Google search manipulation starves some websites of traffic
Google's placement of its own flight-finding service in search results is resulting in lower click-through rates for companies that have not bought advertising, according to a study by Harvard University academics.
The study provides data for how Google's placement of its own services amid "organic" search results may hurt competitors, which is the focus of an ongoing antitrust case between Google and the European Union.
How paid and non-paid search results are displayed has a powerful sway over consumers, the study found. Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and Zhenyu Lai, a Harvard doctoral candidate, looked at when Google began inserting its own Flight Search feature, launched in December 2011, into search results. Read more...
Comment 4 inShare154 Yandex, Google’s Russian Rival, Is Twitter’s New Real-Time Search Partner
A significant step for Twitter in its international growth: Yandex, Russia’s search giant, today announced that it will carry Twitter data in all of its search results.
The news also underscores one possible route to revenue generation for Twitter: Yandex describes this as a licensing deal. The terms of it were not disclosed but Microsoft reportedly paid Twitter $30 million for a similar search agreement.
The agreement with Yandex will see Twitter’s data firehose appear both in Yandex’s blog search, as well as through a dedicated URL, twitter.yandex.ru. Read more...
Why Google’s Search plus takes away more than it adds
Search should not be a social network. Nor should it have an agenda. But changes pushed out by Google last week are driving in uncomfortable directions.
Google has rolled out a new feature called Search plus Your World, currently available for users of Google.com who are using English and signed in with a Google profile. The feature, which defaults on but can be toggled off via a switch at the top right of the screen, displays social search results based on a user's Google+ contacts and photos shared via Google's online photo-sharing service Picasa.
This new feature specifically does not promote search results from alternative social network services such as Facebook and Twitter, although content from these rival services can still appear among search results - but only if it's specifically relevant to what you're searching for. Google+ data appears regardless of whether you're seeking it.
The big, uncomfortable point here is that Google is treating its own social content differently from the social content of some of its rivals' services. Google appears to be promoting content from its own services simply because it can - rather than because it's the most relevant and therefore useful result for a user's search query.And here's an example of Google promoting its own content over content from a rival social service - when running a search for the word "Twitter" with Google's Search plus Your World feature switched on the result is accompanied by a prominent promotion box (see below, right) that contains a series of Google+ users. Not exactly what you'd call relevant for a search for "Twitter"! Read more...
Senators question whether Google has biased search results
Several U.S. senators accused Google of giving search preferences to its own suite of services over competitors, but Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt denied that his company is manipulating search results during a hearing Wednesday.
Google's search results appear to be biased in favor of its shopping results and other services, and Google's own services always seem to appear near the top of its organic search results, said Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican.
Lee referred to a chart showing Google's shopping results consistently in the top three search results, while other comparison shopping sites moved up and down in Google rankings. It appears that Google has "cooked" its search results, he said. Read more...