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Good morning, Marketers, should we cut Google some slack?
I ask myself this question regularly because it’s likely that no company has ever had the influence that Google does. And, when Google gets something wrong, it almost always makes the news — whereas similar news from nearly any other company just doesn’t carry the same impact.
The difference, of course, is that incredible influence comes with serious responsibility — ad auctions and ranking algorithms need to be fair and user privacy needs to be protected. Three of the articles you’ll find below touch upon these aspects: The deduplication of Top Stories content speaks to scraped content and publisher concerns, the increased focus on adult ad policy enforcement touches upon fair competition and the proposed surveillance advertising bill is a rare instance in which Google and marketers agree.
Almost everytime I ask myself if we, as search marketers, should be more understanding of Google’s missteps, I come to the same conclusion: No. We want to compete on a level playing field. We want a better, safer internet both to conduct business in but also for ourselves as users. Google has that influence (just look at how much its algorithms have made page speed a priority for site owners) and, by keeping a watchful eye over it (and other influential platforms), we can do our part in moving towards that future.
George Nguyen,
Editor
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