Could You Walk In Google’s Shoes? Making Tough Calls With Search Listings

It’s pretty easy to sit back and slam Google for how you think it should make decisions when it comes to search listings. It’s much harder to actually make those decisions, when you have a deeper understanding of all the implications involved. To experience this better, here’s a chance to put yourself in Google’s shoes and make some of the tough decisions.

Below is a video from a special session we did at our SMX West search marketing conference earlier this year. Patrick Thomas, Google’s search policy specialist and Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam fighting team, suggested a variety of scenarios to the audience that certainly had no easy answers, as you explored them more. In particular:

• A woman commits suicide. She leaves a note online, which then ranks tops for her name. Her family wants it removed. Do you take it down?
• Do you remove graphic and violent content, such as war footage, which can be both shocking yet also have redeeming values?
• You have a picture of Ho Chi Minh’s wife that you show within a fact card, but the Vietnamese government tells you this isn’t true, despite others saying it is. Do you remove it?
• MartinLutherKing.org is a white-supremacist site that ranks well for “Martin Luther King,” in part because of many schools linking to it, assuming it’s somehow honoring the civil-rights leader. Do you change those rankings?
• What if a search for vaccines brings up 9 out 10 top listings that are against them, because anti-vaccine campaigners are more vocal than those that accept them?
• When auto-complete suggestions present stereotypes about countries, races or religions, do you censor those?
• Someone doesn’t like a picture of them online and wants it removed from Google’s listings. Do you do it? What if it’s a newsworthy photo?

The session gets into more scenarios, as well. Check out the video below:

[youtube width=”599″ height=”337″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Xq1L_hV7Y[/youtube]

By the way, Google’s looking for people to give them feedback about such issues. Learn more at this Google blog post.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.