Alphabet Google Misspells Relevance, Yikes, Yelp?
November 25, 2015
I read “Google Says Local Search Result That Buried Rivals Yelp, Trip Advisor Is Just a Bug.” I thought the relevance, precision, and objectivity issues had been put into a mummy style sleeping bag and put in the deep freeze.
According to the write up:
executives from public Internet companies Yelp and TripAdvisor noted a disturbing trend: Google searches on smartphones for their businesses had suddenly buried their results beneath Google’s own. It looked like a flagrant reversal of Google’s stated position on search, and a move to edge out rivals.
The article contains this statement attributed to the big dog at Yelp:
Far from a glitch, this is a pattern of behavior by Google.
I don’t have a dog in this fight nor am I looking for a dog friendly hotel or a really great restaurant in Rooster Run, Kentucky.
My own experience running queries on Google is okay. Of course, I have the goslings, several of whom are real live expert searchers with library degrees and one has a couple of well received books to her credit. Oh, I forgot. We also have a pipeline to a couple of high profile library schools, and I have a Rolodex with the names and numbers of research professionals who have pretty good search skills.
So maybe my experience with Google is different from the folks who are not able to work around what the Yelp top dog calls, according to the article, “Google’s monopoly.”
My thought is that those looking for free search results need to understand how oddities like relevance, precision, and objectivity are defined at the Alphabet Google thing.
Google even published a chunky manual to help Web masters, who may have been failed middle school teachers in a previous job, do things the Alphabet Google way. You can find that rules of the Google information highway here.
The Google relevance, precision, and objectivity thing has many moving parts. Glitches are possible. Do Googlers make errors? In my experience, not too many. Well, maybe solving death, Glass, and finding like minded folks in the European Union regulators’ office.
My suggestion? Think about other ways to obtain information. When a former Gannet sci tech reporter could not find Cuba Libre restaurant in DC on his Apple phone, there was an option. I took him there even though the eatery was not in the Google mobile search results. Cuba Libre is not too far from the Alphabet Google DC office. No problem.
Stephen E Arnold, November 25, 2015
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