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https://medium.com/@brianwarner/how-google-uses-content-theft-and-algorithm-updates-to-maintain-its-search-monopoly-a5aeed4a53e4

How Google Uses Content Theft And Algorithm Updates To Maintain Its Search Monopoly

by Brian Warner, CEO CelebrityNetWorth.com

EXCERPTS —

“I launched the website in 2008 after recognizing an untapped niche for which there was high demand in the marketplace. Our editorial content is rooted in financial analysis, market research, and inside sources that we have meticulously developed over the last decade. In the years after launching, CNW grew into a small but thriving business. Our site employed a team of writers, developers and designers who helped create content and web products that could not be found anywhere else and had never existed previously in the marketplace. The content we create to this day is not commodity information like the height of a famous building or the time of day in a foreign city. It is original, unique and proprietary.

 

As a quick recap for those who are not familiar with our story:

 

● In 2012 Google began to “scrape” our website’s content. Google used these scrapings to build its own content widgets that displayed our original information directly in its search result pages without credit. For a period this was done on a very small scale.

 

● In 2014, Google Product Managers and Data Scientists reached out to request an API to our site that would allow them to display net worth boxes for every celebrity in our database. We declined but Google went ahead and scraped the entire site anyway.

 

● By mid-2016 Google was displaying a scraped answer box for our entire database of celebrities. The answer boxes were designed in a way that made it impossible for users to click through to a website, assuming a website was credited as its source (which was often not the case).

 

● When combined with a series of unexplained algorithm changes, the end result today is that our traffic and revenue have been reduced by 80–90%. I’ve reduced staff to a skeleton crew and the website survives month to month. I frequently support the site’s ongoing costs with personal financial contributions to avoid further layoffs.

 

In the paragraphs below I’m going to outline how Google has used algorithm updates and content theft to maintain its anti-competitive monopoly in online search.

 

I don’t think it’s debatable that Google has a monopoly on online search. That is a simple fact any reasonable person can see. I would also argue that over the last decade Google has used its overwhelming market power as a monopoly to benefit itself while crushing competition. These anti-competitive actions have done enormous damage to the open internet and the end result has created massive harm for everyday internet consumers.

 

To put it bluntly, Google today is a competition-killing monopolistic leach. That is especially evident when examining the current status of web content creation.

 

When Google started, it was an amazing gift to web content creators. Google positioned itself as the benevolent pass-through entity through which curious web searchers would connect and interact with the open internet. This fruitful relationship gave birth to countless websites that the American people love and rely on today.

 

Unfortunately, Google is no longer a benevolent pass-through entity. Today Google’s exclusive goal is to keep users on Google at all costs. Google does this by siphoning as much content as it can from the internet and reassembling it in self-fulfilling widgets that keep users within Google-owned properties.

 

SEO and marketing analyst Rand Fishkin recently released a study showing that at least 60% of the users who perform searches on Google today DO NOT LEAVE GOOGLE. That actually might be a conservative estimate because the research could not account for traffic that ends up on a Google-owned app. These so-called “zero click” searches end with web users either staying on Google.com or being sent to a Google property (YouTube, Maps, Reviews, etc…). The result is an internet ecosystem that has been starved of traffic and therefore revenue for continued operation and innovation.

 

It is my view that Google has removed essentially all of the oxygen from the open internet ecosystem. There is no longer any incentive or even basic opportunity to innovate as I did back in 2008. Furthermore, there is no longer a reward for cultivating existing content or web products.

 

With the flip of a switch, Google turned our original content into its own content. And with that change, Google would keep the searcher within its walled garden indefinitely.

 

Today our traffic is 80–90% lower than it was in 2014. Our revenue and profits have dropped accordingly, which has forced me to cut our staff down to a bare bones team that operates at minimum hours to keep the site moving on life support. Not surprisingly, the quality of our content and product have dropped.

 

Perhaps the loss of one website that estimates the net worths of celebrities isn’t the most obvious harbinger of a dying web. However, I implore you to see the larger picture for both the internet at large and consumers. Thousands of websites that the American people love and rely on every day cannot exist without the oxygen that Google formerly provided. Google has killed all incentive for continued content creation on the web while crushing countless small businesses.

 

In order for Google’s monopoly to maintained, content creators must be kept weak and at bay.

 

A major tool in Google’s monopoly maintenance strategy is the continuous bloodletting of content creators through deployment of constant and nefarious algorithm updates .

 

All website owners live in constant fear of Google’s algorithm updates. Without explanation or recourse, Google can deliver a fatal blow to a website’s search ranking visibility. It’s frankly, evil.

 

Keeping website owners in a constant state of fear has resulted in a world where websites no longer compete with each other head-to-head to provide better content or new products. Instead, websites are forced to divert all available resources towards recovering from and attempting to prevent algorithm updates. A small business simply cannot keep up. Even companies with unlimited resources live in constant fear of a knife twist from Google.

 

Google frequently uses algorithm updates to punish competitors who have spoken out against their practices publicly. Two months after submitting a Statement for the Record to a Congressional committee investigating competition in the tech industry, Google released an algorithm update that reduced CNW’s traffic by 30% and removed our site from a traffic-driving product called Google Discover. No explanation. No recourse.

 

Magically, these algorithm updates never impact Google’s own products! As a result, the quality of the internet that Americans interact with daily has suffered dramatically.

 

Most websites today exist as starving subjects of a fat feudal lord who controls the world. Take it or leave it.

 

Imagine a world where there is only one plot of land for farming, let’s call it Google Farm. And imagine that Google invited anyone with a seed to come to its farm and plant a crop. In exchange, Google Farm took a small share of the monthly bounty. Everyone was happy for a while.

 

Then one day, after noticing how popular your corn was at the market, Google realized it could make more money by selling its own version of corn using your seeds. Not only that, Google also suddenly announced your plot of land was being relocated to an infertile swamp. There’s no recourse and, worst of all, you still rely on (and pay) Google Farm for your water, sunlight, fertilizer etc…, and are forced to only use Google Farm-approved tools.

 

That’s the internet today.