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Publishers cry foul on Google, search results, interlinking, entire internet
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As first reported by AdAge, the powers-that-be in American media are pressuring Google to give preferential treatment to their online articles based on their content somehow being more valid than, say, someone pointing to that content:
"You should not have a system," one content executive said, "where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately."
Reckless arrogance aside, it would seem instead these publishers are missing the point entirely of what a search engine actually does.
Generally speaking, search result rankings are based on over 100 known factors, most notably the number of pages linking to another but also (and just as importantly) based on what the engine finds in a page, what the links to a page say, and how long it has said what it says. For example, a certain page might contain expert material on a given subject, but if no one links to it that page will rank poorly; another may discuss the same topic in lesser detail, but more inbound links make it a stronger page in the eyes of the search engine.
But the more interesting claim here is one of major media somehow being the owners or rightful authority on something - but how do they know what people are actually looking for? Let's say, for example, a sports fan goes to look up award-winning journalist Rick Reilly in Google. Google combs its vault and returns the most-referenced articles about Reilly (in this case his Wikipedia page, followed by his personal site).
But what do we really know about that reader's interest in Reilly? Is it his old Sports Illustrated columns? His excellent Sammy Sosa takedown piece? His derided overuse of puns?
To take it a step further, is it really the duty of Sports Illustrated (or ESPN or Deadspin) to simply say they are the most important point of authority on a subject? And are they? If Maureen Dowd writes a column, and Slate rips it to shreds, and the Slate piece is more widely read and cited, is the Dowd column still more important simply because it's in the New York Times and forms the logical end of the trail of links passing through the Slate piece?
The true nature of the internet would suggest not, but evidently the Times would say "of course." Publishers are more vehemently than ever clinging to the media-as-democratization-tool to justify their continued existence, but apparently not so tightly they wouldn't attempt to artificially manipulate one of the great advancements in media democratizion.
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