An interesting development in Italy caught my attention today. After reading about it first on Slashdot, then in the New York Times I was interrupted by the normal things that happen. Picking up my kids from school, banning spammers on AffSpot, etc.
Which gave me enough time to reflect on a quote in the article. You see, some Italian publishers are kinda pissed off at Google. They’re not happy with where their sites are ranked on Google. Well, arn’t we all? But wait, there’s more…..
You see, the Italian publishers are unhappy to the point of calling their lobbyists, lawyers, and calling in favors from politicians. Google is being investigated by Italian Regulators for not telling newspaper publishers everything there is to know about PageRank.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the quote from the New York Times article:
“Because Google does not disclose the criteria for ranking news articles or search results, he said, newspapers are unable to hone their content to try to earn more revenue from online advertising. Ad revenue on the Web is directly proportional to the size of the audience, which is heavily influenced by search or Google News rankings.”
Think about this for a minute. What if everything you know about SEO, site promotion, conversion, etc. was rendered moot because someone with deeper pockets managed to use the political and regulatory process to gain knowledge that would put their sites on top… And wipe yours out in the process.
And this is exactly what the newpaper publishers pushing this in Italy are trying to do. They either havn’t or couldn’t succeed by the quality of their content, it’s attractiveness to their viewers/subscribers, or using online advertising and social media to drive financial success for their sites.
So it isn’t their fault (in their view), it’s Googles fault. All because Google wouldn’t automatically make their sites #1 on every search. Or send them the details of PageRank so they could manipulate it to their advantage.
I wonder how long it’s going to be now before the Kansas City Star or the St Louis Post Dispatch (or the New York Times which isn’t in the best financial health) decides to simply sue Google for their failure to popularize and monetize their own web properties.
This is something worth watching.
Start discussion.....