Google selling out search results to large corporations?

When I type in 'y' I get youtube as the first suggestion.

Search for images, video, news, books, etc and Google always comes up first. Searching for a generic product and there's a new section for a special G products listed in search (favors large companies). Search for random entertainment and youtube takes over a chunk of the results. Google is no longer giving the most related results... it's pimping their products.

ps was just using email as an example (not a great one) and no I don't think MS is any better of a search engine in an way.

Am I the only one that sees larger sections of the search results taken over by Google products and large corporations?

 

Yeah I noticed the same thing with the Bing search engine. Its the first "decision" engine because it makes "decisions" for you.

 

If every time you thought of food, Foodtown popped into your Brain/Mind/Head as the first option, whether you wanted it to or not, chances are you might be more inclined to drive there, and grocery shop/eat. This is a bit of the chicken and the egg. Yes, these are the top searches starting with these letters TODAY, but does it throw off the future by creating an unfair advantage by assuming everyone wants to go to those top websites forever?

This is the same with Search Engine results. You may not have ANY preconceived notion of what result to pick, but because Google has implied you will click on a result, you are more likely to click on it now more than ever. It feeds this mentality ten fold. Remember in the Matrix when the Oracle asked Neo not to worry about the Vase, he asked what Vase...then he knocked it over? Well, it might not have ever happened if it wasn't suggested. This is a dangerous slope where a SE with so much power can essentially think for people without them realizing it.

The problem with guessing and assuming what an individual wants, and even catering to those personalizations is a negative feedback loop in which a person pigeon holes themselves according to their own personal search history. If you have an established pattern, but want to broaden out of it, it will be nearly impossible as your personalized results are meant to be more relevant, and therefore might keep you from more broad, but equally as valuable information (but you'll never know because it wasn't included in your personal search).

Including local results is one thing (great feature imo), but nudging people into different directions (even if they were going to go there based on stats) is another.

Future is looking more like Minority Report where everything is tailored to the individual...damn that seems very annoying. I'm not a unique butterfly but I believe humans have more range and complexities than what's going on currently. In the future with more complex algorithms this guessing game will get better, but for now it favors the large brands only, and really screws the little guy.

If you have a search query that is a couple words you can see 40+ results before you even finish typing the entire query. This means generic words are going to get even more volume, while the other terms are going to lose out, unless a user can "dodge" 40 dynamic results being displayed as well as the changing PPC ads on the side.

Solution from a webmaster / business perspective? Lower traffic volatility with Adwords. And we all know why that's important..at least to G.

 

Please... Give me a break. Paranoia will destroy you.

Google doesn't pay PhDs to come up with brainless algorithms like "sort all exact match keyword phrases that start with 'e' descending by global search volume and display the top 5." ROFLMAO If ONLY instant search algorithms were so simple.

Think about it. The words that are showing in the dropdown are NOT there because they are big companies. The fact of the matter is that what they are doing is based on statistics and user behavior. They are there because the number of head terms + long tail searchs that start with those words when taken as a whole far exceed others in search volume.

Type in 'e' and you see ebay pop up in the list. So finish typing 'ebay' and then add every letter in the alphabet 'ebay a', 'ebay b', 'ebay c'... there are tons of popular searches for each of those... Take it to the next level and search for 'ebay aa', 'ebay ab' ebay ac', etc. Then pick a complete second word like 'ebay motors' and start adding the first letters of the 3rd word like 'ebay motors a', 'ebay motors b', 'ebay motors c', etc.

Now add the search volumes for every 1 word, 2 word, 3 word, 4 word, 5 word, 6 word, etc. keyword phrase that starts with 'ebay'. THAT is why ebay is being shown in the list. NOT because Google is selling out to large businesses. These large "brands" have a TON more search volume than any small business can EVERY dream of having.

Google is not just thinking about the 1st word in a typical search phrase. By anticipating the entire phrase (without knowing it up front) they are suggesting the phrases that people will be more likely to search for. And though 0.0001299188312517899% of the searches on the web that start with an 'e' might be for phrases that start with 'ebay', it's a much larger volume than the 0.0000000000000000381882 of phrases that might start with 'email'.

 

Google privacy dont let they sell this information, is much money in risk.

Best Regards

 

Ya, I was starting to believe that Google was providing results to their favor until you mentioned this. When I do a search for "Y" youtube is not even coming up on the page except for a few video results but there are 3 sites above them, and Yahoo is #1, their biggest competitor.

 

Google Instant has already hurt my traffic, and it's only just been rolled out. I don't like it. I'm not happy. Google Instant will drive me to drinking.

 

Seriously, some of you are hilarious. Why wouldn't Google show sites such as ebay, espn, expedia, etc. when the user types "e" ?? These are highly searched, highly trusted, highly visited websites. Too many of you are worried about your own paychecks, and you're not thinking from a user's perspective. Hate to break it to you, but chances are when someone is typing the letter "e" they're more likely searching for ebay than they are your site that gets a few thousand visitors every month.

Go ahead, start an "independent" search engine that doesn't show any quality sites. Let me know how that goes.

 

Manipulating doesn't means support their own, support one and kill million is same result with better image, Neither Yahoo or Youtube is belong to anyone of us, all this instant is Rich get richest,else bye bye to seo and focus more on ADWORD ...