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Getting newspapers de-indexed from Google News is only smart if you presume that people are using Google News INSTEAD of finding you directly.
Rather, I'm sure the reality is that its NOT a zero-sum game, and therefore, because people use both, newspapers should view Google News as a traffic generator, not a traffic sink hole.
t @ dji
And in any case, removing your paper from the Google News index assumes that people will then find it directly instead -- rather than assuming that they will just never come to your site at all, which I think is probably a lot closer to the truth.
Sam needs to get a clue!
Probably depends on the paper. Strong brand, no; weak brand, yes. Kind of thing.
I think Zell's point is probably more that he doesn't want intermediaries in between him and his readers - Google or anyone else - whether they directly profit from it or not. And he probably thinks his brand can handle his distribution. Who knows, maybe; maybe not. But basically he's trying to resist letting Expedia be the reseller.
The issue for Zell isn's whether Google makes $ off of the news page - it's whether people start using Google to find his content, rather than going straight to the Trib's page. Because Google's perfectly happy to introduce his readers to his competition. And because the numbers of his competitors is growing exponentially, the risk to him of Google News being the search tool of choice for his readers is considerable, at least to his content that is commodity content. And I think that's prolly a pretty high %. Which of course is the ultimate issue. Too much of it is commodity content with very many competitive providers. Not a nice place to be.
And Rob, if it wasn't about the money then why did Zell specifically mention the money?
I realize he and other owners are concerned about competition, and about others getting in between them and their readers, but that particular train has already left the station. All the wishing and lawsuits in the world aren't going to make it come back.
I think Rob's point is true, but not in this case, so it seems. To me, it seems like Zell thinks Google is a competitor, and doesn't understand what's going on. Exactly as you pointed out Mathew.
We've been seeing a lot of these crazy "old timers" in the news lately, and it won't stop anytime soon as long as they are running companies without having experience in the world of e-commerce.
Look what happened to the judge in the case of the "Porn Pop-Up Teacher". The DA is trying to fold without embarrassing him. And that's exactly what these kinds of cases are: embarrassing!
If a reader hears about something happening in his or her community and goes to Google to find more about it, then the newspaper's brand is eroded. And, it's Google then who can capitalize on being considered a reliable source for local news. They're already trying to capitalize by providing business directory listings, etc.
Newspapers need to protect their brand more than they need to harvest empty page views from Google. When someone searches on Google, then finds a link to a newspaper, it's Google who gets credit for being the reliable source, not the newspaper. The person is more likely to use Google, not the newspaper. Aren't we trying to increase usage of our sites, not Google's?
Those one-off pages linked from Google aren't of any value to advertisers. They'd rather not be on those pages at all.
So these links do drive up page views? But they're worthless page views that do more damage than anything else.
And if the clicks that come through are "worthless" page views, then whose fault is that? Google's? And if all people want is a headline and two sentences of a story, are they going to be any more worthwhile a page view if they come to a newspaper's site directly?
As for Google getting the credit for being a reliable source instead of the newspaper, that's similarly absurd -- Google gets credit for being a reliable *source of links,* not a reliable source of information.
If a person hears about something going on in their community and begins searching for more information about it, Google wants to be their first stop. They want to be the first stop for finding anything. They don't necessarily care about providing news, just answers.
If you can't understand branding, you won't understand my argument.
"This person is an IDIOT. We're SO SMART! Let's all show how smart we are, how hip and cool and "in" and "get it", by screaming IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT at him. Aren't we so smart?"
How many millions have all the ranters made?
I'd assume he either phrased something poorly, or that *I* was the one who didn't get it, rather than that he's a blithering moron.
I think if he thought about it more he's realize that the issue is that the intermediary will influence his traffic more than he ever can, unless he provides something truly unique, which I really doubt he can. Unless he goes hyper-local, perhaps, which is itself terribly risky. But the point is that he's in a very crowded content market and his brand is probably never going to be strong enough to allow him to do an end run around the Googles of the world.
Sure Google's great for him because they can send him traffic. But Google *sucks* for him because they can also send that same traffic to every one of his bazillion competitors. They've become the biggest newstand in the world, the shelves are full of competitive product, and Zell has a dying brand.
My point is that he's traded a market where his readers *had* to come to his paper for content like his, because the geographical limitations of newspaper distribution gave him a content near-monopoly, to one where they can get that content anywhere, and to help them sift through the near-infinite choices use finding tools - over which he has no control - to find relevant content. He's competing across geography, across media and across the pro/am boundary. Yikes. There's not a damned thing he or anyone else can do about that, of course. There's just too much content like his out there. And the other big dogs in content would love to see him yank his content because that would mean one less competitor.
I suspect that what we're going to see is traffic moving to a long tail kind of distribution - there will be *very* few very big dogs, like the NYT say, and very many very smaller dogs who serve very specific niches. And Zell has bought in near but not at the top. He has to either be right at the head of the distribution, or he will get blown away as his traffic is dispersed to its tail.
And Rob, I think you are totally right about the situation Zell and other papers are in. But I don't think the brand is dying unless he lets it die -- and I think trying to build walls around content, or trying to pull a King Canute and roll back the tide, is a recipe for disaster.
That is, as a matter of probability, I would assume there was an idea that was either being garbled or wasn't apparent to me, rather than this guy who seems to have expertise in the topic just spent a zillion dollars on a transaction where he lacked the most basic understanding.
While not an absolute guarantee, such an assumption is a good bet.
And so what if Google News introduces Zell's readers to competition? If those readers are leaving Zell's papers for other news outlets, then that's Zell's problem. Innovate, hire better writers, produce better content, and win those readers back. That's the beauty of competition.
Just because someone is a successful businessman in one sector (in Zell's case, real estate), doesn't necessarily mean any of the following:
- He's smart
- He's honest
- He can speak intelligently on all business issues
- He can make good business decisions in other sectors
That's like saying, hey, this guy is a superb swimmer. Let's have him on our baseball team! Or let's have him be a baseball commentator on TV. Oops. ("But hey, he's an exceptional award-winning athlete... how could he be wrong about another sport?!")
RIAA. MPAA.
Organizations comprised of multi-billion-dollar and (at least formerly) successful businesses. Current (much deserved) verdict?: Morons.
No branding, no returning traffic, not even a site, just raw feeds of text and images optimised for Google News indexing.
It'd be tough to build a business model out of that and therefore, Zell doesn't want people to read material from the media organisations he paid billions for through Google News.
So yes, he has got half a point, but he's missing the other half: the alternative to Google News that has the same attractive proposition for readers (easy access to multiple global news sources) but which builds Zell's Trib business. Good luck coming up with that...
Juha, I don't think that's the logical extension of Google News at all. Google News is a search engine, just like the regular Google search is. Does that make all of the websites that it links to nothing but a raw feed of text and images for Google to index? Maybe -- but it doesn't have to be that way.
Content is king, and good content will always draw readers. Google News is a way to find more of them -- provided Sam and his newspaper do their jobs properly.
An amateur news organisation that knows how to optimise its site for Google (News or the search engine in general) will always trump a professional one that doesn't jump through the SEO hoops.
Google News is not ideal to find good or the best content either. There are only very rudimentary ways to make it display the sort of content I think is the best (or say that which a group of people think is the best). Maybe that'll come with Google version 2.0 (should be 3.0 to be Cool Web), but anyway...