again, Google can penalize it as it chooses, because they own Page Rank. The point I'm making here is that any one company having such power over the findability of information on the Internet is dangerous. Today it's text links, tomorrow it could be any advertising that's not AdWords.
by Aral on 2007-10-26 17:56:58
Yeah, I wasn't saying you were being sneaky about it. We even talked about it in Boston and I was hoping to do something similar myself. But still, I don't see these links as "advertising" per se, but as an exploit of the system which Google has attempted, maybe poorly, to correct.
by Keith Peters on 2007-10-26 18:06:34
Have you seen a drop in traffic yet? The PR indicator doesn't really mean much, a drop in traffic would show that they've actually done something to this and the other sites. And a subset of the question - have you seen a drop in traffic for the Flash-related topics you normally rank highly for? I'm guessing the site could still do well for those even if your actual PR does drop a bit, but you might not rank as well for peripheral terms. Good luck trying the other search engines. I do that quite a lot, lets just say I still use Google for all my normal searching.
by Paul Silver on 2007-10-26 19:02:51
Google is an utterly indifferent god. It doesn't care about you either way. All that matters is that the changes improve the quality of the search results.
by Alex Farran on 2007-10-26 22:14:39
@Alex Farran: I am sure that Google do not care about individuals effected, but I don't see how dropping someones page rank because they happen to be making money with out Google Ad's makes for improved quality of search results.
by Stephalicious on 2007-10-26 22:26:38
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel that the only end result of all this will be that Google will end up making Page Rank (at least the public one that is displayed on the toolbar) irrelevant. Perhaps that's their ultimate goal. The Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) do not appear to have been affected. Regardless, I don't think this will remove the need that exists (for non-Google-Adwords advertising) and, if it does spur on the other search engines or lead to the creation of new ones, then that's good for everyone. As I said earlier, Google has every right to do whatever it wants to. It'll be interesting to see the consequences.
by Aral on 2007-10-26 22:42:08
And it mostly hurts the "little guys", who make a few hundred bucks a month by producing freely available quality content :(
by Chuck Monroe on 2007-10-27 21:04:00
I'd almost say the Weblogs Inc. blogs deserved to be penalized for the practices they employ. In the body of all of their articles they link back just about once per article to their own internal search engine on some random word. I keep clicking links absentmindedly thinking I'll go to somewhere relevant but I just wind up at their search results page. That, at least, is a blatant misuse of google's page rank system and if they're combatting this so much the better.
by Saxon on 2007-10-28 02:04:54
[...] Aral Balkan discusses the impact it had on his blog on his recent post Google is an Angry God. His site dropped from a PR8 to a PR5 overnight. [...]
by Google Penalizes Paid Links : Designing Interactive on 2007-10-28 23:02:22
Our PageRank dropped too. I'm not worried about it yet either. Our SERPS haven't been affected and our traffic is unchanged. Accessible websites built with web standards, especially those with genuinely useful content, will tend to do better in the SERPS automatically.
by Josh Walsh on 2007-10-28 23:06:33
"However, it will also end up hurting itself because it will deprive the search results of the relevant content from my site." You could see it that way, or you could interpret that your hurting yourself and the ability to find your content by having the ads mentioned previously. i.e. both you and google are making a decision here. Just being devils advocate like keith ;)
by Tink on 2007-10-29 14:05:24
Hey Aral, Ever heard of The Deck? Basically a group of high-volume traffic sites that charge a premium for a very picky advertising platform: "We won’t take an ad unless we have paid for and/or used the product or service." How about organising something similar for high-profile flash bloggers and sites? Anyone serious about reaching such a specific audience would (hopefully) be prepared to pay the required rates, will not be worried about pagerank as it's not pagerank they're after, it's a targetted audience. No interferrance from the almighty G, then you guys get to focus on the projects that make our lives easier. Just a fleeting idea I thought i'd share :P Dan
by DannyT on 2007-10-30 14:41:52
Perhaps chiming in a bit harsher than Keith Peters & Tink, the textlinks are silly. Sure you can maybe make a few dimes with ads (irrelevent or not), but this is your professional blog, right? Your profession isn't directly related to Golf, Auto Detailing, Home Loans, Calling Cards, Flower Delivery, Freezers, Office Supplies.....etc etc... The proper thing to do is option d) a) Add a 'Promoters of Aral' feature page b) Post occasional promotional stories 'Aral loves Nacho Cheese Doritas' c) Continue mirking the waters of info-blogs with ads (with varying degrees of subtlety & relevancy) d) Maintain an ad-free professional blog Irrelevent, and unrequested ads are hurting the internet, for every ad shamelessly thrown on a blog, a virtual angel sheds a tear mate!
by LEE on 2007-11-06 15:33:45
Sadly, I too feel that Google has blatantly misused there powers in this instance. Advertising is advertising. It's the same as Domino' Pizza or Toyota advertising during the Super Bowl or the World Series...What does either company have to do with Baseball?? But saying that those ads are inappropriately placed is just foolish. Advertisers want there ad placed in prominent place so it can BE SEEN. They pay for it to be displayed where it will be noticed.
by Danny Sedor on 2007-11-08 00:59:48
Hi Lee, Actually, the ads have allowed me to create SWX this year so I just can't being myself to think ill of them. That said, I'm going to be launching a new initiative that should address your concerns, _and_ benefit some other Flashers.
by Aral on 2007-11-08 11:18:34
In order for google to remain relevant, it must maintain independence from the so-called heavyweights and use it's whim and strategic thinking of make sure search results are of good quality. Otherwise it will be falling into the trap of the old paradigm that we all dislike (the elite sites or minds determining what is worth public notice). I am sorry that you got punished for having money-making, but content irrelevant links on your site, but many of use that write content for the love of our trades (not to spread pagerank to others) did not get punished. My golden rule is that SEO on purpose and just for the sake or SEO, or to master and exploit the google formula is the undoing of any SEO effort. As we all know, if you write useful content that makes sense to humans, and only link to things that will benefit your readers (not links to benefit your friends), your site will establish itself as useful to human beings (who are the ultimate consumers of your site anyway), regardless of what google, Lycos, Yahoo, or whatever the next search engine dictatorship might be. Just to let you know, I lost my entire pagerank between August and November (I removed the www in my domain), but this did not affect the traffic... the results ranking actually continued to improve. I stay aware of the rules, but never bend to them just for ranking at the expense of good information.
by iDonny on 2007-11-09 20:37:29
When a man gets angry he falls down.
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