I think it was offered with the best of intentions and in this situation it is good advice.

To me, more than anything it points up the conflict that google has between its free and paid properities. From a small business person’s perspective they are one and the same.

Having a Google Maps that is voodoo and smoke and mirrors on the one hand and a paid alternative that is basically bug free is not very comforting…. and really should never be the choice.

Google needs to make Maps as good as it can be, as transparent, as functional. They need to provide guidance on best practices and not make folks like yourself spend weeks on end trying things out to see what works. Then only then should they suggest: You might want to try a paid ad as well.

Mike

Mike

“Some businesses have gained a bit more visibility by applying to be
part of the Sponsored link program.”

Wow… that statement does sound deceptive. I would certainly give Summer the benefit out of the doubt as to intention. But I think… wow!

All the while they have broken parts that they haven’t fixed for a long time and don’t acknowledge. Thus creating incredible frustration and making work for the stakeholders that also compromises data integrity.

While I agree that they should and probably can not provide ranking info, the conflict of interest is very real. If you can’t even get in the category you want because Google’s category rules are obtuse or not yet fleshed out or are possibly broken, is the only answer to buy an ad? The service is free and the rules should be fair and understandable. The alternative to that is not saying “become an advertiser” (although in this particular case it is very good advice). The alternate is fixing the thing, providing guidance on best practices, minimizing spam and then saying “oh and if you want you can also advertise with us”.

Keeping everyone in the dark may have legitimate reasons but in the end, I almost always find that transparency is the best policy in life, computing and politics.

Mike

Perhaps Google are unable to provide details; as in technically unable, in that the ranking is not totally understood even to themselves.

I’ve built indexing systems that I don’t understand, partly from using ‘black boxes’ to do parts, but also certain optimizations that just feel right that cant be adequately explained. I can guarantee that Googles Algorithms are more complex, use a bigger dataset and have more inter-relations, and as such nobody can really understand how it does actually fit together. Its true with time these ideas form and become better understood.

I also think that Google attempt to make it ‘just work’, so that they dont want to specify practices due to not wanting to cause people to do anything special and/or change what they have. (this is also related to spam, if you do specify do it, the spammers can use the same understanding, negating the whole effort - this is slightly more specialised than ‘trade secrets’ which are of course also protected)

As a final point, I also know that as soon as you explain or document something, it becomes much harder to adopt, tweak and change it. I have neglected to explain things precisely because I need to quickly change and adapt.