{"id":40007,"date":"2017-09-02T03:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T07:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40007"},"modified":"2017-09-01T10:38:21","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T14:38:21","slug":"nice-little-business-youve-got-here-mr-forbes-itd-be-a-shame-if-something-happened-to-its-google-search-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/09\/02\/nice-little-business-youve-got-here-mr-forbes-itd-be-a-shame-if-something-happened-to-its-google-search-results\/","title":{"rendered":"“Nice little business you’ve got here, Mr. Forbes. It’d be a shame if something happened to its Google search results…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Gizmodo<\/em>, Kashmir Hill<\/a> recounts the tale of what happens when Google decides to suppress media coverage it doesn’t like:<\/p>\n

Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google\u2019s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished.<\/p>\n

I was working for Forbes<\/em> at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google\u2019s then-new social network, Plus.<\/p>\n

The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes<\/em> to add Plus\u2019s \u201c+1″ social buttons to articles on the site, alongside the Facebook Like button and the Reddit share button. They said it was important to do because the Plus recommendations would be a factor in search results \u2014 a crucial source of traffic to publishers.<\/p>\n

This sounded like a news story to me. Google\u2019s dominance in search and news give it tremendous power over publishers. By tying search results to the use of Plus, Google was using that muscle to force people to promote its social network.<\/p>\n

I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn\u2019t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer? The answer was yes.<\/p>\n

After the meeting, I approached Google\u2019s public relations team as a reporter, told them I\u2019d been in the meeting, and asked if I understood correctly. The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button \u201cinfluences the ranking.\u201d They didn\u2019t deny what their sales people told me: If you don\u2019t feature the +1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google.<\/p>\n

With that, I published a story headlined, \u201cStick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers,\u201d that included bits of conversation from the meeting.<\/p>\n