Google has now taken aim squarely at the trashy results that frequently show up in its listing for products, etc., after the scandal with JCPenney’s. But actually, these problems have existed for years in many niches.
Whether it’s the best fat burners, books, software, it’s rare to find that you are looking at results that are not intended to sell you product that is poorly reviewed. Too often, review sites only churn out what marketers want to sell you. Not what you want to buy.
Worse, if you look for a person, you often end up with links to numerous directories, none of which contain the result you are looking for. In the UK, if you are looking for a psychologist, you will end up in several pages of counselling directories, many of which are just useless. Yet many psychologists seem to be gleefully unaware of the trap they have found themselves in.
To make matters even worse, Google even ranks its own sites at the top of the listings for many categories of products: health, finance, to name but two. So, Google is going to need to reengineer its own SE to fix these problems.
Sadly, the importance of linking, Page Ranks, and so on, are largely the problems that Google invented in the first place. Let’s see some real thinking, Google. Or are there too many Ph.D’s to do that now?
Yet, it’s bloggers like myself who’ve found ourselves in Google’s crosshairs… Ever feel bullied?