“Google publishes a whole lot about how to make your site
show up as much as possible. If people haven't taken action on it, that's their
own fault."
That is one person’s opinion from this article about the backlash many major
media companies have agianst Google. These media giants, such as ESPN, The New
York Times, and The Wall Street Journal are taking aim at Google over search
results that don’t give them the front row seat that they are used to.
Google has had much success based on their approach of not catering to the status quo. Instead, they leave it up to people to choose the relevance of their content. They do this in large part through a voting process based on internet linking, along with many other factors.
Maybe I can see how the media giants take issue with certain search results such as the "Gaza" example given in the article. But, I believe they are making claims based on too broad of a keyword example. Searchers have become more proficient with their searches, and a generic keyword such as “Gaza” doesn’t necessarily have to return a bunch of news articles published by the New York Times and WSJ.
Google may not publicize its ranking algorithm, but they do explain in great detail what you can do to make your website rank higher for particular keywords. Media giants may feel they don’t have to play by the same rules since they are so well known and established, but small business owners certainly don’t have this luxury.
A new business just launching a website for the first time has to work even harder on its online marketing than another established local business, making it that much more difficult for their newly launched website to appear in Google’s search results. Many of these business owners are asking themselves the same question: “Do I have the time and expertise to work on my website to move it to the first page of Google for keywords related to my business?”
The playing field still may not be totally level, but Google at least gets us pretty close to it.