Been joining several SEO contests in the last couple of years and only recently did I noticed that Google seems to be giving favors to its own products and services.
Take for example YouTube. When it was not yet bought by Google, you don’t see videos in the search results. But now, just look at the Google search results:
So, let’s just say that Youtube video for the keyword “thriller” is appropriate in the results. Why not put videos from Revver or Metacafe too? Why just YouTube? Does Google have a preferential bias towards its own? Looks like it.
How about Blogger? Just this afternoon, one of my workshop participants, Joaquin Vocos, used Blogger instead of WordPress.com for his blog. A few hours later (about 3 hours), he was already ranking in the Google search results for his name.
The other blog posts and pages that had his name published on an earlier date on WordPress.com are nowhere to be found. All of the results are coming from BlogSpot.
The lesson — if you wanna be indexed very quickly, use BlogSpot. Because Google loves its own. But don’t you think it’s a little unfair?
I used to be a complete Google fan, but with the recent dubious Google tantrums, it made me hope for other competitors such as Yahoo and MSN for their services to go truly go head to head with the Big G.
Yep, Google needs a competitor.
Twitter: deuts
says:
Google, again, it has always been google. It’s very biased.
well,it is their search engine after all. Probable result is that they index their own properties quicker since its in their own backyard already. FYI. I used a wordpress blog and got top results for my company name in a couple of hours too.
There is a great possibility that Google favors its own (e.g. blogger and youtube) but assuming this trend continue, it’ll be a problem with Google in the long run.
What makes Google successful is the quality or relevant results they return to their users. Should they decide to mess up with their user oriented system, users might as well look for other more credible search engines.
Great Pinoy Blog!
Yes i agree with that. Google is biased with its own services. I’m originally a Dailymotion boy – used to upload real estate videos for a site of mine on Dailymotion for more than a year now, and just uploaded some of those vids on YouTube months later. Now if you search them using Google, my recent YouTube uploads comes first, and that same video w/c I uploaded on Dailymotion a year ago is located on the 2nd page. But, if you use the same keywords on Yahoo search, my Dailymotion video comes first then followed by YouTube. Good thing I uploaded on both sites.
Twitter: mikkogozalo
says:
Agree with you.
Google has a PageRank of 10, hahaha. It could be usual reaction of a big company, to favor its own.
Maybe more people really linked to the original video clip. Maybe it’s easier for them to index machines that are closer to them (their own).
This speculation needs more study and tests. IMO, one blog post that makes too many assumptions doesn’t cut it.
Just being the devil’s advocate here.
1. It’s possible that the other video websites are just not as SEO-friendly?
2. The vast majority of people link to YouTube videos anyway so YouTube gets the link juice.
3. You can complain against Yahoo! too for preferential treatment of Flickr photos in their Image search.
4. It’s quite possible that Blogger blogs are just SEO-optimized for Google (like having direct pinging capabilities, auto sitemaps, etc.)
On the other hand:
1. Even if Google returns results from Revver, etc., it will still show video thumbnails for YouTube results. This is arguably unfair, but this is useful to the users. Other video sites should probably have SEO-friendly video thumbnails.
Twitter: techathand
says:
This proves that my Comment on your last post is true, that blogspot ot index first rather than wordpress.com when it comes to Google.
so who’s willing to fund an antitrust suit against Google ? Preferably with adsense money
@ Eugene — you will never find a a video from Revver on top of the SERPs. Google will only show videos from Youtube. As for image search, yes Yahoo! is also biased towards Flickr (sometimes too biased IMO). But I don’t use Yahoo Search.
i told you its the darkside
Google and any other company at that will surely favor their own products over the others especially when it comes to ‘public’ services like Search Results.
That is the sole reason why I am not dropping Blogger/BlogSpot, and why some of the blogs I am asked to manage for other people/groups, I strongly suggest Blogger/BlogSpot – it is well configured and coded to be search engine bot/index magnet.
I haven’t experimented much with Spaces and Live search, but seems to be similar. And anyone on WordPress.com are better off using Live Spaces, Blogger/BlogSpot, or get/run their own blogger platform of choice like b2evolution or wordpress.
I will even choose LiveJournals over WordPress.com when it comes to free-blog hosts. It’s all about “freedom”, wordpress.com is too limited. Or get MovableType, also great (I’m using it as well for some blogs, self-hosted MT.)
kung napapansin din ninyo. mas madaling ma-index yung mga post sa newly created blogger account compared sa content ng paid hosting na website.
they are prioritizing their own of course! and I view it as spamming their own search results.
The evil empire strikes again.
If you look at it at a business perspective, it does favor its own. Google is a company, a business. Why should it highlight results from competitors? That would be like giving profit to competitors on a silver platter. They’re probably just protecting their assets and profit.
But then, I think another good question to ask based on this is the credibility of the results. Makes you wonder if Google is still a good measure of a site’s authority on a subject, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it also make it easier for spam blogs to rule the Google SERPs? They would be able to rank higher than established blogs not on Blogger just because they used blog platform that Google owns.
Perhaps he should’ve tried creating a Blogger.com and a WordPress.com site for “Joaquin Vocos” on the same day, and then compare the two in the SERPs.
Then the test would be fair.
Similar url, exact content. Then compare the two.
Here’s a counterexample: search Google for “happy holidays from revver”. It doesn’t return a YouTube video as the first result, but it ironically returns a Metacafe video. Hehehe.
Here’s another counterexample: search Google for “minesweeper the movie”. It returns a College Humor video as the top result.
I guess for the Google-favoring-YouTube hypotheses, I think Google somewhat favors YouTube but not to the extent that people think they do. I guess people just really favor YouTube over Metacafe, Revver, Vimeo, etc. that it seems Google overly favors YouTube. Agree? Disagree?
(Ack! Repost… Overly sensitive Akismet… tsk, tsk)
Here’s a counterexample: search Google for “happy holidays from revver”. It doesn’t return a YouTube video as the first result, but it ironically returns a Meta cafe video. Hehehe.
Another counterexample: search Google for “minesweeper the movie”. It returns a College Humor video as the top result.
I guess for the Google-favoring-YouTube hypotheses, I think Google somewhat favors YouTube but not to the extent that people think they do. I guess people just really favor YouTube over Meta cafe, Revver, Vimeo, etc. that it seems Google overly favors YouTube. Agree? Disagree?
(Ack! Repost… Overly sensitive Akismet… tsk, tsk)
Here’s a counterexample: search Google for “happy holidays from revver”. It doesn’t return a YouTube video as the first result, but it ironically returns a Meta cafe video. Hehehe.
Another counterexample: search Google for “minesweeper the movie”. It returns a College Humor video as the top result.
Here’s a counterexample: search Google for “happy holidays from revver”. It doesn’t return a YouTube video as the first result, but it ironically returns a Meta cafe video. Hehehe.
I guess for the Google-favoring-YouTube hypotheses, I think Google somewhat favors YouTube but not to the extent that people think they do. I guess people just really favor YouTube over Meta cafe, Revver, Vimeo, etc. that it seems Google overly favors YouTube. Agree? Disagree?
(Ack! Repost… Overly sensitive Akismet… tsk, tsk)
Search Google for “happy holidays from revver” for a counterexample. Or “minesweeper the movie”. (The result on the first is ironic.)
I guess for the Google-favoring-YouTube hypotheses, I think Google somewhat favors YouTube but not to the extent that people think they do. I guess people just really favor YouTube over Meta cafe, Revver, Vimeo, etc. that it seems Google overly favors YouTube. Agree? Disagree?
I guess for the Google-favoring-YouTube hypotheses, I think Google somewhat favors YouTube but not to the extent that people think they do. I guess people just really favor YouTube over Meta cafe, Revver, Vimeo, etc. that it seems Google overly favors YouTube. Agree? Disagree?
You are right on pointing out that big “G” is prioritizing their own backyard first before his neighbors. This is not new to me, I’ve seen this happening to one of my website. For example, the website that I am developing (social site for filipino – digg like site) – I was getting index by Google and getting 8K last month but now I am getting 5K and most of them when you search for keyword “ebenta” you are getting youtube videos link from my site. But the sad this is the link is not from my site but from youtube – Sad
so when you search for example “ebenta video” on google, you are getting bunch of video link from my site but none is pointing to the site. This is just an example.