Google tends to be the source of ire for many European countries who feel that the US based company plays favorites on the one hand or doesn’t follow their own rules closely enough on the other. The latest in the long string of ‘Google Hate’ comes from Italy, where the newspapers claim that Italian news is being unfairly treated by Google.
The AGCM of Italy (which is an agency similar to the US federal trade commission) is an organization that investigates alleged antitrust behavior. Unlike a court, a ruling can be handed down at any time. The allegation in this case is that Google is punishing Italian newspapers by not giving them enough information about how the ranking takes place. They also object to the banning of the news sites from Google if they are not present on Google news.
The New York Times reports that the accusations imply because Google is not giving details about their ranking methodology, the leading newspapers cannot gain enough revenue from online advertising.
Google does present information about some of their ranking factors into public, but naturally full disclosure is not possible due to the very real possibility of reverse engineering, or gaming of the system. Neither Italian newspapers nor any other advertisers would truly benefit from such an entire disclosure, as it would simple become a battle of ‘who has the sneakiest black hat SEO tricks’.
Google is actually protecting genuine publishers by taking an unpopular stand on the issue, and presents a valuable option in the form of a separately managed area for news; in fact, this is an exclusive service open to only selected publishers for news articles. Italy doesn’t seem to get it, and still objects to the policy of news needing to be in Google News for best rankings.
Tags: AGCM, Google, Italy, newspapers