Is Google still the search engine or is it leading towards being a content king?
Google is more and more working towards a portal model in which it shows you the content you searched for, rather than delivering you the links to websites it found the content on. The shift towards 'being completely in control over content' is noticeable.
Despite the major point Google made of talking about how good it was going to be for webmasters, the latest changes in Googles image search (at the moment only available on google.com) made many webmasters angry and frustrated. Due to the new presentation webmasters complained about “significant” decreases in traffic. Some even report losses of trafic up to 60% on the
Google Webmaster Central blog.
What changes did Google make
Google image search changed its image search algorithm that makes it harder to stumble across adult pictures, whether or not you're searching for them.
"We are not censoring any adult content, and want to show users exactly what they are looking for -- but we aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them. We use algorithms to select the most relevant results for a given query. If you're looking for adult content, you can find it without having to change the default setting -- you just may need to be more explicit in your query if your search terms are potentially ambiguous. The image search settings now work the same way as in Web search."
The move is designed to ensure adult content is shown only to those who explicitly request it. In other words you will have to be specific to what you want to see or, put the word porn or sex in your query.
But what concerns users and webmasters more is the fact that:
Google uses large images without consent
Without consent of owners, Google now shows large images that were taken from websites and placed on their own servers. Clicking on a result directly leads to the larger image, a visit to the web site it came from, no longer is necessary.
People searching for certain 'product' images will now no longer visit the site to see the larger one, and therefor wont see the site and any other products and or advertisements on that site.
Google knows it will probably get away with it, not just for the fact that a large number of small companies depend on online sales they can get from product images searched for, or revenues from ads, and will hesitate to block the bot, but also because of its mighty law department. Remember the ongoing dispute on
Google copying books?
For sure, they know that what they are doing is wrong. The statement that "images may be subject to copyright" is nothing more than a smoke curtain. Under the US Copyright Act, all images are copyrighted automatically.
Small thumbnails = fair use but showing large or original images on any other web site than the original without consent, is a copyright violation.
Googles defence against all the accusations is a simple
'then go and block the bot'. In other words, i will come to your house and steal your possessions, but i wont succeed if the door is locked.
The next step
The next step Google will make is showing ads around the results and then leaving webmasters that spend a lot of energy in building good websites empty handed.
How this will end is uncertain but for sure it stired up a lot of emotions as we can read on Google Webmaster Central blog.
Some quotes from concerned people:
Jimbo1420:
Show a small image and a link to the website page (not the jpg). Do your job as a search engine and stop trying to be a content provider without paying the cost.
Gotin
IS Google a search engine, helping people to find helpful websites or a gallery, which generates content, using images from other websites?
twingo
How can you justify that you are displaying images from websites of other people on Google Network and place one link. This is called scraping images.
EcoCatLady
Why does Google want to put its own publishers out of business? This just makes NO sense to me.
