I love using Google's Suggested Search feature for spell check and to find answers to nifty questions like these:
Wait, what were those suggested searches? I just spewed Theraflu onto the Mac. Who am I kidding, those queries aren't helpful at all! In fact many are horribly offensive. If you want to replicate those searches today, you might not find them because Google has since refined their autocomplete algorithm and in some cases perhaps applied an offensive filter. If I lost anyone with that last sentence, take a minute to head over to Search Engine Land and read Danny Sullivan's enormous post on how Google's autocomplete suggestions work. Or you can read the 60 second overview here:
From what we've been able to determine, the following are the primary contributing factors to Google's Suggested Search algorithm:
- SEARCH VOLUME - There's a minimum threshold for popularity and once reached the suggested search will be triggered. How "sticky" a suggestion is depends on whether the popularity is long-term or short-term.
- PERSONALIZATION - IP address is definitely being pulled, as well as, the user's own search history, the country of the search engine itself (e.g. Google.fr vs Google.com) and the language.
- QUERY DESERVES FRESHNESS (QDF) - This is the short-term popularity filter, which can pop within an hour as seen with Osama bin Laden's death and on Monday, news of Meredith Vieira's departure from The Today Show, which showed a massive surge in popularity for her name immediately after the announcement:
What followed were two new suggested searches for a search that starts with just [meredith v...]:
- MISSPELLINGS & VARIATIONS - Google will display common misspellings. This can be seen in recent news on the discovery of [Rita Chretien] and her missing husband:
- AUTOMATED RESULTS - Google displays automated results often for queries like flight status, local time zones, area codes, package tracking, certain answers, definitions, calculations, plus currency and unit conversions.
- BLOCKED SEARCHES -
Q: Does Google exclude any users' searches from autocomplete? A: The search queries that you see as part of autocomplete are a reflection of the search activity of all web users. Just like the web, the search queries presented may include silly or strange or surprising terms and phrases. While we always strive to neutrally and objectively reflect the diversity of content on the web (some good, some objectionable), we also apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, hate speech, and terms that are frequently used to find content that infringes copyrights.
It looks like Google (and the other search engines with autocompletion) have a lot of secret sauce behind this feature and it sounds pretty nifty. What could possibly go wrong?
According to a lawsuit Google lost in Italy for libel and an appealed ruling in France for offensive language, there are some very unhappy campers about suggested searches. When the plaintiffs' names came up in Google with "fraud" or "scam" attached, this feature went from convenient to libelous and costly.
They're not alone.
Take a peek at Google's own Webmaster forums where you'll find a number of cries for help and frustrated threats of litigation. I can personally attest to the fact that 40% of the clients at Outspoken Media come from online reputation management and in many cases the business or individual has been harmed by a competitor, a single crazy customer, a crazier ex or worse a well-optimized negative review on a "consumer advocacy" site built solely to extort money and/or generate income through AdSense.
Many reading this post will adamantly believe that if a negative review was resolved positively then what is there to worry about? The problem in my eyes (and those of our clients) is that potential customers are alarmed when they see [company name scam]. In industries with a high level of competition and little brand awareness, customers aren't going to take the time to investigate further. When clients have followed Google's own advice for reputation management and that can't turn the tide of suggested searches, there's nothing left to do but see their business get damaged or resort to other means. More frustrating is that Google isn't publicly addressing concerns. They did temporarily block [scam] and [ripoff] searches at the end of March, but after two weeks of hesitant celebration they were back.
SEOs are getting more vocal about the need for change. Not because we're spammers, but because we're fighting on behalf of clients and those who can't afford our services, but read our blogs everyday looking for guidance and a way to solve a very real threat to their livelihood. So, without further ado:
5 Suggestions for Google Suggest
Note - Some of the following may be controversial. These aren't meant as a to-do list, but a start to a much-needed conversation. Let's try not to get into the tired black vs white hat debate or gangsta-style snitch threats. Please do take a minute to share your recommendations and findings in the comments below.
- Develop a support area - This might be a unique area under the Google Webmaster Central forums or something as simple as more actionable advice than the previous post on managing your reputation through search. It could be even simpler by taking the form of a public response to the many questions already being posted.
- Prompt a Google Webmaster Central message - Setup an alert for webmasters similar to the malware alert and other automated messages in GWC that triggers a message like "Google has detected that your website is ranking for [your name scam]." Link this message to the aforementioned support area or the tool mentioned below, so that webmasters can take necessary actions to report or repair the findings.
- Provide a reporting tool - I know this is going to be controversial, but hear me out. This already exists in Google Places as a feature for reporting spam in a listing. Google says the tool should be used if a:
- Listing contains incorrect information or spam
This report would be subject to abuse, but I'd like to think that by placing it within Webmaster Central there would be less so, especially if Google invested in the upkeep of the support section. I don't know that I would personally even use it, but it would make a lot of clients happy to feel like Google was listening.
- Place is permanently closed
- Place has another listing
- Place doesn’t exist or is private
- Some photos, reviews, or details belong to a different place - Rely on reputable third party partners - Instead of making small businesses spin their wheels with fruitless attempts at a resolution with a dozen scraped "consumer sites" give more value to the reputable advocacy sites. I know, another controversial topic! Everyone has their opinion of the Better Business Bureau or Yelp, but when it comes down to it, those are real businesses with contact information, clearly established resolution guidelines and public representatives. I'd much rather focus my efforts there and I already know they have more effective filters for *real* reviews.
- Improve the algorithm - This may seem simple, but if it was the post would be moot. I'm not a genius, so I'll let those guys figure this one out, but there has to be more consideration for what the actual search results pages look like, less value placed on popular search volume and more consideration for the sites causing those searches.
Those are my suggestions for Google Suggest! There are only so many ways to write [company name scam] content with a positive spin or tempt fate by turning to other solutions. Leave your ideas in the comments and while we're at it, maybe we can find a way to solve world hunger.
Also, in case you haven't already signed up, Rand, Jen, Avi Wilensky and I will be presenting in New York THIS Thursday. If you're in the city, come out for some fantastic insight and company.
About Rhea: Rhea Drysdale is the CEO of Outspoken Media, which specializes in SEO consulting, link development, social media strategies and reputation management. When she isn't fighting trademarks for the SEO industry, she is She-Ra on Twitter.
An SEOmoz/Outspoken crossover post?! That's like Batman appearing in an X-Men comic! No, wait, it's like She-Ra appearing in an episode of Transformers :)
You can't contain this kind of awesome pairing. :)
I have one suggestion for businesses which are being haunted by business name+ scams results in Google Suggest. Create a page on your website with title like : <yourbusiness name> Legit or Scam? and then go on explaining why your business is not a scam. Aim to rank no.1 for your business name+scams on Google SERPs (it wont be much difficult). Keep updating your page from time to time with fresh contents to retain your ranking. Sometimes a review site may rank higher than your page, in that case launching a press release is a good idea.
Don't forget to link the PR back to the scam page on your website. You can launch several press releases (from well established sites) to dominate the entire SERP. Also try to dominate the first page of SERP for your business name and all the positive and negative terms (associated with your business/brand) suggested by Google suggest or related searches. In short keep an eye on what google is suggesting and optimise your website for those search terms (if you think they are important). In this way you can get full benefit of the traffic coming from your branded search terms and you are ready in advance to defend yourself from negative queries.
And after doing that what about getting a bunch of people to search "[your company] is not a scam" so that shows up in Suggest next to "[your company] scam"?
Although I feel like that would be kind of improper. What do you think?
Because "company name is not a scam" wouldn't look shady at all. :D
Unfortunately, that's a bit like "Don't think of an elephant" - someone sees "company" + "scam", and the suggestion has already done some damage, even if you throw in the "not", just by making people wonder why someone would say that.
Yeah... good points... Just trying to think of ways to deal with this problem. But the more I think about the more it sounds like just another bad idea... :)
I don't think it's any worse than producing scam related content with a positive spin. You gotta do what you gotta do, but it's frustrating that we've put in this position.
Definitely agree with and implement that method, but it goes against the very fabric of what we're tring to do. Why are we feeding Google even more content with the offending keywords in it? This seems illogical to me. Again, we absolutely do practice this method and when used with others, it can be very effective, but why are we having to manipulate content to this extent to solve a problem created by Google? Just not something I agree with philosphically.
My only suggestion to the Google Suggest team is to stop suggesting us what to search for. If you look closely majority of times google suggestions are funny, stupid, offensive and sometimes dangerous to businesses. It also promote illegal activities like piracy and other criminal activities. Like if i type "how can i ki", Google will suggest "how can i kill my dog", "how can i kill",...."how can i kill my sister". Type the name of a popular software and you get suggestion to download the cracked version in the middle of typing.
And yet they block suggested searches like "bittor..." for bittorrent. It's a slippery slope.
Its not that easy when you have established news sites posting out articles with titles like "Company + Scam" especially if the company brand term gets like 10,000+ searches a month. When you have 100s of people linking up to the news articles too it is very annoying. I have dealt with a very large scale case similar to this. Was a PR nightmare, don't worry we eventually were sucessful but after usaing many different strategies.
Also for information on Google Auto suggest a post I highly suggest people take a look at is https://explicitly.me/manipulating-google-suggest-results-%E2%80%93-an-alternative-theory
It would be really useful if the data from Google suggest was avaialble on the Google keyword tool.
I don't think it's reasonable to call Google "libelous" because of what shows up in auto suggest (not suggesting the author does so). If that's what people are searching for then that's what shows up. And in many cases the auto suggest showing [company name] scam might be true and very helpful for searchers. I understand there is brand damage but that's life, I can't see why Google should be held responsible for that.
Google created it and it's not perfect. They should be held responsible until it's perfect. :)
About the reporting tool - there is a pretty easy way to reduce the potential abuse and it's already working in Google Places. As you may know not all users can create a new Place and verify it with phone right from the start. Your account should be old and have some kind of history in Google Places/Maps (don't know exactly what are the requirements). So if Google provides Suggestion tool it should be available to "good" users. Faking entire account with history, posts in support forums, etc. will stop the lazy part of the black hatters. As we all know the creative black hat specialists are true SEOs so they deserve access to this tool ;)
Interesting...if you type into Google, "Seomoz is..." you get two autosuggests:
seomoz is a waste of money
seomoz is worth it
A good majority of the internet’s inhabitants enjoy chuckling at some of the more ridiculous things that come up in the Google suggestion box. One thing I can’t help asking myself each time they come up is, “how did some of these suggestions come to exist?” Turns out that there is a modest to ridiculous amount of complexity that goes into producing these silly suggestions, and most of that content is on us (the public). Search popularity remains paramount in determining suggestions, but localization and short-term event data are factored into the algorithm as well. As a side-effect of the algorithm’s inputs many businesses have noted that the results are giving them bad press simply because 'scam' is suggested after the business name. I’m not addressing businesses that have repeatedly ticked people off, although I’m sure they don’t like this either. However, I know that I personally check many businesses in Google search to make sure they aren’t scams, and it makes sense that ‘scam’ would be suggested. Business owners would love to find a way to circumvent these suggestions because people click them and then end up seeing a lot of marginal hate content. Point is its pretty much damage done from the moment someone sees ‘company name’ and ‘scam’ together.
But there are really many scammers in the internet , I am scammed by gspay.com for a lot of money, you can search gspay scam , it's unfair for victims by gspay fraud if google block scam .the Registered Office of gspay is 122-126 TOOLEY STREET, LONDON, but it's a barber shop when I search it on google street view , their whois address on godaddy is : Tooley 88a , London , it's also fake . no suggestions for gspay scam , dont mean there are no gspay scams .
Very well explain about Google's suggestions for search query. Interesting and very helpful blog for us.
Thanks
Rakesh
SEO Consultant
Hi Rhea - I really enjoyed your webinar, but I'd like to suggest you get a higher quality mic. The quality of the webinar sound was terrible and I am listening through BOSE speakers. Maybe the video quality was cut down for faster download rates, but I've seen videos on YouTube with highly pixelated video quality and awesome audio. PLEASE get a better setup. Your message is great, but to try and sit around and listen to that webinar about Reputation Management was difficult.
The problem is that so many people write link-bait articles with "scam" in them, that it's become out of control. And sadly, linkbaiting like this is promoted as a white-hat technique for getting readers.
Does anyone out there have hard numbers that show how the autocomplete/suggest on search engines are changing the way we search? I use it a bit but it would be nice to know what percentage of searches are actually "autocompleted" as I know many that don't look at the screen at all as they type :)
thank you Rhea posting this article in seo blog. Good Suggesting.
in webmaster tools lot people at learning stage they don't know what is what, and also Google algorithm.
so keep so up dates in Google, to easy understand to new one.
I'm always a little leary when I hear arguments along this line. Having done reputation management before, and moving into that direction again, I've run into more than my share of stories of the poor, embattled businessman who is hunted online by a vengefull ex-partner/-wife/-customer/etc. I would say in about 8 cases out of 10 I ended up dropping them as a client because it turned out the reputation was well-earned and I would rather not work with people like that. It takes a good little bit, in my experience, for [company name is a scam] to show up regularly in the predictive algorithm, and at that point you really have to wonder just how much truth there is to the reputation.
I know I'm painting with a broad brush here, and I don't want to call anyone out, but I know there are SEOs and Reputation Managers out there that will look the other way and try to undo this sort of thing so long as the client is signing the checks and they don't bounce. I also know that these people and their clients are usually the loudest voices when it comes to this topic, just like content farms like eHow are the loudest voices complaining about Panda.
In short, while Google hardly gets a free pass on some results, there is really no practical way for them to deal with this issue. Think about it, any of the methods a legitimate business would use to help themselves would be completely abused by ACTUAL scammers and spammers to remove negative reviews and people trying to honestly warn others. Sure, some businessess suffer as a result, but I would rather have 2 legitimate businessess out of 10 have to deal with an undeserved reputation if it means that the other 8 scammers are called out for what they are.
John, I understand your hesistancy. It's something that I've seen in the industry as well, but like paid links, there's a level of risk and tolerance for those who choose to participate.
At Outspoken Media we have fairly strict rules about who we take on. They usually have fit into these do's and don'ts:
I've passed up many ORM clients because I didn't trust them or I was morally opposed to something about their company, services or team. When that happens, if it's a purely personal reason for why I don't want to work with them, then I'll pass them onto another ORM consultant with less moral hangups. Otherwise, we let them know we aren't open for business at that time.
To date, I've only had one situation where my gut failed me and within three months we were no longer working for them. It was an expensive lesson that tightened our policies. Not everyone has the same set of principles, but that doesn't mean all reputation management consultants and SEOs are "spammers." Let's stop pointing fingers within our own industry just because someone's methods vary from ours and they're willing to take on someone we wouldn't.
As for Google dealing with the issue, it shouldn't exist in the first place. Since it does, there has to be something they can do about it. As for those methods being abused, we know this exists today with the paid links reporting tool. I doubt that Google is investigating every submission, but rather trying to identify trends, large networks and new tactics. With something similar on the ORM side, I'd personally see this as a means to identify abusive "consumer advocacy" sites and perhaps strengthen Google's own reviews filter. If x number of complaints are being reported as false from y unique sources, there's some interesting data that's worth looking at. Does it look like the site is producing a large amount of optimized content as virtual blackmail without providing any means for businesses to address the issue? If so, that's a problem and Google should be able to account for sites like this manipulating Suggest.
I'm not comfortable with two legitimate businesses getting screwed with no means to defend themselves. More attention needs to be given to Suggest and more open communication about it. (that's my two cents!) :D
Certainly don't mean to point fingers at you or anyone specific here, Rhea. There are a couple of firms I am thinking about specifically, and I use the term firms very loosely here.
That said, thanks for the reply. I just don't see that this is necessarilly a problem. Do innocent companies get hurt sometimes? Of course. But approaches like simply leaving out [Company Name is a Scam] would seem, to me at least, to lead towards an environment where businessess have an edge on consumers. To me, this is the exact opposite of how the internet should work. Things like the auto complete results should be one of those places where enough disperate voices from the consumer side SHOULD be able to drown out a business, no matter how much money they pump into ORM or SEO.
Is it frustrating? Yeah, of course. A company I worked for actually recently had an AdWords campaign knocked out of comission for months because a competitor meticulously flagged their ads as "selling counterfeit goods" (despite the fact that it was a service company that sold nothing), and no one at Google would tell us what was going on or how to resolve the issue. We didn't even know the campaign had been disabled until we did our daily check and saw 0 impressions. So yes, it's frustrating, and I have felt the futility of butting heads with the great, white whale of Goog. On the other hand, that frustrating immutability is also I think why so many people trust Google so much. We have all come to realize that Google doesn't care if you run a tiny blog with 5 monthly visiotrs, or if you spend hundreds of thousands monthly on adwords, everyone is treated mostly the same. There is a feeling that if a result is showing up in autocomplete, it's because a lot of people are searching for it. If a lot of people are searching for [Company Name is a Scam], then clearly something is out there that is causing people to think that Company Name is a Scam. Instead of blaming Autocomplete, or suing Google as happened in Italy, isn't it a better option to seriously examine WHY people are searching for that? If it ends up being a malicious "consumer advocacy" site, Google already provides a mechanism to report spam pages, and you also have grounds to press for legal action. In this case, Google is not the problem, and they have absolutely no responsibility for making sure your business does well on the web.
Ultimately, I think we've all become a little too reliant on the idea that Google IS the internet. It isn't. It's a free service that they provide, and I just don't feel they have any obligations, social, moral, legal, or financial to make sure no ones online brand is hurt in any way.
Looking forward to hearing you speak at the meetup on thursday, by the way.
First! This is a bit different post and I am not use to of reading where I have to (writer is suggesting) something to the Google almighty!! Because I feel at the end of the day Google didn’t listen to us! And if it really does then I would suggest Google to please stop NYT to become a Google police! (but that’s a different story!!)
Regarding this post you almost left most of us speech less because you yourself pointed out the most controversial suggestion that is Reporting the Spam or incorrect information! Like the one available in SPAM.
I really didn’t think this is a good idea as the suggestion should be for the betterment! (Although ideally it’s a great idea) but the ground reality is most of the spammers will Abuse it and search results will be worst then even today! (no matter even if it is available in GWC)
That’s Just the way I think!
I understand your hesitancy with the reporting tool and it's a suggestion I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with. However, I do enjoy and use this feature on sites like Yelp where I'm not "outing" anyone but rather arguing the legitimacy of clearly fake or biased reviews. When a review is posted that breaks the guideliness of the site, it's been very effective for getting those removed or edited, so that they do not damage the reputation of the business. I feel like there needs to be some level of communication here even if it isn't necessarily a "reporting" tool.
Hi Rhea,
it is a pleasure to read you also here.
As Italian, the lawsuit against Google is something I followed closer and with attention... and, therefore, we could start a thread about it and the controversy it opened in the Italian SEO/ORM community: but it is not the right place.
My personal thought is that Google sometimes act like a bipolar humanbeing, preaching and acting about neutrality of the web in some cases (like the Italian one, as neutrality and "unconsciousness" of the Algo was its line of defence) but then, in other cases, voluntarily censoring suggestions (and instants)... for instance, I still remember all the posts/tweets by Danny Sullivan about censored words.
This attitude makes very hard to have a minimal control about what "suggestions" Google can offer to the public.
But, if I may suggest a 6th tip, I would also claim to reviews sites to start seriously looking at better ways in order to control the correctness of the reviews generated by the users.
I know it is something that maybe go against the rules of indipendence and free expression, but many times I find this like an easy excuse by the reviews sites to not commit themselves seriously and to "wash their hands" like Pilatus.
Thanks for sharing and I'd love to learn more about the Italian case and how the community reacted over there.
As for getting more strict with reviews, that's happening. There are services that are trying to bridge the gap between an actual purchase and a review. You can't get better verification than that! It's a little scary, but could be incredibly effective and I see that level of verification coming down the pipe soon.
I was irritated by that blog post, too - the way it turned out .... I had to read it twice to fully digest.But at the end I learnt something about the factors of Google's algorithm to Google Suggest :-)
I (as many others I guess) support your suggestions - but there is hardly a hope. I am sure they try to improve the algorithm all the time but probably this is a big challenge.
Context is everything, but it doesn't scale well...yet.
Agree. Not sure the suggestions even work, but really wanted to start the discussion. This is an area that's becoming a huge thorn many's sides.
I think that Google suggest is definitely flawed. I agree to Search Engine Land's observation, but there must be a redressal forum. I have also noticed that different country TLDs of Google have different versions and depending on the demographic and search behavior, autocomplete also changes slightly. Nevertheless, awesome post!
Great writing! That video made my day.
Is this a new way?Lately just in the study