(Older post. Why do I fail to post some stuff when I write it? I dunno.)
I’m glad Marissa discusses the AOL deal on the Google Blog. If I’d said something similar, it would carry about this much weight, but saying it on the official blog carries this much weight and quashes some of the misconceptions floating around. I’ve already mentioned that I’m glad the Official Google Blog is now discussing meatier subjects. I think that’s one of the reasons that the Google Blog snagged by a whisker the Best Search Engines Owned Blog award. To be fair, Yahoo and MSN have really done a fantastic job of blogging their work this year.
Matt –
1) With all due respect to Marissa and Google officialdom, one of the reasons we read you, Zawodny, and Scoble is to get the “real story” rather than the one the PR mavens and corporate legal department have edited. I think I’m still with Battelle on this which means “concerned”.
2) The problem points were not clarified by Marissa. If AOL content has ranking problems and is reviewed by insiders if confers an incredible advantage to AOL content. Why? Because the algo has imperfections. If the insider review simply determines that “AOL’s dogfood section has 302 redirection problems” Google’s given AOL a LOT more than one gets by simply memorizing the guidelines and your posts. I understand this type of help has been given to large advertisers for some time but that is no consolation to the rest of us.
3) I hope Google takes Danny’s (SES) advice and initiates a paid review system for all sites. Charge the big ones more to help subsidize the mom and pop reviews. At the point where special treatment was given to the big guys Google slipped. Paid review is a way to regain that trust.
Matt,
If you keep posting at this speed I’m going to have to change the settings on my Google homepage to show more posts from your feed.
Thanks for all the great info.
Agreed with Joe Hunkins: that, and we can respond on this blog. You don’t even censor out a lot of the bad rap that you get, which takes both class and a set of cojones.
I’ll guarantee you that half the stuff that gets said on here (including some of my own) would get the old censor treatment from the Big 3 blogs.
Adam, I do think it would be neat if they turned on comments on the Google Blog, but they might get flooded.
Joe, I’m not close enough to the AOL thing to be able to comment in depth; that’s why I’m glad that Marissa did the blog post and then followed up with both Danny and Battelle to talk about it more. Me, I just stick to giving advice to regular folks here. 🙂
P.S. Joe, didn’t you think the google.by domain belonged to Google? 😉
Matt – cool on regular folks advice. I’m proud to be one and will keep trusting your comments which are fun AND educational! Your comments and conference talks are the most transparent part of Google and that’s really to Google’s (and your!) credit.
The false google.by rumor – I didn’t help pass it along but I think I posted at John’s blog that I did get fished in and thanked him for clueing people in.
As an AdWords advertiser, I also have concerns about that portion of Marissa’s post. I mean, she says that the AOL deal will not give them any advantages on AdWords, but they are also receiving a credit for the ads. If I don’t have to pay real money for my own AdWords ads, I will certainly bid higher and care less about poor ROI, won’t AOL do the same thing? In fact, it seems like a perfect opportunity for AOL to shut smaller competitors out of their markets, since they can bid as high as they want on as many keywords as they want without consequences. Or did I misunderstand a portion of Marissa’s post?
google.by failed to load the original google logo dynamically. so when i visited it for the first time yesterdy it didn’t have the special logo 😉
Just wanted to let you know that this story causes your XHTML to break on the front page. They both result from the FONT tags around “this much.” I’m pretty sure its wanting quotes around the font sizes.