Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

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I like the way you keep your company with your friends. You seems to enjoy every bit of the experience. And now here comes another love of your life, blogging. You’re a good writer though.

Your map’s self-help really is of value to me. I learned a lot from it.

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As the worlds biggest chicago white sox fan, i simply appreciate the chicago white sox

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i simply appreciate the chicago white sox

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Will

I too appreciate both the collegiality and cooperation. For me it is THE way to learn something new….glad you could make this particular party, I enjoyed your posting and getting to know you a great deal.

Mike

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Mike,

Than you so much for including me. Now that you and David both have linked to me I’m going to have to live up to my New Year’s resolution to blog more frequently.

I appreciate you, David, Matt, Steve, Tim and Miriam more that you can know on both a professional and a personal level.

David,

You are among the finest fellows I’ve had the pleasure to know. Thank you and all the aforementioned, for your encouragement.

Will

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Will, it’s truly been a pleasure getting to know you better since our serendipitous meeting in San Jose. Thanks for all of your help with the Local Search Ranking Factors and your own excellent insights on the Search Influence Blog.

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Hey Marty

Glad you are enjoying the series. You really to thank the many folks in Local that took the time to put together their lists. Its a great crew!

Mike

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@Michael: Thanks for organizing all this data for us in one central spot. We’ll be reviewing it during staff training next week. I look forward to getting to know you better in 09′. Happy New Year.

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Hey Mike,

I just wanted to say I’m loving this series. As Tim said yesterday I’m finding new stuff in each of these posts.

Happy New Year!
Will

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Nice to hear from Matt on this stuff, but I would have loved to hear about some non-Google related stuff (then again maybe there is no such thing any more :))

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Mike,

I totally agree that the data collection and aggregation capabilities of Google are a boon to society as a whole.

A wise friend of mine said, and I’m paraphrasing, “you can’t trust markets to self correct”. In other words, as soon as a system has the opportunity to be economically beneficial to someone, someone is going to behave opportunistically.

So, to the extent that the boon doesn’t intersect with bad behavior it’s great. When they do, map spam

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Will
I am with you. The wiki style editorial will not work in the business listing arena without significant additional layers of review (if then). I don’t see all Map wiki features this way.

I see a fundamental difference between a wiki edit of a business listing and an edit in Map Maker. The data collected in Map Maker is a valuable basis for creating maps in areas of the world where none exist. There is little motivation to cheat like in the business listing and more incentive to get it right (future safety). The data can also be triangulated against satellite data, gps data and use input to come up with a reasonably correct map.

Mike

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Mike,

It’s very instructive to hear from Matt on this topic in particular. I know his role is web spam in general, but clearly he’s got a voice in the community and at Google.

And obviously from his most pointed examples he’s looking at the problem with his spam colored glasses on.

The challenge of the wiki style editorial (so easily abused by you and Danny) is that the wisdom of crowds requires a crowd. With small businesses there is no crowd, there are only a few references and it doesn’t take long for the impact to be felt decidedly (as in your Denver Flowers example).

Perhaps it’s my personal bent, but often see “do no evil’ as “power to the people” and clearly the challenge of so large a dataset is “the people” don’t have enough power to move the needle. But when it moves it can have a powerfully negative impact.

Will

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@Tim
Thanks, that was exactly what I was hoping for.

@Matt
Thanks for the list. I too thought Steven Brier’s article was an under appreciated gem.

Mike

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This is a great idea Mike! Matt, thanks for this list… found a really handy one I hadn’t read before.

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This should be excellent, I cant wait to read these!

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looking forward to the series!

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@CJ

I agree with Mike. But the point is, when you are noticed that you are helping promulgate a crime, and do nothing, well . . . . need I say more?

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CJ

I don’t necessarily view it as a bad legal decision as much as bad outcome that is a result of a bad law.

The issue for me is that once Google (or whomever) knows that it is being used for illegal purposes and it DOES NOTHING and the illegality continues, that they should retain immunity.

Certainly a 3rd party website can not reasonably be held responsible for the activities of all the users all the time. But once illegal actions have taken place on that website due the design of the website, then there should be some legal obligation incurred and not immunity.

In the case of Local, when listings are being hijacked and used to illegally divert income from the business owner via Google, should Google not have a legal obligation to fix the hijacked listing immediately? Should they not have a liability if they don’t? Should they be immunized if they continue to allow these hijackings even when they know that they are illegal and they have not put in place any system to properly prevent these hijackings?

Mike

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I fail to see why you view this as a bad legal decision. Besides being squarely within the law, it would be ridiculous to hold Google liable for something an advertiser does long after the initial ad-click. Should any newspaper that ever ran an ad for a local grocery store be potentially liable if the grocery store one day sells expired meat, or dismisses an employee unfairly? Obviously not, and to hold a search engine liable for the actions of every advertiser is a very slippery slope.

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BTW. I realize that libel and fraud are two different things. Here the argument was that Plaintiff was a third party beneficiary of the contract between the seller and Google.

But the point I was making, is that republishing fraud should be illegal just as defamation is.

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I need to read the actual court opinion, but my gut tells me the decision will not stand in light of past case precedence in similar fact patterns.

Republishing libel after being put on notice takes you immediately out of the protection of the law.

So my guess is that this is round one and that the federal judge was basically summarily adjudicating the case based upon the information he had.

It could be that the responding party failed to meet their burden by showing Google was on notice it was libel.

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I like Merchant Circle so far as a free service, but have never gotten a case from it, and I doubt the link juice helps.

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One doesn’t need a tin foil hat….there is no conspiracy here…just laws written by big companies to protect big companies….

Certainly if the action occurs without Google’s (or whomever’s) knowledge and they take it down promptly, it is one thing. But to have immunity even after they know of crime and do not act that is something else…..

Mike

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I’m not dusting off my tinfoil hat or anything but I think this points to a serious problem.

As more users migrate away from Yellow Page and they turn the focus of their buying searches to Google and so many 3rd parties find value in controlling the conversion, there is an inherent responsibility and conflict.

I mean, Google is becoming Media (with a big M) - it’s not just the lack of competitiveness online that’s worrisome, it’s the offline as well.

If they, who are the ultimate monetizers have no liability, we who need the business they bring are forced to rely on 3rd party distribution channels who are becoming the trusted feeds…

…whether or not those 3rd parties have our best interests at heart.

The data and SMB aggregators will always be focused on controlling the conversion and increasing switching costs.

I want an opportunity for the little guy to succeed and if Google has no liability relative to intentional inaccuracy then we have a serious problem.

Will

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