Google pushed out their biggest ever algorithm change last Thursday in an attempt to prevent low quality web pages from ranking high in their search results. They managed to greatly reduce the profile of article farms and some questionable community content sites, but they also trashed original mom-n-pop sites and boosted the search profile of eHow, the biggest content farm of them all. Fortunately, I’ve discovered a silver lining in Google’s breaking of the Internet and crowning eHow as the new gold-standard of search.
Internet users will give up on finding useful how-to information online and return to buying instructional books.
According to SeoClarity, eHow’s top ten rankings on Google have actually gained 20% . I did a quick search on some phrases where my laptop troubleshooting material from fonerbooks.com and daileyint.com dropped appreciably in search rankings Thursday to illustrate the results. I’m using the laptop hardware subject because I publish the bestselling book on Amazon and my site was featured in the New York Times as a resource, so my credentials are pretty solid. Let’s look at the phrase “toshiba troubleshooting” where my page dropped 5 positions. The new #1 is, drum roll, eHow, with a page that lists three generic problems (not how to troubleshoot them) and no actionable information for effecting repairs. So I took a look at the last ten articles by this troubleshooting expert, which were:
How to Take Crease Marks Out of Posters
Drinks With Parrot Bay Coconut Rum
UTV Safety Rules
Treatment Programs for Juvenile Delinquents
Fitness Requirements for the Army Reserves
How to Get a Loyalty Rx Card
French Driving License Types
How to Get Under Armour White Again
How to Kill Fibrosarcoma
How Do Genital Herpes Spread?
Another example would be “laptop inverter test”, which I looked at because I originated the test in question, one of the few times I’ve been able to put my graduate school education in radio frequency engineering to work. Ranking above me now in third place is, drum roll, eHow. Since the author in question who did an abbreviated rewrite of my test procedure didn’t fully understand what he was reading, a person following his instructions will likely reach the wrong conclusion and throw money away on a new LCD screen. My heavily illustrated procedure, which was previously the #1 result, has dropped to #4 behind the eHow page, another page that cites my test, and a new #1 that suggests swapping parts.
The other big winner in the SeoClarity report was Amazon. In fact, I now see Amazon as the first result in Google for searches on title variations of The Laptop Repair Workbook. Unfortunately, the #2 result is now a piracy directory, Filestube, which lists 25 file sharing sites where you can download my book for free.
So Google’s top two choices for searchers are:
#1 Buy it from Amazon
#2 Steal this book
Google never used to put piracy sites on the first page of results for my books, this is a new feature on their part, and I think it goes a long way to show that their problem is cultural rather than technical. Google seems to have reached the conclusion that since many of their users are looking for pirated eBooks, quality search results means providing them with the best directory of copyright infringements available. And since Google streamlined their DMCA process with online forms, I couldn’t discover a method of telling them to remove a result like this from their search results, though I tried anyway.
But the silver lining remains in place. The worse Google search becomes, the more likely readers will return to bookstores in search of reliable information that they can actually use. Time is a valuable commodity for most adults. Spending hours looking for answers with Google and frequently ending up with instructions that will lead to wrong conclusions if not outright damage is not an efficient use of time. A generation has grown up believing the reliable answers are only a search engine away, now a new generation may be forced to return to the bookstores and libraries.
And I, for one, am glad I don’t own any stock in Google.
Morris,
I have to wonder, if you had the time and cubic yards of money to waste on such an endeavor, what the legal results of suing Google over this new change would be. A slick lawyer might be able to successfully argue, in front of the right judge and jury, that Google was encouraging the theft of your intellectual property by placing pirate sites in such prominent places in the search results, in effect, making Google an accessory to the crime.
As a high school teacher I have had countless arguments/discussions with my teenaged students that internet piracy is different from the actual theft of a book from a book store only in the sense that one act of theft involves electrons and the other involves a physical book. They struggle to see the difference. They all agree stealing the physical book is wrong, but stealing information on the internet is not a crime in their eyes. Even if the physical book and the ebook are the same title.
Perhaps you are right in thinking this is an internal cultural issue for Google and they see nothing wrong with the results of their change in search software.
For people like you who make a decent living selling information this is a serous issue.
Kevin,
I don’t have a slick lawyer, but I do know a top intellectual property atttorney who took an internet infringement case to Federal Court for me five years ago, where he fought for two and a half years and won a settlement.
Google does enable the theft of intellectual content, I don’t think anybody would argue that. The problem is that the law protects them. It’s a combination of free speech and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act – as long as the respond to properly submitted complaints they are probably safe. Of course, I would have to work 24 hours a day filing complaints for the rest of my life to have an affect.
I realized several years ago when I released my publsihed books as unprotected PDFs that they would be widely copied, though I didn’t realize Google would promote the practice as actively as they do. When the time comes to prepare new editions, probably early next year, I’ll have to decide whether it’s worth the effort. If piracy has reduced my sales to the point where it’s no longer profitable for me, that’s the end of the eBooks.
Morris
People can talk about this until the cows come home – but until someone dislodges that 800-pound gorilla, Google will continue to do what Google wants to do. However, I don’t agree that people will flock back to bookstores or libraries for accurate information that they may need – they will just find ways to obtain it online *somehow* whether it is a laptop repair guide; a car repair guide or an how to break the latest DRM guide – especially with Google making it so readily available by ranking it so high. I can see a point where eHow (like Wikipedia) will become irrelevant in people’s eyes (because of all the chaff that they have to dig through to get to the wheat) and they’ll just continue to the second or third hit for the info that they need (or simple search for the repair guides names with the word “torrent” tagged on at the end).
I am not sure that an “educated approach” like Kevin’s, or even what the MPAA was trying to do with their ad campaign, will discourage IP decimation on the internet though, not when sites like Google make it so easy to obtain it. Honestly I can see the day when IP is completely “DRMized” and only sold through “authorized channels” in conjunction with self publishers, like yourself, walking away from the situation completely as you are no longer able to pull in a profit from what you created.
Bryan,
Can’t you let a guy look for a silver lining?
Though I don’t really agree. For grown-ups, at some point our time becomes more important than free.
Yes, anybody who knows about pirate sites can find pirated stuff without Google. What upset me more than losing half my Google US traffic was seeing the piracy directory coming up #2 for a search on my strongest eBook.
Just for information, there are two different Bryan’s posting on this thread, and the above one isn’t me
But ironically my points do mirror the above Bryan’s to some degree:
An alternative to returning to bookstores would be blocking eHhow from your personal search results. I’m pretty close to taking that step, personally.
On another note, why does Google honor no follow links? I think even these links should be counted as search juice, except in the case where they are only part of a comment on a blog, in which case the commentor may be loading his comment with a link for his own promotion. But in other cases, it makes no sense to me. It essentially is allowing the public to manipulate PageRank by turning it on or off for given links.
Regarding DRM, I’ve already decided that the eBook formats I’ll be selling will only be those with DRM, so right now that means Amazon Kindle. It’s a shame I can’t sell from my own site — my own site is a much better investment than sending people to the Kindle store, not just because Amazon takes their portion of the sale, but also because on my own site I get to keep the customer’s information and sell them stuff later. Still, I’m not willing to sell stuff as PDF’s, and thanks to Morris’s guinea-pigging here, we’ve all learned that the dangers of PDF’s may be too great.
Bryan R
Bryan #2,
Google Chrome supports blocking domains, I’m not using Chrome these days.
I don’t know if Google honors NOFOLLOW links completely or not. They do show up in WebMaster Tools just like regular links. I sometimes use them when sending customers to Amazon, I believe that’s Google’s advice, and I very occasionally use them within my site navigation for things like the contact page. Other than that, I know I “NOFOLLOWED” a link to eHow once, but that’s about it.
Manipulating PageRank probably doesn’t accomplish anything. My highest ranking pages these days, at PR=6, are not winners.
Keep in mind, for all of my problems with PDFs, I netted around $20,000 in 2010 selling PDF versions of my printed books. Yes, they get stolen much more than they get purchased and yes, my print sales have been drooping, but part of that could be aging of the titles.
You have PR 6 Pages? Which ones? I couldn’t find any, only PR5.
$20,000 after taxes is a pittance for wiping out the potential for passive income for years, 2nd editions, etc. It’s kind of like “selling” your rights to a title for $20,000. I wouldn’t do it. Of course, you are right, it does depend on what the opportunity cost is and other factors like aging.
Bryan #2
Bryan #2,
On my old site, daileyint. I’ll let you search for them.
There’s an old saying about a bird in the hand. In any business, you don’t know what’s coming next year.
Morris
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