As we cede control of public functions to private entities we may gain some functionality or efficiency but we often loose control of other more critical, less commercial aspects of our lives.
For example, as we cede control of money, traditionally a public function, to the likes of PayPal or Bank of America in the form of internet or credit card payments we run the risk of them unilaterally and arbitrarily removing access to this form of exchange, as in the case of Wikileaks. As commercial entities, they are not held to the same standards as a government of due process and can behave without much criticism or oversite, limiting access to given individuals to a critical public function at a whim.
But we run the risk of not just losing control over public functions but of language as well. In the novel 1984, George Orwell articulated the idea that the control of language was a way to control not just actions but thoughts. I.E. The loss of language can lead to a loss of freedom.
I work, study and breath in a very small corner of the internet, Google Places. In that corner, I interact with Google in all of their glory and weirdness.
In Google Places, Google feels a need to control language. Perhaps that is a good thing, limiting use of drug and sex terms in a public directory. But it requires any business that is using those terms to go to Google and request permission to use them. A very strange relationship for sure. And a slippery walk down the slope of language control indeed.
But even stranger has been a recent “discovery” that Google is intervening, humanly or algorithmically, to prevent the use of some non controversial terms in the forums. Forums, unlike Places pages, are meant for “open” discussion.
The phrase that they are deleting? World Trade Center. That’s right, a word that is embedded not just in our language but in our psyche is being actively deleted when used in the forums. Their handling of the phrase is inconsistent, allowing it sometimes and deleting it on others. But delete they have. And on more than one occasion.
Google is a company that proclaims from the height of the highest newspaper hill that they are the essence of openness …. open systems, open technology, open source, open information. They use words like “transparency” and phrases like “Open will win” as mantras.
Yet for whatever reason, they can not abide by the the words “World Trade Center” being used in posts in the Places forums and see fit to act as arbiters of our language… very weird indeed.
I manage the online marketing for a small insurance company in Bradford Pa, Sundahl and Co. Insurance. While looking at the local search results the other day, I noticed that a local competitor was suddenly showing up with a number of reviews. It surprised me as the insurance market segment and this area of the country don’t really lend themselves to “organic” reviews. I have two insurance agencies that I have done work for, both market leaders, and between them they had garnered 2 natural reviews over the past 3 years.
Upon examination it became immediately clear that the reviews for this agent were purchased, faked or to otherwise procured without a real customer. In the past few weeks I have had several other experiences indicating the rapid commodification of reviews….
* I saw that my Honda dealer, with a mediocre service department at best, had started “buying” reviews.
* Stever, a local seo in Canada, Someone (I can’t remember who) was kind enough to send me a link to a “3 positive reviews for $5″ offer at Fiverr.com and “a short review on your Google places account for $5″
* Brian Combs of Ionadas.com sent me a copy of a email spam that arrived via his contact form touting the benefits of positive reviews from a company called PostPositiveReviews.com. Their whole business model predicated on trading in reviews and back links.
Reviews about a business are one of the key jewels in the bag of online marketing tools available. Businesses work hard to get good reviews and benefit from the positive word of mouth when the shopping community lauds them. Google has had on-going trouble keeping track of these jewels, losing their own and those from 3rd parties all too often. Now with recent changes, Google seems to have added new problems and bugs to their handling of reviews.
With the rollout of Hotpot and user ratings, Google appears to have made massive internal changes to their review process. Reviews with Google have always been flakey but now they are even more so with half baked changes that make providing reviews on Google Places more friction laden then ever.
I think this screen, shown when you click in Places to see the reviews provided by an anonymous “Google User”, says it all:
Apparently, Google is attempting to make anonymous review histories available for perusal but there have been serious flaws in the process that have not been fixed for well over a month. The error message above has been visible for over 3 weeks but even worse is that reviews from new anonymous reviewers are often not posting at all onto Places leaving reviewers and businesses confused. (more…)
Last week in This Week in Startups, Jason Calcanis had a great interview with Lior Ron (who like hotpot has his name backwards ),the product manager for Google Hotpot. The interview is interesting, gives insight to the technology and Google’s thinking about its role going forward and its relationship to personalized search.
The interview is longish but well worth watching and chock full of gems. It is refreshing to hear candid remarks from the Maps team.
The actual interview with Lior starts just around minute 4:58 and trust me you will want to start there…
Update : A spokesperson from Google just sent me the following;
Just saw your post from today and wanted to let you know that we do have some improvements to the Places dashboard coming, but they may not make it onto Santa’s sleigh for delivery by the holidays.
Google recently pushed out an upgraded Places Dashboard analytics view that included significantly more detail, mobile information and viewing options. As of last night, the new analytics have disappeared in the US and the UK and reverted to the old style analytics. Whether we were seeing a test, a final product that was not yet finished or someone pulled the switch too early is unclear.
How soon or whether we will see the new view is not known.
Update 12/18: For reference and for use by Rasmus, I am uploading a complete screen shot of the “new but missing” analytics (click to view at full size): (more…)
Yesterday was a seminal moment in Local. It largely went unnoticed but it reflects the rapid monetization of location pages by the major search engines.
Bing* announced a number of local, map and mobile upgrades that improve an already good, but under rated and under used product. Clearly, they are battling toe to toe feature wise with Google Places and will be giving as good as they get. It is nice to see their staying with Local and keeping in Google’s rearview mirror with a general purpose Local platform.
But the part of the announcement that caught my attention was the following:
Mobile (iPhone):
Check-in: Share your current location with friends and family via Facebook, foursquare or Windows Live Activity Stream.
Plans: From the Bing homepage or a local search result, people can plan a night out and share the plan with friends via Facebook, who can comment or join the plan.
Opentable and Grubhub integration: With the integration of Opentable and Grubhub into Bing for Mobile, once you find your restaurant of choice, you can reserve a table on OpenTable or order takeout from Grubhub without leaving the Bing app.
Local enhancements:
OpenTable will be integrated into the local search vertical, allowing people to book reservations from the restaurant details page in Bing.
FanSnap will be integrated into the local search vertical, allowing people to purchase tickets to a concert or sporting event through the events details page in Bing.
For the first time for the SMB, Google is providing human interaction in the form of the Tag and Boost teams. Google, to their credit, recognized the need for both outbound calling and some level of support in the SMB market place.
But in an effort to cram every business and every problem into the same scalable system, a not small number of businesses are getting very upset. Unlike most businesses that put in place processes with a goal to satisfy every customer, Google has always taken the perspective that if you scale worldwide there will always be some statistically acceptable low level of failure in every process including customer service. Their business processes and algo’s do not seem flexible enough to ever achieve “customer delight” in say the manner of an Apple.
Here are two recent examples that demonstrate the problems that Google is facing on the customer service front. The first being predicated on quirks in their algo and the second on a lack of flexibility and clarity in their promotional efforts.
The Bayfront Westcott House Bed and Breakfast, has had a Tag promoting his bed and breakfast in St. Augustine Fl. Unfortunately, his listing has merged with that of the B&B right next door. Given how Google’s algo works and some bad luck on the phone number choice when he bought his business, it is understandable from a technical sense. It is not understandable in the very real sense of him running his business. He and I called Tags #800 a number of weeks ago and were told that the problem was being elevated. Weeks may be moments to Google but they are years to the typical SMB. (more…)
Yam Regev (PureSheer) sent along this new view visible in Google Maps that moves StreetView front and center in the Maps results. It is not clear if this is a test or not as I was able to see it at work but not at home :
Thanks to e-mphasis Internet Marketing for pointing out the increased detail that Google Places is now including in the Dashboard Analytics.
Google is not only providing a breakout of desktop vs. mobile activity but is showing a great deal of additional detail in the mobile environment. Note the inclusion of “Add as Contact” and “Reservation”. Is Google planning a reservation service near term?
They have changed the layout, making QR codes and the event posting option more obvious by moving them to the left upper screen quadrant.
There are more date ranges for summary analysis including the ranges today, yesterday, this month, last month and different starts to the week. The implication of this is that this data will be in near real time, allowing for a much more timely view of the affects of promotions.
Most of the analytics also have an added +Show More Search Queries feature that allows the showing 10 results for each segment rather than 5.
In addition to showing where driving directions were requested from Google is also showing locations used in searches for your business which offers a more granular (if still not complete view) of the geo modifiers used in the search phrase. The map showing locations has added more visual detail as well
The new analytics is a welcome improvement over the old one. There are still things that could improve (why only show 10 keywords? why show keywords separate from geography?). Accuracy is still suspect as in my example Impressions and Actions were highest on the desktop but the numbers for terms used were shown as significantly higher on mobile.
Certainly having the granular mobile information, the apparent real time or near real time information, the more flexible date ranges and dramatically improved maps are significant upgrades. Not only do the changes provide an SMB with better understanding of the actions of her clients, they clearly point out the every increasing role of mobile and make its impact both numerically and visually obvious for all to see.
And just what does the word “Reservation” refer to?
Google Places has a word filter in place that prevents the use of certain terms and phrases in a listing. It is a particularly “nasty” filter as it doesn’t allow the record to be verified and offers no way of working around the ban other than removing the “offending” word. Even hospitals get swept up in its reach. If you are a Sex Therapist (XXX Therapist?) it becomes kind of awkward but what are you supposed to do if you live on Pine Street or your last name is Martini?
Begging in the forums in the hopes that a Googler will lift the flag is the only way to have this particular penalty removed . I, in a fit of ecentricty, started catologing these banned words. Now in an effort to provide the transparency that Google lacks I am sharing my secret list of naughty words with the world.
In September, Danny Sullivan wrote a post on the The Five Words You Can Never Suggest On Google Instant. Places, not happy with 5 is going for broke… here is my list of 253137 55 banned Places words from the past 4 or 5 months that I have cataloged. I am sure that there are many, many more, so feel free to add to the list:
),the product manager for Google Hotpot. The interview is interesting, gives insight to the technology and Google’s thinking about its role going forward and its relationship to personalized search.
