The Wall Street Journal has published a memorable article about Google Search. To me, the WSJ article sounds a bit like a specialist article about pig slaughtering being published in the Allgemeine Deutsche Imker-Zeitung (General German Beekeepers' Journal). Written by a kindergarten teacher.
On November 15, 2019, the Wall Street Journal published an article (3) entitled
How Google interferes with its search algorithms and changes your results
and the subtitle
The internet giant uses blacklists, algorithm tweaks, and an army of contractors to shape what you see.
Translated into German: "How Google interacts with its search algorithms and changes your results" – "The internet giant uses blacklists, algorithm optimizations, and an army of contractors to shape what you see."
Wow. That's really bad. At least, according to that sensational headline. Even at this point, the expert is surely confused.
And even more about the rest of the article.
The article basically reads like an artificial construct. With built-in untruths. The experts interviewed described the article as highly problematic. If the SEO experts are to be believed, statements were even falsified. (2).
Google wants to and must deliver the best results for people!
{{divider}}
Understanding Google: Part 1 – Autocomplete and Suggest
Autocomplete (or Suggest) makes assumptions and suggestions when entering various search phrases. Assumptions about what the search intent of a search query might be, which can then be supplemented with search suggestions.
The whole thing is based on search volume and the probability of what the searcher might google. For certain topics, this even happens on a daily basis.
The Wall Street Journal has conducted a very strange benchmark test on this issue. And it shows how bad it is when you are completely unclear about what you are doing there and how propaganda against Google is then published.
Several graphics were displayed showing what the autosuggest functions of Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing offered users.
We took a closer look at the WSJ's phrase "Joe Biden is."
Why would Google display insults such as "Joe Biden is... [...] an idiot" or "a liar"? Especially as a statement? Would you want to read something like that about yourself in public? Would you want to be labeled a racist or a Jew? Why would Google expose itself to accusations of racism, as happened in France?
If you are a brand, you usually want to be clean. "Don't be evil" has long been Google's slogan. There have also been lawsuits and injunctions, for example by Bettina Wulff in connection with Google's suggestions.
Why would Google take the blame for this? And what search result should one expect from "Joe Biden is an idiot"? Yes, no, maybe?
These few examples alone show how immature the WSJ's research is and how meaningless some of the phrases examined are. We have recreated the WSJ's experiment in our own way. This clearly shows how meaningless the WSJ's research is.
For the majority of Bing results, there were no search queries at all in Google: meaning fewer than 10 people ask this question per month on Google.com in the US.
Why would Google display this?
Some of DuckDuckGo's search queries were below the belt. Some search queries don't make any sense at all, such as "Joe Biden is ... Donald Trump." Huh? Are we dealing with a split personality here?
If you are really looking for hate speech and insults, then you have to enter it directly into Google. And there you will certainly find what you are looking for—from other providers. But not directly from Google.
Why should foul language be encouraged? Google is aimed at all age groups. Or would you like it if your child served you the best swear words at the breakfast table? ...
Or when your 14-year-old daughter Googles her father and gets suggestions that he might be Jewish or an alcoholic, or even that he spends his money in the red-light district.
The following graphic lists the search terms used by the WSJ. Insults are hidden by Google. This is also stated in Google's statutes (4). It's no secret either.
The fact that this is displayed in this way by other search engines shows, in my opinion:
- Immature algorithms.
- Less sense of responsibility towards users.
- And perhaps too few complaints that this hurts.
The most striking search phrases were "Where do I buy heroin" and "Heroin dosage." It's good that Google doesn't offer suggestions for these. According to the WSJ, DuckDuckGo and Bing do. They even suggest charts (graphics). For normal phrases such as "recession," the majority of suggestions were identical.
As already described, there is an official statement from Google that certain additions will not be displayed.
In contrast, the WSJ writes:
"GOOGLE HAS BECOME more open about its moderation of auto-complete but still doesn't disclose its use of blacklists. Kevin Gibbs, who created auto-complete in 2004 when he was a Google engineer, originally developed the list of terms that wouldn't be suggested, even if they were the most popular queries that independent algorithms would normally supply." (3)
What is the WSJ thinking? The WSJ seems unable to distinguish between the autosuggest feature and normal search results.
Google has said in congressional testimony that it does not use blacklists. Asked in a 2018 hearing whether Google had ever blacklisted a "company, group, individual or outlet...for political reasons," Karan Bhatia, Google's vice president of public policy, responded: "No, ma'am, we don't use blacklists/whitelists to influence our search results," according to the transcript. (3)
More about blacklists in the section "Understanding Google: Part 2 – Blacklists & Penalties."
SEO and content marketing with intelligence – when even basic knowledge is lacking
Some time ago, there was an outcry from an entrepreneur in the field of alternative medicine that Google was suppressing his results. (No, not one of my clients).
Allegedly, the autocomplete feature was not displayed as "HE" had expected. He criticized exactly what the WSJ did with its benchmark. And with many of its own benchmarks, it provided alleged proof that only positive words are displayed instead of negative and critical words.
Basically, the test from Part 1 was repeated, along with the uncertainty about how Google Autocomplete works.
Why weren't his "wishes and ideas" displayed for autocomplete? There was a very clear reason for this: there were no or hardly any search queries, or other additions simply had more search queries.
It has been known since 2010 that Google has a negative list of words – published by Danny Sullivan himself and also described in Reference (4).
As a SEO expert, I then had some fun and audited his website. website audit . It didn't take long: massive duplicate content (DC), published multiple times on countless platforms. 1:1 – duplicate content in its purest and worst form.
And anyone who doesn't understand how Google works and doesn't respond to Google's announcements that duplicate posts will simply be hidden has simply failed to understand what content marketing and real SEO. Not to mention the many bad links.
With a website audit score of 49%, he really took the cake. It was a very poorly maintained website. In fact, it was the worst-maintained website I had ever actively examined in an audit.
And then people wonder why their websites don't appear in the index or are ranked 200th and the number of clicks is going down? Good SEO consulting is simply priceless. As added value for your company, of course. SEO does not mean significant additional expenses – really. Because it is an investment. In your future.
Understanding Google: Part 2 – Blacklist & Penalties
The WSJ continues to talk about blacklists. What could this mean? Do they mean those sites that scrape massive amounts of content from other sites to increase their own value, set bad backlinks, and just do nonsense? Because they hope to gain high authority for the website in order to sell it profitably or to generate high advertising revenue?
It is well known that authority cannot be inherited. And it shows a lack of knowledge about how Google evaluates pages. It goes without saying that such scraped pages and bad link generators will eventually be deindexed by Google. The WSJ describes this itself.
And why does Google prevent certain websites from achieving a good ranking or decide that pages should be deindexed?
- Stolen, scraped, spun content
- Duplicate content
- search engine manipulation
- black hat SEO
- Technical SEO is simply worse than that of the competition.
- Failure to comply with Google's guidelines
- Violation of advertising insertions
- Backlink policy
Let's go back to 1997: Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their own search engine. And they were celebrated for it. Based on the PageRank algorithm, Google delivered the best results at the time.
And as is the nature of some people, they try to grab everything they can get their hands on. Munter was manipulated to position unattractive results with no added value as high as possible in search engines.
Why would Google deliver inferior results and accept all of this?
Of course, Google adjusts its algorithms to deliver the best possible results for users. This is what happened with PageRank and countless core updates. Google took active measures against fraudsters and manipulators.
What would happen if Google had no visitors or only 50% market share? You have to ask yourself what Google earns most of its money from: advertising! Ads! And what would happen if, instead of 3.8 million search queries per minute, there were only 1.5 million search queries? And, as a result, significantly fewer potential clicks on the ads?
A downward spiral would be set in motion: dissatisfied shareholders, slumping profits. In 2018, Google generated approximately $116 billion in revenue through advertising, while Alphabet, its parent company, generated "only" just under $137 billion. As a result, Google contributes almost 85% of the parent company's total revenue through advertising alone.
Imagine you build the best car in the world and want to keep it that way. You have the reputation, the market, and great sales. Would you then let someone take the butter off your bread and install a cheap engine with cheap components? Or install things that could harm the driver?
Certainly not.
The same applies to Google. Google has set itself the goal of delivering the best search results for its users. Have you ever tried other search engines and compared the quality of the results?
Google and low-wage workers – The human raters
The WSJ also reports on "low-paid contractors." This probably refers to human raters. Google has published a 160-page paper on what ideal search results should look like. The whole thing was based on research and experience as well as psychological considerations.
In order to deliver the best search results, these human evaluators are included in studies. What's more, anyone can become a "human rater" purely by chance. Google can display search results differently for a selected group than for the general public for a period of time. (5).
Google conducts tests every day to deliver the best search results. A lot can happen in the process: rankings are swapped, colors are changed, etc. And the human raters do nothing else: they evaluate, and the Google engineers feed and condition the AI and Rank Brain.
Here, too, the WSJ demonstrates a knack for presenting things differently than they really are. The writers seem to know nothing about eye-tracking studies and research. Or is every company now getting into trouble with antitrust regulators because they optimize purchasing decisions?
Lara Levin from Google comments:
"We do today what we have always done: provide relevant results from the most reliable sources available."
"We are doing today what we have always done: delivering relevant results from the most reliable sources available."
Incidentally, Google pays $13.50 for these "low-wage workers." There's nothing more to say about that.
The SEO community has critically examined this WSJ report. Actually, it's enough to make you laugh and cry at the same time (2). It remains exciting to see in which forums the WSJ article alone appears unreflectively as "the latest SEO tips." I am always delighted when customers say, "I researched something about SEO over the weekend." Wonderful.
