Is advertising killing search?

I know we all think of Google and the web as some vast storehouse of information, but that's a naive viewpoint to have. The barriers to entry for publishing a website are so incredibly low it's not even worth discussing. While there are valuable and accurate medical resources on the web such as WebMD, going to google and typing in 'allergic reaction to carrots' is like walking down down to Times Square and shouting the same question and taking the advice of the first stranger who happens to give you an answer. There's no 'truth' or 'accuracy' factor that google uses when ranking results. While the ranking algorithm is made up of over 100 factors, one of the most important is the measure of a website's inbound link authority or trustworthiness. The theory being if a site has lots of links from other trusted sites we'll assume it's trustworthy and therefore accurate. While many government sites have this trust, the site architecture is so poor, other signals of quality or topical relevance don't exist, and subsequently the search engines can't find the good pages.

I don't think most publishers of the adsense pages set out with the intention of providing false or misleading information, they are simply filling a void that exists between search ranking algorithms and unnavigable and non user friendly site design and construction. If there's one thing to remember it's that nature abhors a vacuum.

Fascinating discussion. It reminds me of the critiques of Overture in the late 1990s, before it became the business model that everyone copied--including Google.

the fundamental flaw that i see with all meta search solutions is that they are working from a polluted pool. in an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible, google, yahoo, et al grab everything they can find, and then apply their algorithms.

this backdrop provides for a cat and mouse game between savvy web marketers and the search engineers. because the stakes are so high (for both sides), a great deal of time and money are devoted to manipulate the results, one way or the other.

in time, other sites will fill the void for searchers looking for more relevant results.

Steve,

This has long been a concern to small business owners.

If you do a search for Pacesetter Mortgage (My mortgage company),

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pacesetter+mortgage

You will not only find lot's of ads but if you look to the right hand column, you will also find companys who are posing as Pacesetter Mortgage.

My company's identity is being stolen from the likes of:

applyontheweb.com
fundslender.com
expert-expert.com
zessco.com

If you click on some of these thieving websites you will see that they do a pretty good job of confusing the consumer to make it look like it is actually me!!!!!

I have written Google and Yahoo about this practice to no avail.

I am all for search and what the internet has done in terms of productivity, but having another company out there stealing my company's identity pisses me off!!

To make it worse, there doens't seem to be any way to prevent it.

David Porter
President/CEO
Pacesetter Mortgage Company

"Pissed off in Okemos"

Hi Stephen,

The fact that you abandoned Google for Orbitz is just another signal that people are beginning to favor "Vertical" search engines, and "Local" Search over a global search engine like Google. Vertical and Local search provide a narrower and more relevant search result.

IMHO, it seems that Vertical and Local search is the way people will be conducting most of their searches in the not too distant future. BTW, human-edited web directories (DMOZ, Best of the Web, etc.) are also a good way to get highly relevant information.

The web is a great source of both info and dis info.
It's not the advertising that makes things hard.
That device invented by Alexander Gram Bell called a telephone has become. You can't have personal contact with business. Everthing is voice mail. It woud be nice to be able to make a simple phone call instead of bouncing around web sites all day.
In short, no voice, I don't buy from them!

I see Google, Yahoo et al. as simply the starting point of search. If you have no idea where to go, then Google is a good place to start. But it is overwhelming becase it has too much information.

If you already have a brand-name site for your topic (WedMD for health questions) then you go there first, not Google).

Or maybe you try an obvious site like pets.com if you have a dog related question.

Lacking these, your next level is the vertical search or what I call MICROSEARCH. It's a smaller subset of search data that includes only topically relevant sites in its index. Maybe it's human edited. Maybe it's created by bots. Maybe it's a combination.

Either way, it's a cleaner and faster way to get where you want to go, once you learn about the microsearch engine. But of course, you'll need a Google or Yahoo to start the process.

If they're having a severe allergic reaction, perhaps asking a doctor might be a better idea?

Well I stand here and plead guilty. I am one of those publishers that creates content and makes a good living from Google advertising on my sites. It's my main source of income actually.

I can tell you that the SE algos are getting tougher and tougher on weak sites that only deliver ads. As time marches on, I believe the streams of garbage sites will not rise to the top of the search engines.

I believe in the future, if a site does not contain some VALUABLE and original information, you won't see much in the way of traffic.

There seems to be a new script arriving everyday that creates stolen content in the form of snippets. There are many different scripts being sold to thousands of eager buyers everyday.

My hope is the search engines of the future will recognize web sites created this way, and have them de-indexed before they see the light of day. The reason I say the "future", is because some of these scripts are still fooling the search engines, albeit short lived....

I believe GrayWolf hit it on the nose with his post. Remember this is still the early stages of the information era. Believe it or not, one day there will be a next company that will come and eat Google for lunch. As crazy as that sounds, history will repeat itself. Some new technology on innovation will arrive on the scene and help improve on situation. Let's not take ourselves to serious. Five to ten years from now many of the relatively small search problems we have will disappear. I'm sure only to be replaced by a new form of problem.

Stephen B. what exactly should come up when you search for "travel" on Google? Currently only authority sites appear. I'm sure when you say "polluted with optimized sites" you're talking about higher level phrases e.g. "Caribbean Cruises,Florida Keys Scuba Diving". Yeah, it's very polluted. But just like you said, "search isn't that bad for most subjects", it's all relative.

Being a web marketing for many years I find Stephen Arnold perspective to be more from a, coke drinking database engineer type. Somewhat cynical because he can see all the ugly that goes on with SE's. While us coffee drinking web marketing types have to be alot more optimistic because it takes alot of confidence and faith to make a online campaigns be affective regardless of expected adverse conditions.