Does Google control the internet?

• Jonathan Crossfield
• 24 September 2008
• Page 1 of 2 : single page

In 2005, a giant shrugged, creating shockwaves throughout online business. Google, the world’s most popular  search engine, implemented changes to its algorithm designed to improve the quality and relevance of its search results.

The directors and managers of Kinderstart.com were in shock. Overnight, the PageRank of their website dropped to zero. Hits from Google disappeared, reducing the website’s total traffic by 70%. The drop in traffic led to an 80% fall in revenue, a huge downward stroke on the business graph that would have any company director cowering under the boardroom table.

Kinderstart fought back. In 2006, it sued in the United States District Court citing nine counts against Google. The lawsuit claimed the drop in PageRank and the effect on the search results was an example of ‘pervasive monopolistic practices’, destroying fair online competition and denying the website’s right to free speech. Among the nine counts, Kinderstart put forward that the drop in PageRank amounted to defamation, reducing the level of authority and trust consumers might place in Kinderstart.

After 11 months, the judge ruled that “KinderStart had failed to explain how Google caused injury to it by a provably false statement... as distinguished from an unfavourable opinion about KinderStart.com’s importance.”

To most observers, the ruling was not a surprise. Previous rulings – most notably in the case filed by Oklahoma City-based Search King Inc in 2003 – had established that Google tweaking its search results system was a form of opinion protected by the same free-speech rights Kinderstart claimed Google had violated.

Despite these court rulings, many webmasters and online marketers continue to object when Google’s actions negatively impact their websites.

The irresistible rise of Google

Ten years ago, Yahoo! was seen as the winner in the search engine battle. The Guardian said it had a “near-monopoly of the hierarchical directory search market”. Only a few years later, Google would claim this pedestal from Yahoo! This dramatic change illustrated how internet dominance can be as fickle as a mouse click.

Google has had a level of success far beyond the original imaginings of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the two creators who designed a search engine virtually synonymous with the online experience. For a company name to become a recognisable and commonly used verb is an achievement matched by only a few select brands. Internet users refer to ‘googling’ a term, even when they may use another search engine to do so.

The key to this influence, and the reason for the company’s rise, is Google’s faster and more accurate algorithm. Once Google became established, webmasters wanted to tap into that influence through search engine optimisation (SEO).

But as Google’s influence has grown, some website owners have begun to see Google rankings as a right, not a service. They argue no single company should dictate how websites must behave to reach the majority of web users. Google's power to dramatically change a business’s bottom line with the push of a button makes the company an easy target.

Google takes control

John Roberts, professor of marketing at the University of New South Wales, has closely followed the growth of Google and the development of online marketing.

“Google should not be punished for excellence,” he says. “Google has risen to such prominence simply by being better than anyone else. In terms of unpaid search, I think Google has done a reasonably good job in meeting the needs of searchers. Does it need to do better? Of course. Search engines from established companies like Microsoft and Yahoo! are continually improving.”

Google agrees. “Our popularity is a result of our continuous efforts to provide the best search service for users,” says Adam Lasnik, search engine positioning strategist at Google’s California headquarters. “Google earns its success one click at a time – we are only as good as our last search result as users are free to use other search engines.

“Google does not have a natural monopoly and so when it stops being good for the market, or when another search engine demonstrates that it is even better, Google will lose its position.”

Yet it seems Google will maintain a strong presence for a while yet. Search engine optimisers still see Google rankings as the primary source of traffic and design their strategies accordingly.

Search engine optimisation was not always the powerful marketing tool it is today. Eleven years ago, some visionary webmasters realised how search engines were deciding the online behaviour of their target audience. They identified some of the factors used to assess and rank websites and developed strategies to exploit these.

'Reading a few blog articles isn't going to make you capable of putting a strategy together'

Not all SEO techniques were, or are, frowned upon. Some are based on the simple premise of providing the most relevant quality content for the user – precisely the goal of the search engines. But some techniques sought to exploit loopholes or use simple tricks to gain traffic, resulting in changes to the search engine algorithms to correct and limit these manipulations.

“Online marketing is still very much the wild west,” says Larry Bloch, CEO of Netregistry. “People are still learning what the boundaries are and pushing things as far as they can get away with. Rules and codes of conduct don’t appear until someone goes too far or pushes the boundaries of what the wider online community decides is acceptable.”

When Google launched in 1998, the company actively sought to have regular communication with webmasters in the hope that both sides could learn from each other and identify these boundaries.

“We work hard to keep in regular communication with webmasters and have been actively informing and learning from them in many ways,” explains Lasnik.

This transparency and communication resulted in the Google Webmaster Guidelines, designed to provide detailed information on how to avoid penalties and construct sites in concordance with Google’s vision. The Guidelines have been the source of fierce debate; critics see them as Google trying to dictate how webmasters should construct their sites.

“Companies in any industry have to adjust to a number of factors: their consumer’s tastes, the specifications of their retailers, government regulations – webmasters are no exception,” says Roberts. “They have to adapt to the rules set by Google and other search engine companies. The question is whether those rules are fair and if they are not fair, who is responsible for doing something about it.”