Cheerleading for Google+ Will Not Drown Out Foundem
July 12, 2011
The noise about the two week old Google baby, Google+ is loud, heavy metal loud. But I am not sure Google+ will drown out the peeps from the Foundem matter. This firm is a shop and compare service in the UK. It’s pretty good, but the firm alleges that Google’s method of indexing did some harm to the Foundem traffic.
“Foundem Takes on Google’s Search Methods,” relates the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate. Here we go again– more legal pressure over Google’s search practices.
The small British shopping comparison site Foundem was one complainant who prompted last year’s European Commission antitrust probe against Google. The site’s representatives have also spoken to U.S. antitrust agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission. That agency currently has Google under investigation.
Foundem’s complaints stem from the period between 2006 and 2009, when its Google rankings were so low as to be nearly absent. The article elaborates on their perspective:
Specifically, Foundem says that Google tweaked its search algorithm to give a lower ranking to sites that had little original content and were mostly designed to send users to other places on the Web. Such a change sounds like a reasonable effort to filter out low-quality sites, but it had the effect of eliminating from results those vertical-search engines that in one manner or another compete with Google, the company maintains. After all, sites without much original content designed to send users elsewhere is basically the definition of any search engine, including Google.
Foundem also alleges that Google’s prominent placement of its own products such as Maps and YouTube videos gives it an unfair advantage.
For its part, Google portrays Foundem as a low-value site that deserved its low rankings.
More and more challenges of this type are sure to add fuel to the U.S. investigation of Google’s alleged methods. We’re intrigued to see how it all plays out; stay tuned. I am not sure Foundem is going to get lost. Just a hunch.
Stephen E Arnold, July 12, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
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