Does Google Hold the Key to the Internet Kingdom?
By Lisa Gill, www.NewsFactor.com
Monday January 21 01:37 PM EST
In the dampened dot-com economy, search engines have taken to providing much more than plain-vanilla search results in response to queries. Paid placements, Web site advertising and payment for expedited listings all have blurred the line for consumers in terms of which content is owned, paid for, or represents actual search results.
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In fact, in the midst of an ad revenue drought, Google (news - external web site) is the only noncommercial, profitable search engine that does not charge site owners a fee to be listed.
This is significant because Google is considered to be the search engine with the largest reach on the Internet, with more than 3 billion documents indexed, including 2 billion Web pages. And Google's rise to the top received more fuel last month, thanks to the company's acquisition of a nearly complete archive of Usenet newsgroup postings.
Google spokesperson David Krane told NewsFactor that the 700 million archived Usenet posts purchased from Deja.com date back 20 years, beginning 10 years before the birth of the Web. The archive is not only the largest of its kind, but is also one of the only ones owned by a search engine.
Indeed, the search engine's ever-expanding breadth, depth and consumer reach lead to the question: How does Google's role as a major gateway to Internet content affect users?
No Paid Placement
Krane said that even in this tight economy, the company has no plans to accept payment for Web site placement in search results, although paid advertisements appear at the top of the screen when certain search terms are entered.
Even Yahoo! bowed to paid placements in November, when it announced a partnership with Overture, formerly GoTo.com, to display Overture's paid search listings through April 2002. Yahoo! started selling listings on its commercial category pages earlier last year.
Consumer advocate group Commercial Alert blasted search engines last summer when it filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that paid search engine placement is deceptive to consumers. The complaint specifically cited AltaVista, AOL Time Warner, Direct Hit Technologies, iWon, LookSmart, Microsoft and Terra Lycos because of their paid placement practices.
Search Results Differ
Rather than accepting payment for placement, Google directs what users see in terms of how the searches themselves are performed.
Harley Manning, research director for customer experience at Forrester, told NewsFactor that what makes Google's searches so unique is that -- unlike any other major search engine -- Google's search algorithm is based on how often a Web site is linked to from other sources.
"If you do a search for 'Lord of the Rings,' Google would find all the sites that refer to 'Lord of the Rings,' and then take the ones most often pointed to by other sites and say those are the most relevant," Manning explained.
So for any given search, a user will receive results that include the most popular Web site matched to the search phrase.
"It's smart because for someone that knows enough and cares enough to build a site, then the sites they point to, that's going to be a much more meaningful recommendation than an editor who you hire [who] may know less about the subject," Manning said.
Revenue for Posts Possible
Manning noted that while the Usenet archive represents a piece of Internet history and thus can be seen as a philanthropic purchase, he also expects Google will turn a profit from the collected posts.
"The two ways this makes sense is that they're doing their part to preserve part of the Internet. And the other is that there is some way to monetize it by having it be such an attractive content area, and therefore they could get some ad placement from it," said Manning.
Currently, no ads are posted on pages that contain archived Usenet posts.
It also is unclear whether any other type of database might be purchased by Google. Krane said the company could not disclose any future deals similar to the Usenet archive acquisition.
Popularity Soars
A November 2001 Jupiter Media Metrix report ranked Google thirteenth out of the top 50 Web properties for that month, with more than 22 million unique visitors. Google's Web indexing partner Yahoo! was ranked on the same list in third place, with just under 72 million unique visitors.
The Mountain View, California-based company also won a Webby Award last summer in the Best Practices category. |
