Google and Wall Street Journal, SEO community’s reactions

Wrong quotes, bad interpretations, interviews discarded as unfit to their own theory: the Wall Street Journal article that pledged to unveil Google’s manipulations and interferences on its own research system has actually “brought together” the entire SEO community, that deemed it anything but convincing and reliable as it is based on “rumors” rather than true facts.

Wall Street Journal vs. Google, the case continues

We already talked about it in our yesterday’s analysis, but in the past few hours Barry Schwartz published on Search Engine Journal and Seroundtable two further insights that “dismantle” Wall Street Journal journalists’ theories, revealing (for real, this time around) that the piece was builded on a biased position of attack against Google and, probably, a poor knowledge of the topic, a.k.a  how does the search engine work.

The whole SEO community defends Google

“At first, reading the title of this news bomb, I thought maybe the Wall Street Journal had uncovered something”, explains the editor we often quote here on our blog pages, then recounting his increasing sense of disbelief. Not for something Google may allegedly done, but in “how the Wall Street Journal could publish such a scathing story about this when they had absolutely nothing to back it up“.

The comments of the SEOs and whoever knows how Google works

Plenty of statements came to back up Schwartz’s considerations, though, sourcing right from the entire SEO community; for instance Bill Slawski tweeted that “Barry did a great job of providing a foundation for his expertise, which the WSJ failed to do completely”, while Glenn Gabe stated that “Barry did an unbelievable job breaking down the flawed WSJ article about Google. It’s almost like Barry published the article they were trying to write”.

Eric Enge (one of the authors of The Art of SEO, still a fundamental pillar of the field) was not easy on them either, remarking how biased the story is and how many references there are to not-better-specified “people familiar with the matter”, expression that rather means “we’re not talking about Googlers”. Furthermore, “we know they ban spamming sites and have human reviewers, and that featured snippets are a different algorithm”; and in regards of “boosting major websites … you mean the algo boosts the rankings of sites that people want? I’m not saying that Google is Mother Teresa but this story does not tell that story in a reasonable way according to a source familiar with the matter”, like Enge himself.

Even the Screaming Frog twitter account joined this neverending series of critics toward the WSJ article, tweeting that “Search is complicated; the WSJ appeared set on seeing that complexity through a conspiratorial lens”. A point expressed even more clearly in a comment to the article itself, that reads that “the piece serves the only purpose to supply the conservative propaganda machine with a weapon to attack the liberal Google”.

A piece led by a clear stance

Rand Fishkin, that in the past alsa was fairly critical against the search engine (we would like to remind you about the twitter exchange during the debate on “Google CTR“), on this occasion spoke on behalf og the Mountain View’s company: in questo caso è intervenuto a sostegno della compagnia di Mountain View: “Sadly, the WSJ reporters tried to shoehorn a narrative onto facts that don’t fit, rather than letting the discoveries themselves guide the piece”, says to the Search Engine Journal the Sparktoro founder.

Then adding: “There’s a lot of unproven, speculative innuendo about how Google’s blacklists work, about the nefarious motivations behind their decisions, and no statistical or meaningful assessment of whether Google’s decisions are good or bad for businesses or users”. ToFishkin “lwas the insinuation that Google’s removal of certain conspiracy-theory-promoting and, frankly, embarrassingly bad websites from Google News were somehow a strike against Google rather than the company doing the right thing”.

“Im certain” goes on with a pinch of sarcasm and not-so-veiled criticism “that the reporters at the WSJ would *never* take as factual the crazy crap spouted on those alt-right and white supremacist sites, yet here they are excoriating Google for excluding them from the news results”. These passages “really undermined the credibility and believability of everything else in the piece”, saddening Fishkin that was anyway able to find “a number of really interesting elements that deserve further exploration”.

Barry Schwartz dismantels Wall Street Journal’s theories

Hence, let’s go see what Barry Schwartz discovered analyzing the journalistic exposé and the way it was carried out and published: to him, the worst part was that in the piece has been quoted people that later claimed their words were misquoted or misunderstood, or both, while other interviews were not even ever actually used as not useful to the “theory” the journal wanted to support.

Discarded interviews

A practical example is the one from Marie Haynes, that posted a tweet to tell the story of how she released some statements to WSJ reporters, that however seemed “fixed on proving that Google was manually inserting big brands at the top of the results”. The SEO expert instead proved that in the example the journalist gave “the top organic result had hundreds of good links”, “disappointing” the reporters, that later decided not to add her contribution to the final version.

Misquotes

The quoted Glenn Gabe, then, read in the piece a claim he never actually released, according to which he should have defined the unintelligible algorithms system as “black magic“: a ludicrous allegation, explained the SEO expert, that recounts to have instead said “Google’s core search ranking algorithm is extremely complex and sophisticated. It’s often seen as a black box by many businesses owners and it can be incredibly confusing to understand why certain sites rank well and others don’t”.

Truly different words, where the expression “black box” occurs often and that (besides being very frequent in our field) has no kind of reference whatsoever to magic, let alone the black one! To his request of correcting the quote, Gabe initially received a positive answer, but were later notified that the editor straight forwardly denied to edit that part of the article.

WSJ keeps on pursuing his goal against Google

Barry Schwartz himself reveals to “spoke to a number of these Wall Street Journal reporters back in both March and April about this topic, and it was clear then that they had little knowledge about how search worked.“. They lacked, he says, of a “basic understanding of the difference between organic listings (the free search results) and the paid listings (the ads in the search results)”. Furthermore, “they seemed to have one goal: to come up with a sensational story about how Google is abusing its power and responsibility for self gain“.

And for that, “Google is not certainly perfect, but almost everything in the Wall Street Journal report is incorrect”, sustains Schwartz, that then manage to face step by step all of the critical and controversial aspects of what it was supposed to be a sensational scoop against the search engine, trying to break down the several thesis the attack is based upon.

The limits of the US journal’s article

Alongside all the quoted cases of gamed interviews, statements obtained “off the records” and for that used with poor professional ethic or discarded pieces as not in line with their target, even the reporters methodology seems sketchy. In order to draw their conclusions on Google’s interference on results they studied “17 words and phrases that covered a series of political matters and candidates, cultural phrasings and names in the news.. on a 17 days period”, sample and period really too narrow to truly be representative of something.

This insight also proves how little familiarity there is with how the different SERP features actually work: it shows in the fact that the journal jams together “auto-complete suggestions, knowledge panel and featured snippet“, that instead follow very different and specific criteria (and algorithms), that Google documented in a (fairly) transparent and clear way over the years. In this case, Mountain View’s team of engineers work in order to avoid that this features could provide as answers results that violate the policies on sexually explicit, violent, dangerous or straight false and wrong contents.

A lot of voices, still little facts and evidence

Similar question the one regarding the alleged blacklist, the most favourite subject used by conspiracy theories and on all the attacks against Google, but truly never demonstrated; WSJ does not provide any practical proof as well, as in the article they only refer to “anonymous sources” without further details, senza ulteriori dettagli, a pretty poorly constructed handle according to Barry Schwartz. Even their last theory – Google favors big companies’ websites and the results suffer an external influence – seems more based on rumors and hearsay rather than substantial facts.

In the end, SEJ article reminds that Google’s aim is to guarantee relevant and useful search results, stressing on how ranking algorithms could never be made “open source” for obvious competition reasons and inevitable manipulation.

The real critics to Google

So, there surely are legitimate and classic critics to make on Google research, and Schwartz promptly lists some of them: the several changes operated on SERPs that made somewhat harder to get organic visibility; it could be useful to be more transparent on some ranking factors; the company strongly advertise its own products and services among search results; it contributed to ensure the mobile search dominance through Android. Reasons that, then again, have been the subject of investigations and fines for antitrust violations on EU soil and of regulatory controls in the United States.

But the WSJ piece seems to interpret everything “through this anti-big tech lens” that distorts reality and generates, lastly, an article that “is an embarrassing piece of “journalism”, and a missed opportunity that unfairly paints a black eye on Google Search and the SEO community”, closes Barry Schwartz.