As you are probably aware, Google has been in the media spotlight lately about their search quality. And today, Huffington Post published a blog post titled “Content is Best Fresh, Not Farmed“.
Oh Really?
Let’s take a look at Google’s search results for a popular news item that I wrote about yesterday, Chitika’s FTC Settlement in regards to behavioral ad targeting. Let’s try a Google search for Chitika FTC.
Here is the search results on Google for Chitika FTC:
Take a look at the Google search results, and you will notice that Google has decided that a a duplicated (the same exact content) press release from PR Newswire, for more *MORE THAN HALF OF THE SEARCH RESULTS* on the first page of search results. C’mon, Google, is a press release, duplicated on all sorts of local news web sites, appropriate to show over and over again in your search results? I don’t think so.
Let’s take a look at the Bing.com search quality for the same exact search result, for Chitika FTC:
In the Bing.com search results for the Chitika FTC query, we actually see separate, non-duplicated search results. We see some news articles, my blog post/article about the subject, and then we even see the FTC web site. And even more unique, quality news articles about the subject.
So, which search results have better search quality, the Google search results that are filled with a PR Newswire duplicated press release from Chitika (do you think there’s some bias there?) or Bing.com search results, that have unique news articles on the subject? I guess we now know that if we want to get word out for a particular subject or about our company, all we have to do is pay PR Newswire to publish a press release for us.
Apparently Google’s recent Farmer update has not included web sites that are full of duplicate press releases. C’mon, Google, show one press release in the search results only, please.