Search Engines Leech Value from Web Sites 308
bigenchilada writes "Jakob Nielsen, former Sun Distinguished Engineer and now usability guru, proposes "that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index."
He says that the value provided by search engines may be tilting too much in favor of the search engines. The web sites that create content are now simply fodder for the search engines' revenue stream."
more evolving and changing business models (Score:3, Insightful)
This "tilt" intrigues. It's interesting in that it describes an unfolding and evolving business model to which companies must react.
I like that he doesn't just whine about the problem but offers solutions too, to provide the "stickiness" required to keep customers coming and interacting with companies' sites. This is the way the evollution should work.
Oh, that the RIAA and the music industry would have to abide by the same principle now that their business model has changed, rather than buying legislation to cripple advances in technology (which, btw, will NOT work).
Maybe, maybe, the music industry could learn something from this.
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2, Interesting)
They will. I've been "crying" at slashdot about how I feel copyright should go away and never come back. Search engines and other "find an answer" utilities will help us get there.
You shouldn't give all your answers on any transportable media format. If you have something to offer, give people an appetite to come and see you and pay you for the rest. If you're a band, put up a bunch of your catchy tunes on BitTorrent and tell people to com
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2, Insightful)
People spend time and capitol to invent something, a book or a new type of fuel. It might cost millions to develop a new medicine and if there where no copyright laws someone could copy that product and sell it cheaper (because they do not need to recover the startup costs). Now if every time you spend your money and time to create something just to have someone copy it really kills the incentive to create it in the first place.
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent. With no copyright, the big music companies can just copy your recordings and sell them, without sending one dime to the artists. Sure, your artists can fight back by selling their music online, but the big music company will get all the CD sales because they can produce and distribute them cheaper than you can.
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's take this debate off slashdot, if you want to go beyond the basics of my proposition.
I propose that the big music companies have a cartel over distribution because they use copyright
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2)
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:3, Interesting)
Look into direct broadcast of concerts over the Net on a subscription basis as a revenue stream. I've been arguing that a LOT of fans of a band might want to see their favorite band do concerts on line once a week, rather than waiting a year for them to come back around on tour to their local area. It might not have the ambiance of attending a live show, but it could come close enough to be a revenue stream. I've
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:5, Funny)
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is not mass production. VCR remotes are mass produceable. Toy cars are mass produceable. Silicon chips are mass produceable.
And e-book is infinately producable. For $0 cost I can share an ebook with the entire digital population, whether I wrote it or not. Sure, hook people with a cliff hang
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2)
I am putting my money where my mouth is -- I'm opening a studio to record music, podcasts, video shows and the rest. I'll offer professional engineers and professional hardware freely or at a great discount in exchange for the artist giving up any right to the content.
We don't know how it will work because no one has really tried it -- the Internet now lets us. In my life I have made 2 books (so
I'm failing to see... (Score:3, Insightful)
From your post it sounds like you are saying content is worthless, but the author has value. But to me as a consumer, I couldn't give to shakes of a monkey's ass over who wrote my SQL Bible, but it's content has saved me hours of head banging frustration.
Why would I pay $20 to meet the author of the book when I already have the book? Why would I pay $20 fo
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2)
Actually, I'm not doing anything but sitting on the phone talking to people who want to be part of some new ways to do business. I help find the money and the investors and bring it to the people who understand the risks involved. Out of 100,000 people who have read my posts here, I've found 2 or 3 who are willing to get involved. W
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2)
Bandwidth is your distribution cost - yes, you can claim that something like bittorrent would make that insignificant....but aside from viral marketing/word of mouth how exactly will anyone know about it? A webpage? Bandwidth.
You're probably right that for a very popular title the cost is negligable over the long haul, but don't claim it's free.
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2)
A slight technical nitpick: BitTorrent is not a centralized network onto which songs are put (in the manner of eDonkey, et al). Rather, it is a file transfer protocol. One doesn't put songs "on BitTorrent" any more than one would put songs "on FTP" or "on HTTP". Rather, one _makes songs available_ via FTP, HTTP, BitTorrent, etc.
This may seem like a technicality, but the distinction between a protocol and a singular centralized implementation thereof is
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:2)
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:5, Insightful)
Most bands working the clubs make a few hundred dollars a night, which is split among the members and their crew and rarely adds up to much. Big name acts make millions, but booking their huge venues is not cheap, either, and a LOT of people get their fingers in the pie. They often make less than you would think.
Commerical artists get paid very little for their work, unless they are (once again) among the top tier of a very competitive industry. Stock art and photography have put increasing pressure on their revenue sources, as most publishers look for low cost solutions to their graphic needs. Art has, and always will, take time to produce, and a single sale rarely justifies the time invested in a work of art. Copyright law enables the artist to offer different rights packages to different clients (first North American serial rights, reprint rights, exclusive rights for s particular sales medium, etc), which can help offset what would otherwise be a clear loss.
It's that, or the galleries.
All of these professions exist because copyright law makes them workable.
Copyright law could stand to be loosened (specifically, it's duration needs to be shortened, and it needs to be less retrictive regarding derivative works), but abolishing it altogether is not such a good idea from the standpoint of most of the truly creative people in this country. It's hard enough to make a living as an artist, musician or writer now. We'd have to put them on welfare if we abolished copyright law altogether.
Everyone here seems to asume that copyright law is just the lapdog of large corporations and overpaid celebrities. In some ways, it is. But for every band of thugs like the RIAA, there are dozens of little guys ekeing out a bit of money from the arts who really need that protection...mainly from parasites like the RIAA. (Most people are too decent to rip you off, but corporations will rob you blind in a heartbeat.)
What you propose is intellectual socialism. I think we've all seen just how well things work out when "the people" collectively own all the property.
No thanks.
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:4, Interesting)
Both of my free books have earned me more than $5000 from giving them away for free to the first reader. In fact, I believe I have made over $100,000 in my life based on the business I have generated from business owners who want my opinion on subjects contained within my free books. Three of my peers have done the same, and all of them have found significant profits from giving away the generalized content while selling the specific content directly to the end customer who can pay the most.
They often make less than you would think.
Two of the most popular bands on MTV right now are people I know directly from their involvement in the Midwest music scene for years. One of the bands (I won't name them now) has brought in millions for their promotions company and has yet to make more than the $200,000 advance they received. Their album is consistently a top seller and they're relatively broke compared to those who know how to manipulate the content cartels. On the flip side, a few local bands who I have told to give their music away freely are making very good money on their local shows -- sometimes over $1000 a night. I believe I will be able to work with many bands over the next few years to making real money without using the force of government to guarantee protection.
It's that, or the galleries.
No, if you're a commercial artist, go and get a salaried job with a commercial distribution house or gallery company. That's how you can make money. Yet most artists feel they want to risk making nothing in exchange for maybe making millions? Come on, its a sucker game. Copyright makes the distribution cartels wealthy because of copyright. I'm finding ways to change that by dumping government as my "protector."
We'd have to put them on welfare if we abolished copyright law altogether.
Sure, you believe that. We'll be opening our No Copyright Studios this spring in Chicago, come and visit. I already believe we'll clear a clean million for the bands and content producers in the first year -- and every thing we record in the studio will instantly be public domain. We'll be watching for others to take the content and redo it, and then we'll be able to use that content as well for our own gain. People with talent CAN turn that into profit.
What you propose is intellectual socialism. I think we've all seen just how well things work out when "the people" collectively own all the property.
Huh? I'm talking about real capitalism. Capitalism does not need regulations or monopolies on force. Capitalism is about supply and demand. CD content or ebooks are infinitely available in supply, so the price should be $0.00. Don't put your most profitable content into CD or e-book form, sell that portion of it in a face-to-face mechanism.
A few dozen people I've met with have listened to my advice and have increased their income significantly -- enough so that they're helping to provide cash for my studio and the promotional side of things. In fact, one of the guys investing nearly $10,000 was broke 2 years ago until he gave up and started to give his products away for free, while gaining a customer base that didn't exist before (he's a painter). Now he makes close to 6 figures a year.
Don't tell me you've made millions because of copyright, no one does. Instead of 10 people making 20 million a year each, I'd rather see 100,000 people making $50,000 a year a piece by producing a live product for sale, and giving the recorded product away electronically, or trying to sell the official release for profit.
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for seeing copyright reduced to 7 years. I doubt it will ever happen, which is why I'm looking for "sideways" movement in the industry I hope to build.
I'm a book author and I've made all my money on asking people to buy a copy for themselve and pass on the free copy to the next guy. I'm sure I'm a rarity, but I would want to believe others have tried this sy
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:4, Interesting)
His "solutions" are pretty weak though:
1-general spam (which he calls "email newsletters")
2-targetted spam (for those who intententionally/foolishly request more info)
3-encouraging discussion group shills
4-trading links with "affiliate sites" (pyramid scheme, as another poster suggested)
5-push spam (RSS)
6-put your web address on your product label (gee, what a stroke of genius.)
7-hardware lock-in (his example is iPod and iTunes)
8-"mobile features". Dunno what the hell he's talking about. He prattles about how search engines are hard to use on mobile devices and how a better position is to be "an icon on somebody's Blackberry". Is he advocating "adware" for mobile devices? If so, all I can say is "nice, dickhead".
The real problem is that he's completely misinterpretted the role of the search engine to support his conclusion. The primary purpose of the search engine is to direct people to the sites they 're looking for. His "evidence" that the engines are usurping the sites' place is a flimsy bit of speculative strawman that "people have begun using search engines as answer engines to directly access what they want -- often without truly engaging with the websites". Ridiculous! People looking for a simple answer that can be culled from the tiny snippet of text in a search engine are always going to use a search engine for that. RSS feeds, hardware lock-in, adware on mobiles-- those are all just typical mass-marketing obscenities which will do nothing to lure active seekers of information. For that you need to get placement in search engines, because that's what people like that use. I think he's just pissed that competitors are using search engines as well, creating a bit of an advertising "arms race". Well cry me a river. Welcome to the real world of business, chief.
Re:more evolving and changing business models (Score:3, Insightful)
User: I want information on X
Search Engine: I want to give users information about X and advertise services related to X
Websites: I want users to become involved at my website that contains content about X
Users want a quick answer, Websites want them to spend some time, sign up/login/register/ignore the "subscribe to newsletter" checkbox being pre-checked, whereas Search Engines want to provide things that look
It is a symbiant relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that search engines account for nearly 70% of my visitors overall, and account for nearly 60% of my return visitors. I don't believe I can rely on my websites to generate income for me (even if I start selling more products on some sites). As I don't copyright any of my text (I am anti-copyright and put all my creations into the public domain immediately), I use my writings to try to increase my income in my regular life -- speaking engagements, one-on-one consulting, and professional advice to companies and individuals in the markets that I'm valuable in.
Nielsen is nuts if he thinks that the web should scoff at search engines. Search engines are (to me) the biggest reason for the web's overall explosion. Bookmarks help, links from other sites are great, but Google, MSN and Yahoo are the big reasons people can find what we want when we want. If they can't index our sites, how can they send us traffic? Sure, he acknowledges this in his article, but he says that web sites are going from information stores to answer engines. This is completely true, and we all fall victim to our own stupidity when it comes to creating content in an "answer" fashion. I've been working over the past few months to try to create extended interest in my most popular pages (found via search engines) by offering crosslinks to other articles. The longer I can keep the people interested, the more likely I am to see them come back again and again. If you make old "answer" pages, offer links out of those pages that give people MORE information, or give them more questions to find answers to.
Content is worthless without distribution. I prefer face-to-face distribution for profit by using more generic information to "catch" the customer who will hire me. Yet without the search engines, how will I get the word out? Hire a publicist?
Slightly off-topic here:
I think its crazy to put quality profitable information on a website (or even in a book, on a CD or in a movie) that you don't want used by others. Copyright may "protect" you from someone knocking it off in high quantity, but that isn't always where information is the most valuable. Using information in an expert situation is how you can turn quality profitable information into that quality profit -- by selling your advice on a person-to-person level (I call it a performance).
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:3)
That's the beginning and end of it, really.
These "content providers" (or this one in particular) realizes this, but they also realize that search engines are a major driving force for their traffic and therefore revenue. I'm not exactly sure who the visionary who wrote this article is, but he doesn't have a clue. Content providers NEED search engines.. to deny search engines in fa
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:3, Informative)
Guess what... if you and all your competitors start making big profits and they decide to invest in advertising, they're going to get more customers than you do
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
The Real Issue (Score:2)
Ultimately, this rent-stripping gets in the way of price competition, as there is less rent to be delivered to the consumer in time. That is, &@@&!£'s near-monopoly is costing the customer money.
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:3, Insightful)
I think its crazy to put quality profitable information on a website (or even in a book, on a CD or in a movie) that you don't want used by others. Copyright may "protect" you from someone knocking it off in high quantity, but that isn't always where information is the most valuable.
Finally. I have been listening to your anti copyright tirades for some time, even took part in a few, and have never fully understood how you could hold that opinion.
Now I understand. I personally stick t
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
Why? Why not use a Creative Commons License [creativecommons.org], and place no restrictions? Or simply ask for attribution as your only restriction? While I understand a distaste for copyright on philosophical grounds, by disregarding it completely you are actually making your work less attractive to most people.
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
Possibly WalMart could. Or Amazon or anyone with a more visible and effective distribution system. Would people bother to visit individual band sites rather than just going to Bootlegs-R-Us.com? Would they even be able to distinguish between the "official" and bootleg sites, if the latter have as much legal claim to your material as you do?
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
I'm looking to change that "habit." I've found some great bands who are willing to give up control in exchange for promotional dollars towards their live performances and their official works. Everything we "release" freely will be indexed by the various Internet engines so that the lyrics or content is "dated" by the original creator. This do
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
He first argues that if a search engine ad will statistically give your company $4 in net profit from additional sales, your company will be willing to give a search engine $3.99 for every clickthrough. He then argues that al
Except that (Score:2)
Advertisers win on most hits. The potential hit ratio is pretty much predetermined, so there's little meaningful competition between search engines.
Re:Except that (Score:2)
You say that as if "monopoly" means "popular". It's not like every PC I buy comes with Google preloaded, or that all my bookmarks are in proprietory google format, so I'l have to start again from scratch if I switch to Yahoo
Re:Except that (Score:2)
50% and less of searches is a pretty strange definition of monopoly. The numbers vary pretty widely, but I've yet to seen anyone claim over 60% for google.
2 156431 [searchenginewatch.com]
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
dada21 wrote:
I have nothing against Monet, but I'd certanly like other options like boudinization, renoirization, or even rembrandtization.
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
Re:It is a symbiant relationship (Score:2)
You know, the word symbiant looked wrong to me, but I looked it over twice before submitting and I just couldn't think of why it looked wrong.
Thanks for the correction. I'll go back and edit my post
Don't like it? (Score:4, Informative)
... then learn to use robots.txt. Simple really.
__Laugh daily funny adult videos [laughdaily.com]
Re:Don't like it? (Score:2)
Let me guess. I think he doesn't want to give up the traffic that search engines generate. He just wants search engines not to make money. Did I guess correctly?
Re:Don't like it? (Score:2)
The summary failed to capture the article's thesis, which is mostly Nielsen's fault, as he refers to "value" in his own summary and he really means "cash".
And without search engines? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wikipedia (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wikipedia (Score:2)
For an awful lot of things I'm interested in, the first page is dominated by hits on Wikipedia and its mirrors anyway. I'm sometimes frustrated (e.g. when researching a Wikipedia article) by the difficulty of finding non-Wikipedia content with Google.
Only a few annoying sites... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at his analysis, he is coming from this from a perspective that most of the Internet can't really related to: a business to business commerce site that uses no advertising revenue and pays a high "click-through" cost for each visitor from a search engine.
After all of those constraints are in place, he further comes up with the idea that by making $4 per visitor (after COGS and conversion rates) "the site can pay $3.99 per click". Well, I guess if you really are hellbent on giving your profits away you could...
He tries to justify this by saying that "if you don't pay this, other sites can outbid you". He justifies this by saying that others will use his sites methods to improve conversion rates and therefore they will outbid you with the increased revenue. Well, maybe, or maybe they will keep some of the profit.
This commentary is not applicable to those with advertising supported models, nor those who are willing to differentiate themselves by more than hyper-competition in search engine optimization. Which means pretty much most web sites are *not* going to see the results that are predicted here. The ones that *will* see this are those that don't have a differentiator and live and die by the converted sale. I think I will cry now... [sniff]... poor toner refill sites.
His solution: #1, spam the user. #2, notification spam. #4, multi level marketing.
Exactly (Score:2)
See that box of ads next to your google search resuls mister Nielsen? I got a little secret to tell you. Not all of them paid the same amount to be there. Neither do people just select the top result. They look at the ads to see wich one best seems to meet their needs.
Successfull advertising != spending a
Re:Only a few annoying sites... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, you could pay more and many sites do. It's called the lifetime value of a customer [wikipedia.org] which, in the long run, could be hundreds of times the initial sale. Consider a site like e*trade which might give away double their profits on the first transaction. Odds are pretty good that you're not just going to buy stock and then forget about it. You're eventually going to sell the stock so they make profit there too. And odds are good that you're not just going to buy and sell one stock and move on to another brokerage. You'll keep using more of their services, and the value of you as a customer will eventually exceed the cost of acquisition.
Academics are not paid to be right... (Score:2)
The web sites that create content are now simply fodder for the search engines' revenue stream.
No they're not. In the future, please perform your mental masturbation in the privacy of your own home. Now go away.
Nielsen is not a disinterested academic (Score:2)
He's a businessman, one of three founders of a usability consulting company [nngroup.com] with six offices in the US.
Participation in search engines 100% voluntary (Score:2, Informative)
Metaphor does not follow (Score:2)
Since the inside of your house is not designed to be - by default - accessible to anyone. The point of web pages is to have people see them. Not so for your living room.
Whatever, dude. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's total and utter bullflop, and it works. And we hate him for it . . .
Re:Whatever, dude. (Score:2)
the number 1 rule of information is that profit motive fucks up content. that's why the BBC is one of the greatest services in the world.
Re:Ah! A non-brit (Score:2)
I have many news sources available but *choose* to use the BBC every time.
there may have been a few cases of the BBC failing to be as good as it could be but I'll take that over private news channels pushing their investors' adverts any time.
Mobile devices and search engines... (Score:2)
Instead of suggesting that we move to direct e-mail marketing and using some sort of p
Here's the real problem (Score:5, Funny)
No, wait -- we need *weaker* copyright laws because then I can use anything I find on my site.
Er, no, wait -- we need *stronger* copyright laws because big-money search engines are destroying the value of the little guys.
No, no, no, wait -- we need *weaker* copyright laws because then I can download movies legally.
Ah. I've got it. We need *weak* or *zero* copyright laws for me, and *strong* copyright laws for everybody besides me.
BS (Score:2)
Notice, though that big companies and big money lobby for the former every day in Washington and abroad, whereas comparatively few
Word of mouth (Score:2)
I agree to some extent that the search rankings are somewhat unfair, but a good website will probably have the power of word-of-mouth advertising.
If the site is indeed very useful and well-liked, it should have no problem sticking around.
I gues
Search Engines Are... (Score:2, Insightful)
Food for thought. (Score:5, Insightful)
His example is something like this: 100 users with a 1% conversion rate for a $4 net profit means you pay $3.99 to the Search Engine for traffic to make 1 cent. Since the search engines are effectively a traffic auction, you always pay exactly as much as your competitors are willing to pay plus a small amount...
I find fault with this argument, because search engines are not a traffic auction, exactly. Google sells adwords but it primarily gives users what they ask for, not what others pay for. Still this is the reality and the mindset of many online businesses, if there are 10,000 other companies like yours, you can only be seen by buying traffic.
His concern is that the search engines' position is too strong - they're the bottleneck, and they price like it. They've created a market where they take most of the profits from any online enterprise. If web businesses find a way to increase margins then it instantly translates into increased search engine fees rather than increased profits, and google earns it by sitting back and "doing nothing."
Of course, they do something, but just like Sony and Tower records, their indispensability may have been converted into a disproportionate amount of the profits of global enterprise.
From 20,000 feet, thinking in a way we seldom do anymore, we could consider alternate regulatory regimes that might tinker with the market. For instance, if you accept that this state of affairs may not be optimal (a few megagiants and millions of small businesses beholden to them), you could flatten it by reinterpreting things like copyright, so that the search engine is not entitled to list anything without splitting a cut of the profits of that enterprise with the content creators.
I'm not actually suggesting this, just trying to seed discussion. One thing that this vaguely reminds me of is the Neal Stephenson concept of the free-market encyclopedia, where anyone can write anything and upload it into the system, and then you get paid, more or less directly, for traffic... presumably by redistribution of fees paid into the system to view content. It's appealing in the way it incentivizes creation of content, especially in such an egalitarian way.
We've got an all-you-can eat model where you pay for access and others pay to publish and writers can pay the rent with advertising or subscriptions... and of course, we have a free market for search services... I like it well enough, but I do sympathize with content creators, who still seem to struggle to realize the value of their intellectual works.
Re:Food for thought. (Score:3, Interesting)
The internet was once hailed as the equivalent of a land rush in the 1800's, when farm land was free for the taking, and it was presumed that independent farmers would rule the country. Unfortunately these small farms needed transportati
Re:Food for thought. (Score:3, Interesting)
1. They take advertising. Attacking this revenue stream is what Nielsen is complaining about, IIUC.
2. They sell you a subscription. IMHO, this is never going to work. There's just too much to subscribe to, and each subscription costs too much. E.g., I get a lot of my interesting essay pointer
Leaching? (Score:2)
On the other hand, include a couple of keywords or search terms that people are interested in, and I start
Symbiotic Relationship (Score:3, Informative)
The search engine benefits from the ad revenue; the sites benefit from the increase in visitors. Both sides win.
Re:Symbiotic Relationship (Score:2)
But the point of TFA was that just an increase in visitors isn't necessarily an advantage to some sites. It's only a benefit if that increase translates into higher profits, or more awareness for your cause, or otherwise furthering whatever the goal of your site may be.
In particular, if higher traffic makes you more money, but you have to pay an equal or greater amount to a search engine just to get it, then only one side is benefitting -- and it's not the one doing the real work and providing the real co
Manage what the search sites get (Score:2)
Yay! ? (Score:2)
Please don't (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, and this is exactly why everyone I know in the e-commerce business spends an exorbitant amount of time trying to figure out how to prevent their site from becoming "fodder" for Google's revenue stream. Because, of course, Google brings absolutely no value what-so-ever and and does nothing to drive t
Lame (Score:3, Insightful)
until IBM took over that in 2000 or so*.
The value of the web is priceless (and free!), how could a search engine
to find stuff on it decrease that value?
This is the one of the most silly things I have read since Taco said the
iPod was lame.
TFA says, "We've known since AltaVista's launch in 1995 that search is
one of the Web's most important services."
Then, "There's no doubt that search engines provide a valuable
service to users. The issue here is what search engines do to
the companies they feed on -- the companies that fund the creation
of original information. Search engines mainly build their business on
other websites' content. The traditional analysis has been that search
engines amply return the favor by directing traffic to these sites."
I use Google for everything. I never type in a blind url, because I make
mistakes from time to time and get some typosquatter or other troll.
What I do is go to the Google box next to the url box and type something
like "barns an noble". Notice I mispelled the name, but even with my
error, the first linke was "Barnes & Noble", which is what I was
looking for. (DNS is already dead because of this, Google is the dot in
dot eveything).
I would have no idea that the url would have been barnesandnoble.com.
Many users don't know that a & is not a valid url character, and
they would mistakently put it in the url if they were to blindly type
it. Most web browsers would give a worthless error message like "The
specified server could not be found." Thanks. I used to run a web proxy,
I've seen everything in the world typed into the URL spot.
What Google and other search engines have done is flood the market with
worthless, fly by night companies. Stable ones have no issues. Search
for Apple computers, or Oracle database, you get useful links. Search
for a commodity item you can get anywhere for the same price, and you
get every sleezeball in the world trying to get your $25, when you could
also just have walked to the store and got it for $30, and played with
it that day.
Niche items are different. I can find them via Google. I have a nice
whip cream dispenser that had the rubber grommet freeze because I was
making so much whipped cream (right). I paid something like $40 for it.
I wanted a new grommet for it, and I used Google to find a store in
Pennsylvania that sold me the grommet for something like $2. I ordered 2
boxes of whipped cream to offset the shipping, and in less than a week I
was back to making whipped cream!
I could have never, ever have found a $2 part without Google.
Google is a monopoly for a reason. Why would you need more than one
place to find all of the questions you have?
* Sun boxes used to run the root DNS servers, and that is were they got
the idea that they were the "dot in dot com". IBM took over that role in
2000 or so, I'm not sure if they still have it or not.
Search engines ADD value (Score:4, Insightful)
How to improve business and retain customer? (Score:2)
How about implementing a decent search engine on the site so I don't have to go to Google to find an answer to my question. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to IBM or HP to look for something other than drivers and had to go to Google to get my answer. Usually this involved how to diagnose a problem but sometimes it involves a manual.
Improve your FAQ. Ever
You need to keep working to earn money. So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
After I RTFA, I basically got one thing out of it. The writer was complaining that unless you keep working at a website you made, you are going to not earn as much money.
I've got news for him - you can't expect to earn money out of nothing. I know some people manage to do it, and good for them. But its not something you can expect to do. If you don't work on improving your site, and others do, its not the search engine companies' fault that people will be more interested in their work and so they can afford more on advertising.
I do see his point - the search engines will get paid more because your work improves, and other's work improves. But this is not something that is unique to search engines. It is part of advertising in general. The larger a company gets, the more it can put into advertising, which means the competing companies need to keep up with them and put more into advertising themselves. It works in a bit of a different way, but its the same concept.
It doesn't matter what advertising it is - TV, Radio, Newspaper, Search Engine - the way the companies make their money is the same. Google, microsoft, yahoo, etc. are not doing anything new here, they are just brining proven concepts to a new medium. Why do we critisize them for it? If anything we should be critisizing the people who have drummed it into many a programmer that once you've written something, you shuoldn't need to maintain it.
His misses one thing (Score:2)
Bollocks (Score:2)
This isn't an issue for sites that truly publish useful or innovative content. The search engines simply allow users to find this content.
It really only hurts news agencies and sites who simply parrot the AP Wire or Reut
(-1, Flamebait) (Score:2)
It's just one too many paranoid Alertbox articles than I'm ready to take.
Search engines are what binds the Internet together, and this is what makes them so successful. But as a victims of their success, now everyone wants a piece of their pie.
The music and video industry wants royalties from music/video search, ISP wants to tax them for "using their pipes", newspapers wants to ta
Who's responsible for the traffic? (Score:2)
Sure this might be partially true. But I would wager most of the web traffic that the "victim" sites get is from search engines. I have done a fair bit of traffic analysis for my company's web page (F50 company, sells computers, take a guess....) and I know even though we have a fairly decent interface, a good percentage of traffic still comes from g
I didn't understand one bit of it (Score:4, Interesting)
Next he claims that just when you are making money after you hyped your article with a massive advertising campaign your competitor will do the same because he doesn't want to loose forcing you to run an ad campaign again.
Wow. How odd. Lucky nothing like that happens in the real world.
Coca Cola has just the one ad campaign in the late 1900's (or is that 1800's) and has been coasting ever since.
OF COURSE NOT Gee whiz. News flash, if you sell your product through paid advertising then you got to keep paying to advertise. More and more and more and every time there will be some new upstart who runs an ad campaign for a similar product forcing you to do it again.
What the fuck do search engines got to do with it? This is just plain old advertising.
No this fucktard has just learned that pay-per-click advertising has better statistics (you can actually tie the ad to the sale) and then used some magic math to prove that ad costs can sky rocket. Someone tell Intel. How much are they spending on that new logo again?
But you can tell this guy is a nutjob. He seems to think that because software/service X is available for free this will stop competition. Gee, look at my tagline for two free editors. Now google for other text editors. How many do you find? Rounded to the nearest hundred.
The bubble is over, there is no new economy, all the same old rules still apply. Oh and it says a lot about Jakob Nielsen that quality of your product doesn't seem to enter into equation. The only determining factor in how many people come to your site is how much you pay for ads and the only factor in how much you sell is your site.
Eheh. Explain this to google please. Exactly where did google advertise? Thank you.
Of course even an idiot gets some things right. Who here uses slashdot own search or uses google to search slashdot for old stories (oh and the third option for editors "Search old stories? What for?"). It is far easier to google with a question the find an answer site. Gamefaqs.com is about the only site I search directly.
If you don't want people to search you via google then A disable google from indexing you or B improve your goddamn site so the fucking search works properly.
Oh and if you don't like paying several dollar per google ad click, then don't. Word of mouth can work wonders if you are selling quality. There are plenty of companies that never advertise. They survive because they are the best and everyone knows it or they are so common people don't even think about it anymore. Anyone else. Welcome to the world of the ad agency sucking every last dollar out of you that they can. It is their way of making a living.
What a load (Score:2)
Without search engines most content on the internet wouldn't be seen by anyone.
Not sure I get it... (Score:2)
So in his eyes there are two major ways to be discovered on the web -- paid listings (according to him: "search engines") and free listings (but these aren't reliable).
And his problem is that competition inflates the prices they have to pay
Gee... (Score:2)
Who's leeching whom?
Simple economics (Score:3, Insightful)
In the long run, every time companies increase the value of their online businesses, they end up handing over all that added value to the search engines. Any gain is temporary; once competing sites improve their profit-per-visitor enough to increase their search bids, they'll drive up everybody's cost of traffic.
This is a simple fact of economics: There is no profit in a competitive market. (That is the economics definition of competitive - not the pedestrian definition.) The point is that you have to differentiate yourself from the competition in order to (successfully) charge a premium for your product - either through website improvement, or having a different product that you're selling.
The fact that the proliferation of auction models has made many markets more competitive is a fabulous thing. If you draw the conclusion that the author should have drawn, it becomes ainfully clear: search engines make it harder to be a retail "squatter" and make money. (That is, to run a site that doesn't have any innovation in either site design or product.)
There is one valid economic objection that the author could have made (but didn't). That is that the web advertising market is asymmetric. Google has a near monopoly (AFAIK), which allows it to extract (close to) the full consumer surplus for the ads it sells (the site makes $4 per visitor. Given these assumptions, the site can pay up to $3.99 for each click on its search engine ads...) This wouldn't be the case if there were substantial competition for Google (and I might honestly be wrong about the lack of competition - I just haven't heard of any).
My point is that there might have been a substantial argument to be made about the search market, but if there was, the author failed to make it.
Indexes versus content (Score:2, Insightful)
You wouldn't do research in books looking only at the index (or even a library's card catalog system) wou
So what? (Score:2)
Increasing advertising is not always the best way of increasing revenue -- another way is to cut prices. If you s
Without search engines.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The plain fact of the matter is there is SO MUCH data on the itnernet as to make it nearly impossible for me to find your site by chance without search engines indexing and suggesting the content on a related search. I don't have time to go and independantly discover your site when looking for a topic or product, if it does not come up with a few google searches it effectivly does not exist and you get 0 revenue from me AT ALL.
Search results == paid placement? (Score:2)
One question: when did "search engine" get equated to "paid link placement"? The whole article seems to be predicated on the idea that the only way to get into search-engine listings is by paying for placement. If one doesn't pay for placement, the whole thesis of the article breaks down. I know I for one tend to avoid pay-for-placement search engines precisely because their results are based on payment, not relevance to me. The exception is Google, and even there I tend to look at the search results before
Community can help (Score:2)
Community is fine for this...if you can find it. Community can be a bit myopic though.
it ain't "leech," it's LEACH, taco (Score:2)
to "leach" is to wash out part of the substrate, as in "the acid rain leached the limestone until the hill crumbled."
LEACH would appear to be the correct word if the substance of the linked report says that search engines are removing monetary value from the website. it is a neutral word.
leech implies malice aforethought, as in "the leeches sucked the prize trout dry, and the annual catch of Ol' Bugeyes occurred no more on Swift Creek." if
The real point (Score:2)
I think what he's getting at is that businesses should hire usability experts rather than spend money on search engine advertising and optimization, obviously. It's a self-serving analysis.
BS All Over Again (Score:2)
BS claims that the content providers are getting a free ride over the BS broadband, and should pay for their transport costs. That was yesterday.
Now the claim is that the indexing services are getting a free ride on the backs of the content providers, and making a fortune off of other people's efforts.
Well I already pay for my broadband myself, and don't think any ISP
Search Engines = SuperMarket Tactics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Search Engines = SuperMarket Tactics (Score:3, Insightful)
Google doesn't operate in a vacuum. No matter what you might think.
Use robots.txt to your advantage (Score:2)
Preview Content: mywebsite.com/preview/index.php?article=123544
Display Content: mywebsite.com/display/index.php?article=123544
Robots.txt: Don't look at my display folder
Preview displays the title, a descriptive blurb, and a link to the full content. Display is the full article. Now you get the best of both worlds.
easy fix (Score:2)
I disagree! (Score:2)
That kind of search was for mostly static information, stu
Re:**AA? (Score:2)
Re:Search engines good for small answers only (Score:2)
Do a Google images search. Or click the "Cached" link in a regular search. If I'm making money off hosting pictures or information for ad money, and I don't update often, I'm basically sunk. Using the Google "cached" link for Wikipedia isn't a big deal, it saves them bandwidth. But because people can use the google cache version, they can get around the need to visit the site. This is a problem if the site is trying to lure people there to look at ads.
Re:hahahahaha (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hahahahaha (corrected quote) (Score:2)
"And the filthy, filthy porn?"
- RvB