mbzrxpgjys? So Google can fix the SERPs after all. Gotcha.
The fun fallout over the whole Bing-plagiarising-Google thing is quite the thing today (in case you missed it, Danny Sullivan has the definitive explanation). But apart from the “is this stealing” hoo-ha, there’s a more interesting philosophical point bubbling below the surface.
For years, and right up to the present day, people have been asking whether Google manipulate the SERPs in order to increase AdWords spend. The short version of this conspiracy version being:
“If Google give 4 or 5 slots of the first 10 to non-commercial results (pace: Wikipedia, BBC, Direct.gov.uk etc) then competition – and therefore cost per click – for AdWords slots is driven higher. Ergo, why wouldn’t they game the SERPs?”
Of course, Google have always denied this. The straight bat they play with is: “we cannot and do not manipulate search results – everything is algorithmic.” But any SEO with more than 4 days experience know that within the algorithm, specific sites are penalised negatively for engaging in various bits of skullduggery.
But if individual sites can be canned, what’s to stop individual sites getting a push in the opposite direction? Anyone who’s ever wrestled with a site with seemingly few quality indicators sitting just ahead of a technically brilliant and well-marketed site must have allowed that thought to surface.
With this test, Google claim to have broken their own rule, as Sullivan reports:
“Now that Google's test is done, it will be removing the one-time code it added to allow for the honeypot pages to be planted. Google has proudly claimed over the years that it had no such ability, as proof of letting its ranking algorithm make decisions. It has no plans to keep this new ability and wants to kill it, so things are back to "normal”.”
“No plans to keep… wants to kill it….” Really?
Google have now demonstrated that they can – and are willing to – game their own results. Does that make a subtle psychological difference to the way you view the SERPs now?
Against the conspiracy theory it’s worth noting that of course, the algorithm is of such complexity at this date that it seems likely that no one individual at Google could actually describe the way every aspect of it works. Like any huge piece of code, there will be legacy issues known only to people who long ago left involvement with the project. Hardcoded fixes, internal code conflicts and varying competing priorities across different markets and the near-constant churn of ‘tests’ mean that true understanding of the search results is probably beyond reach.
But even so: we now know what Google can or could do if they wanted. Food for thought.
15 Comments
Grig
They better know how that algorithm works! Gunna have to call you on that buddy.
Paul Carpenter - http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk
🙂
Institutionally, sure they do. Does any one individual? Probably not. I used to work at a software house that built supply chain and logistics stuff for supermarkets. Horrifically complicated piece of code – millions of lines in length.
Plenty of people could tell you what it did at a high level, and plenty of people could tell you the specifics of any one particular part – but no one person could truly know it all and how the various bits interact with the others. It’s nothing bad: but when you have a codebase of that kind of size, and have so many people working on for so many years, there’s a lot of stuff in the details that affect particular SERPs and no-one probably even knows its happening or why.
Seb - http://www.sweetbabybedding.co.uk
People look in google because of quality organic search results. It is obvious for some time they manipulate them to get better AdWord rates. In reality it is shot to own goal – internet users are driven more and more towards marketplaces like amazon because they can’t find what they look for on google organic.
Liste
Lol! Quote: “We now know what Google can or could do if they wanted”. We didn’t know that Google had access to their search code before? Sorry, but I found that statement really funny. We already did know what Google can or could do if they wanted.
Does Google actually change to put Wikipedia, BBC, Direct.gov.uk etc in the top 5 to raise CPC? I don’t think so. Google has a Wikipedia competitor, so why would they put Wikipedia at the top when they could put Google Knol? True, Google Know isn’t as complete, but it would get that way if it were at the top all the time like Wikipedia.
I think you ought to re-think your thesis. If your site lost traffic because Google decided to do change the logarithm for “mbzrxpgjys”, then you can complain. But if not, why jump to conclusions that they are purposely putting other sites at the top? They might as well have given them free AdWords.
Paul Carpenter - http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk
Hi Liste – I think you’re misunderstanding me a bit. I’m not the one saying that Google have been fixing the results – but just click the second link and you’ll find lots of people who think so. Google have always said that they couldn’t – even if they wanted to – fix the results. And now they’ve shown they can.
I’m not peddling a conspiracy theory or anything – just some observations 🙂
Miguel
This is non-sense. So, until last week, you believed google couldn’t fix the results?
I don’t even know how to start arguing such thing… You are not a programmer, are you?
Have you considered writing about food perhaps? I heard google have said they really can’t do a lemon pie, even if they wanted to.
Paul Carpenter - http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk
Hi Miguel – thanks for the criticism. It seems redundant repeating what I’ve already said above, because you’re evidently misreading what I’ve written.
As for being a food writer? I’d love to be!
cool - http://google
this is an awesome point 🙂 i mean no matter how much they deny .. they do program their algorithms to get more money .. obviously google is also a cheat .. but google is a rich, and so called “intelligent” cheat.
Josh
I’m glad I’m not the only one that thought this was the key takeaway. I think admitting this was a huge tactical error on Google’s part especially with so many competitors raising issues that they manually promote their products in the SERPs. Sure they can still say “we don’t” to those allegations but they will never be able to say “we can’t” again (at least they can’t say it and have anyone believe it).
Jim Rudnick - http://www.canuckseo.com
Like many above, I too believe that the part of the whole Sullivan post was that yes, Google “can” do this…
Do they? Dunno…but knowing that they can is the worrisome part, eh!
🙁
Jim
Mark - http://xperience4higher.com
This was the first thing that came to my mind when i heard about this whole scandal. I doubt that they would fix SERP results as it would become a biased search engine and not truly representative of the most popular sites. Not that all the SEO that is out there in the world today helps with that anyway.
Maurice - http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/
yes from experience in BT if your no1 in a field some times you need to STFU – major PR disaster for Google – looks like Eric was actually doing some adult supervision who knew 🙂
Jim Rudnick - http://www.canuckseo.com
take a sec to read Rob Young’s posting over here — http://www.searchenginejournal.com/microsoft-accuses-google-of-profiting-from-spam/27632/ — it’s Microsoft’s comments that make sense to me, eh!
Google DOES make $ from all adsense clicks….spam or not….
🙁
Jim
Mem
This is the first page returned while searching mbzrxpgjys on bing. Number 5 on google.
jezza101 - http://www.jezza101.co.uk
Doesn’t it just mean that there is no mechanism for their search analysts to manually manipulate results.
Surely we always knew someone could tap one of the engineers on the shoulder and ask them to change the code. For it to be literally impossible they’d have to seal off the servers and throw away the key!!
Bit of a non-story imo – soz! 🙂