Google and publishers: a serious break in relations

There is some tension in the web world between Google and web publishers. Each of the parties has its own interests and goals, and these interests do not always coincide. In particular, Google is focused on providing a useful experience for users, while publishers are looking for ways to increase the visibility of their sites and drive more traffic.

"Google has a team whose job it is to explain to site owners how to succeed on Google. So it's not like Googlers themselves are indifferent to site publishers and content creators. Google provides a lot of feedback to publishers, especially through Google Search Console. The area where Google is indifferent to publishers is directly related to search at the most fundamental level."

🚀 So from Google's point of view, their algorithms work perfectly - they provide a useful user experience. But from the publishers' point of view, Google's ranking does not meet their needs. Determining why this happens is what this article is about.

The background for this discourse is the fact that many sites have lost traffic due to recent Google algorithm updates. From Google, they work well for users. But constant feedback from site publishers - no, it doesn't work. Google's response over the past month is that they are investigating how to improve.

• 📌 Main complaints about Google algorithms: Ranking algorithms for reviews, travel and other topics favor big brands over smaller publishers; Google's decision to send traffic to Reddit contributes to the bombardment of the website's publishing ecosystem; AI Overviews summarizes web pages and robs websites of search traffic.

An interesting comment from Gary Illis in a recent Search Off The Record indicates that he thinks Google is all about the user experience, because if search is good for the user, it will rub off on publishers and be good for them as well.

Google's focus on satisfying searchers can, in practice, translate into indifference to publishers. If you read all the Google patents and scientific papers related to information (search technology), one thing that becomes obvious is that the measure of success is always the users. The impact on site publishers is systematically ignored. This is why Google search is perceived as indifferent to site publishers, because publishers have never been part of the search satisfaction equation.